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Matthews targets innovation at Simmons

New president has history of boosting market share, revenues

By David Perry -- Furniture Today, March 11, 2007

Atlanta — When Simmons was looking to boost its marketing firepower, it turned to a veteran consumer products marketer who has given his previous employers a solid record of growth.

Gary Matthews, who joined Simmons as president in December, has a history of increasing market share and revenues.

In his 27-year career, he has led companies or divisions in industries as varied as alcoholic beverages, pharmaceuticals, snack foods and bicycles.

Now he's looking to take Simmons on a similar ride.

Simmons Chairman Charlie Eitel introduced Matthews to the press at the winter Las Vegas Market. Eitel said the board had been thinking about succession planning at Simmons and also wanted to add more marketing management to the senior leadership team.

He praised Matthews for his "great background" at schools that Eitel said he wished he could have attended. Matthews has an undergraduate degree from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard, while Eitel graduated from Oklahoma State University with a bachelor's degree in business administration.

Matthews has "already been a big help" to the senior management team, bringing "great new ideas to the table," Eitel said.

Matthews said he is now a steward of two great brands — Simmons, with its 137-year history, and Beautyrest, the company's 85-year-old flagship mattress brand. It is the job of management to strengthen those brands and to "leave the company in a better place," he said.

One key to doing that, he said, will be innovation.

"There is nothing more important than improving the product," Matthews said. Simmons will get input from consumers and dealers and will offer new ideas as it continues to improve its products, he said.

Matthews also promised that Simmons will invest in its dealers. "We want to win at the point of sale," he said. The new Simmons Beautyrest line, he said, "is a simpler line to sell and (is simpler) for consumers to understand."

Beautyrest is now segmented into three collections, each featuring a higher coil count than the collection below it. The line has logical step-up stories and clearly expresses the three key features of Simmons' Pocketed Coil technology: motion separation, conformability and durability, according to Simmons officials.

Matthews noted that Simmons is offering "great point-of-sale materials" for use at retail. For example, the company has simplified its Motion Separation Index, making it easier for consumers to understand the differences in motion separation offered by the three new Beautyrest collections.

Simmons will build the value of its Beautyrest brand and drive traffic with advertising, he said.

Matthews added that he brings a consumer marketing skill set to a company that, after a good year in 2006, has momentum in the marketplace.

He got his start at consumer goods powerhouse Procter & Gamble. There, as brand manager, he oversaw the Head & Shoulders Shampoo brand. Then he joined the respected New York-based corporate strategy firm McKinsey & Co., where he managed projects related to marketing and corporate strategy.

After that, Matthews spent five years with PepsiCo in posts including vice president of marketing and vice president of corporate strategic planning. Two of his major accomplishments at PepsiCo included increasing sales of Stolichnaya vodka through new positioning and advertising, and negotiating a joint venture between Frito-Lay and Subway.

Then Matthews moved from soft drinks and chips to Guinness beverages. He was president and CEO of Guinness Import Co. and was managing director of Diageo/Guinness' office in the United Kingdom, where he reversed a sales decline and saw revenues grow by more than 10% in two years.

After that he pedaled into the bicycle field, becoming president and CEO of Derby Cycle Corp., boosting revenues and coming up with coordinated design and purchase operations that saved Derby more than $20 million.

He followed that with a stint in the pharmaceuticals business as president of Bristol-Myers Squibb's worldwide consumer medicines division.

Matthews got his first taste of the bedding industry in serving for about a year as president and CEO of Sleep Innovations, a specialty sleep manufacturer, which grew sales from $225 million to $275 million under his guidance.

He's already learned some key truths about the mattress business.

"This is a high-touch sale," Matthews said. "You have to win at the point of sale."

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Matthews targets innovation at Simmons

Mar 14, 2007

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