Sealy to drop telephone-based program

Will go back to serving dealers with reps

David Perry -- Furniture Today, September 4, 2008

ARCHDALE, N.C. - Sealy is pulling the plug on its ActivLink telephone-based retail service program, which it implemented last summer to serve smaller dealers.

Sealy CEO Larry Rogers said the company revisited the decision to outsource those services "and we found it was a bad decision." As a result, the company will go back to servicing those dealers with regular Sealy sales representatives, he said.

Approximately 1,200 dealers were served by the program.

The smaller dealers already contacted by Sealy and informed of the change generally applaud the return to the former sales model, officials said. "Ninety percent of them have said they would do even more business with us," Rogers said.

When Sealy announced the launch of ActivLink in July 2007, it said the program would enhance the services it provided to smaller dealers. A North Carolina-based telephone service organization contacted the Sealy dealers and provided a variety of services to them, Sealy said at the time.

Rogers said it appeared at the time that the program offered "the means of better serving customers at potentially lower cost." But experience has shown otherwise, he said. "We didn't provide the level of service we felt we should," he said.

He defended the logic behind the original decision. "We always want to continue to explore if there are better ways to do things," he said. "We can't be afraid to take a risk. At the same time, if we are wrong, we need to admit it."

Experience with the program revealed that it didn't meet an important need. "Our industry is unique," Rogers said. "It requires that human touch."

When Sealy implemented the ActivLink program, it reorganized its sales force and eliminated some of the sales representatives who had called on smaller dealers. Rogers said it is possible that Sealy will hire sales representatives or reconfigure its sales reps' duties now that the program has been discontinued.