Ross Furniture transforms bowling alley into showroom
David Perry, Bedding editor -- Furniture Today, October 13, 2008
DOVER, N.H. — Ross Furniture is rolling some strikes in the mattress arena these days. And it’s doing so with a bedding department that occupies a former bowling alley.
Yes, this is one retailer keeping its eye on the ball.
Jason Howard and his team at Ross Furniture saw potential in the vacant bowling alley, where furniture had been accumulating dust for years. So they cleaned the place up, filled the gutters with strips of wood, and turned it into a bright, airy mattress showroom. The 10 bowling lanes are still clearly visible to customers who navigate the well-merchandised bedding floor.
This unusual mattress department is upstairs at Ross Furniture, a local landmark on Third Street here. A furniture store has stood on this spot for more than 100 years.
Customers who walk up the staircase find 30 Englander sleep sets, arranged in a color-coded presentation that spotlights latex, memory foam and innerspring models. The beds in the Nature’s Finest latex line have green foot protectors, a color that signals the eco-friendly qualities of the natural latex. Blue foot protectors signal the ViscoPedic line of memory foam beds, while brown foot protectors mark innerspring beds.
“It works,” said Howard, owner and president. “The color coding simplifies everything. Customers like that.”
A placard at the entrance to the bedding department notes the color scheme, which makes it easy for consumers to keep track of which beds they are trying out. Also making it easy on consumers are the red foot protectors that mark the beds designated as comfort test beds.
All of the comfort test beds are premium beds. The visco comfort test bed retails at $1,999, while the latex test bed retails at $1,899. The American Spirit innerspring test bed retails at $999.
“You’ve got to start high and see their face and then go from there,” said Erik Roy, an eight-year veteran at the company who says he loves selling mattresses.
Englander is a perfect fit at Ross Furniture, said Howard. “I like the fact that Englander beds are American made,” he said. “I like the eco-friendly story. And I like working with Mark (Savel) and Chuck (Warshaver). We are a family business and they are a family business. We are comfortable with them.”
Savel and Warshaver are executives at World Sleep Products in North Billerica, Mass., which produces the Englander beds carried by Ross Furniture.
“Englander has been the easiest line to sell,” added Roy. “They make old-school mattresses. Consumers like the fact that we still have flip mattresses. That’s something fun to talk about. They are not the same old beds.”
Six of the Englander beds are two-sided, a type of construction that producer continues to tout, and one that it says a growing number of retailers are embracing.
Roy said one of the keys to the success of the mattress department is that it offers consumers a comfortable place to try out the beds. The mattresses are arranged in neat rows in the old bowling alley, with room to “spare,” you could say.
