Bedding Conference Offers Business Tips
David Perry -- Furniture Today, June 16, 2011
AVENTURA, Fla. - The mattress industry needs to take several actions to polish its playbook this year and boost business, leading industry players said here.
" Polishing the Playbook: Skill sets for retail bedding success" was the theme for Furniture/Today's recent Bedding Conference here, an event that drew more than 300 industry players to the Fairmont Turnberry Isle Resort.
We addressed the playbook theme with a full slate of speakers during the conference, and I asked several speakers and attendees to share their thoughts with me about steps the industry should take to give business a lift this year.
Keynote speaker James Maas, an expert on the benefits of sleep, says the industry needs a new "zeitgeist" (spirit of the times): "Not focus on beds as a commodity - how cheap can we put out a mattress?" Instead, he said, we should realize that "we are in the health business, the performance business."
That attitude shift would bring major changes to the industry, changes that many longtime bedding observers say are badly needed.
Retailers are making several moves to polish their playbooks.
"You have to go back to the basics," declared Pedro Capo, chief operating officer for Miami Gardens, Fla.- based retailer El Dorado Furniture. "One of the things we are stressing, particularly in our training sessions, is to treat every customer like that's the only customer you will have in your life - not just that day or that month or that week. We are stressing that so much in every part of our business, especially in the mattress area."
That "back to basics" theme was echoed by Lisa Stansbury, vice president of Fred's Beds in Wilmington, N.C.
"We have hired a new sales trainer," she said. "We are going through the basics. It's funny how you can forget the basics. We are not necessarily doing product training; most of our people are pretty good at that. But we are focusing on things like how to close the sale and how to track sales and the importance of having goals and going for them."
Tom Wholley, president of Connecticut Mattress in South Windsor, Conn., said there is "a lot of polishing to be done in the mattress industry in general."
His plans for this year: "We want to polish the services in our playbook and really listen to the consumers. We are selling sleep, but we get so caught up in the nuts and bolts of the industry that we don't look at what the consumer is really buying."
Look for more business-boosting ideas from the Bedding Conference in upcoming editions of this column.
Retail Bedding Playbook is a regular feature about mattress retailers by David Perry, bedding editor. Ideas for future coverage can be shared with Dave at dperry@furnituretoday.com.
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