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Ergo Offers High-End Shopping Experience

David Perry -- Furniture Today, September 23, 2011

John Shaw, left, and Michael Nermon in the Ergo Bedroom showroom at the Las Vegas Design Center.LAS VEGAS - To sell better beds you've got to give customers a better shopping experience.
     That's the philosophy that two bedding veterans are bringing to their newest venture, the Ergo Bedroom showroom in the Las Vegas Design Center here.
     John Shaw and Michael Nermon, who joined forces to launch Ergo Customized Comfort in Irvine, Calif., in 2001, are teaming up again on their second store, a multiuse showroom here.
     During furniture markets, the showroom, which carries the high-end Carpe Diem and Vi-Spring lines, will serve as a wholesale venue. But when the retail buyers are gone, the store will be run as a high-end showroom catering to consumers and the design trade. John Shaw, who now lives in Las Vegas, will run the showroom.
     He and Nermon designed Ergo Bedroom to provide a comfortable setting in which consumers will feel right at home trying out the beds, which retail from $3,000 to $25,000. The lighting is subdued and soothing music, replete with chirping birds, fills the air. The store makes prominent use of voile screens, large see-through fabric screens developed by Vi-Spring, which picture people sleeping - the benefit the beds provide.
Demo unit shows the layers of comfort filling materials and innersprings in the Vi-Spring line.     The store's setting in the Las Vegas Design Center is important. "We are the perfect fit," Nermon said. "This is where consumers are looking for the latest, most luxurious goods for the home." Ergo Bedroom is the only sleep shop, joining lighting, flooring and other furniture showrooms in the design center, located in Buildings A and C on the World Market Center campus.
     Ergo Bedroom occupies about 3,200 square feet and features just 16 beds, all by Carpe Diem Beds of Sweden and Vi-Spring Beds from England. Those two high-end lines both use encased coils and cushioning materials like cotton and wool. The Vi-Spring line adds horsehair to the mix, and uses no foams, while the Carpe Diem line uses latex.
     The two lines have different selling stories: Vi-Spring emphasizes Old World craftsmanship and all-natural materials, while Carpe Diem touts the highest quality materials and some of the newest bedding technologies.
     Jeffrey Klein, a Connecticut-based retailer who is bringing the Carpe Diem line to the U.S., says the two lines complement one another.
     Nermon said the new store should do well. There is a high-end bedding renaissance under way these days, he observed, and the store is well positioned to serve that category with its stylish, luxurious bedding lines.
     He said Ergo plans to expand its bedding collection with products featuring natural and organic designs.

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