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L&P's top ‘Sleep Geek': Idaho retailer Collin Cook

David Perry -- Furniture Today, November 18, 2011

Leggett & Platt’s Mark Quinn, left, presents check for $10,000 to Kathy Christensen, Collin Cook, Stan Cook, Tracy Ganieany and Jason Cook, all of Blacker’s.IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - Santa made an early visit to Blacker's Complete Home Furnishings here.
     Leggett & Platt executive Mark Quinn arrived here last month with an oversized check for $10,000 for Blacker's and one of the store's sales associates, Collin Cook. They were the big winners in L&P's Sleep Geek contest, a 100-day online competition that attracted thousands of mattress retail sales associates from across the country.
     Cook, the son of Blacker's President Stan Cook, embraced the Sleep Geek challenge, winning 18 of the 100 days of questions posed to RSAs, the best performance by any of the more than 2,000 RSAs who signed up on the Sleep Geek website at www.sleep-geek.com to play the game and to become part of the online community of RSAs created by Leggett & Platt.
     "It was fun," Collin Cook told Quinn, vice president of marketing, residential, for L&P. "I did lose sleep because of the game. I was waking up at 2 a.m. to see who won the day before. I learned many things about Leggett & Platt and about the industry along the way. The game was educational."
     And the game brought out his competitive nature. "When you play a game," Cook said, "you want to win."
     And that's what he did, rising above retail mattress sales associates across the country to bring Sleep Geek honors to Idaho.
     The mattress department at Blacker's here is an important part of the retailer's business, one that features sleep sets by Tempur-Pedic, Serta, Englander and Simmons, all displayed against the backdrop of a "Sleep Center" painting on the wall done by Mary Cook, Stan's wife.
     The retailer is serious about its mattress business, and Collin Cook is a serious student of the art of mattress selling. He has been working at Blacker's for almost half of his 34 years. When he learned about the Sleep Geek contest, which posed a daily question to the RSA community, he decided to give it a try.
     "I played the first day, but I was horrible," he recalled. "I played the second day but didn't win. The third day I played and I won. After that, it was 100 days of no sleep."
     The contest asked RSAs questions about the mattress industry and about Leggett & Platt. Cook admitted he learned a lot about the company as the game progressed.
     "I thought of Leggett & Platt as a metal company," he admitted. "I had never thought of them as the bed people. This changed my whole outlook on Leggett & Platt. They are huge in sleep."
     As the grand prize winner, Cook won $5,000, money that he will put to good use. Some of it will help pay for an operation for his wife, Alysia, who has a hole in her heart that must be repaired. And he'll use some of the money to take his family to Disneyland next year. His kids will learn about that trip this Christmas. (So help him keep that a secret for now.)
     And Blacker's also won $5,000. Stan Cook said that money will be used to help pay some expenses - "cash flow being what it is today."
     Quinn was pleased with how the Sleep Geek contest turned out.
     "Collin Cook deserves this win," he said, "and it's nice that his winnings can help pay for something so important as an operation for his wife. Collin's commitment to the sleep products industry makes him the ideal winner of the Sleep Geek contest. He embodies the excellence that retail sales associates bring to their jobs each and every day, in major metro markets and in more rural surroundings like those of Idaho Falls."

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