restonic review - Restonic Brand Central

October 2011
Issue 6, Volume 2
RESTONIC REVIEW
A Publication for Employees, Partners and Friends of Restonic Mattress
August Las Vegas Market Boasts
Strongest Summer Market Attendance
in Three Years, Plus Hundreds of New
Showrooms and Exhibitors
Seven Percent More Buying Units and 23 Percent More
International Buyers Attend Nearly Half-Million Square Feet
in New and Expanded Showrooms
Tens of thousands of home furnishings industry professionals around
the world turned to Las Vegas Market, held Aug. 1-5, to plug into the
latest products, trends and business insights in an effort to boost their
bottom line for the second half of the year. According to scores of
market exhibitors—with nearly 200 companies showing at Las Vegas
Market for the first time—an aggressive approach to new product
introductions and show specials drove better-than-expected orders
throughout the five-day show.
IN THIS ISSUE:
Restonic Partners
with Sears .02
Clare Bedding Renews
Commitment .03
Lights Out,
Game On .05
Restonic is
Women
Certified .08
Look for the new Women’s Choice
Award Banners on Brand Central
1
Restonic FLASH:
Hot news at Sears: Restonic is now available at Sears
via their web based program.Two great brands together
“Supporting Dreams” for the consumer!
Sears Product
Comparable Product
We are not servicing Sears distribution centers across the
Bellflower ET & Firm
CC S Belvedere ET & CF
country, rather deliveries are direct to the consumer via a
Caspia ET & Firm
CC Classique ET & F
Daylily ET
CC Brilliance ET
Fressia Plush & Firm
CC Atlantis P & F
Felicity
HR Aruba
Bliss
HR Barbados
This is a retail, web-only dealer: [email protected]
3rd party delivery service. We are not on the Sears’ floors.
(Daylily is 1” lower profile)
Here are the details:
1. We are on www.sears.com only –
(Fressia models are 1” lower profile)
not in any brick & mortar locations.
2. We are a “drop ship” vendor – in that we are using
(Sears product traditionally tailored)
HomeDirect for in home consumer deliveries – we
are not shipping to any Sears distribution centers.
(Sears product traditionally tailored)
3. We are absorbing the cost for all in home delivery.
Congratulations to our
Yes, HomeDirect ships to every zip code in the US.
Restonic team in Buffalo!
You Gotta Read It to Know It!
Announcing a new contest for readers of the Restonic
Review! Each month we will pose a question to
our readers. The answer is found somewhere in the
newsletter, so you Gotta Read It to know the answer!
Do You Have News?
We are always looking for tasty tidbits and
noteworthy news to publish in the Restonic
Review monthly newsletter.
Our June winner is:
John K. Matthews,
Accounting Manager
Restonic Fayetteville
John has won the coolest ever beach towel!
If you have an interesting story, a new mattress
tale, an old bedding saga - please send it to the
Marketing Manager at: [email protected]
and it will be included in the next exciting issue!
The prize for October:
The new and very spiffy Restonic
Coffee Mug AND a bag of Dunkin
Donuts Coffee!
We are also looking for your Success Stories!
Tell us about a novel way you do business and
how it was successful. Did a promotion add to
consumer interest? Do you promote the brand
in a fabulous fashion? We are interested to
hear from you!
Q: What is our Marketing Manager’s new married name?
T hank You!
2
E-mail your answer to [email protected]
before October 28th. A random drawing from all correct
answers will determine the winner. Winner’s name will
be published in the November newsletter.
Clare Bedding Strengthens its Restonic Mattress Lineup
Furniture Today, July 2011
ESCANABA, Michigan — Clare Bedding, a longtime Restonic
licensee here, is strengthening its commitment to that
Top 15 bedding brand. Owner Don Balsavich, a bedding
veteran whose 30-plus years of experience include top
management positions at Spring Air and Restonic’s corporate
headquarters, has been focusing on the bedding business as
a licensee since 1993. “This is the era of the smaller, wellrun mattress producer,” he said. “As the mattress business
is currently very volatile, there are great opportunities for
growth for the second-tier brands that can out-maneuver
and out-merchandise the big ‘S’ brands.” And that’s good
news, he said, for Clare Bedding, which has been in business
since 1936 and has been a Restonic licensee since 1972.
understand. And by continuing to rely on quality components
and not compromising on materials or production methods
we experience a return rate of less than 0.5%.”
Clare Bedding supplies Restonic-branded bedding to about
200 home furnishings retailers and bedroom specialty stores
throughout the Midwest, including Darvin Furniture in the
Chicago market; Golden Fowler Furniture and Currie’s
Furniture in Traverse City, Mich.; Land-O-Dreams, Rochester,
Minn.; Al Grace, Rockford, Ill.; and Kirkish Furniture,
Houghton, Michigan.
As part of its decision to emphasize its Restonic roots,
Clare Bedding has discontinued its affiliation with the Eclipse
and Eastman House brands, Balsavich said. That will enable
the company to streamline its production and increase
manufacturing efficiencies; three national brands were
difficult to manage and support, he said. Clare Bedding will
continue to manufacture its successful private label Platinum
Dreams line for retailer Penny Mustard Furnishings, formerly
known as PM Bedroom Gallery, with stores in Chicago,
Milwaukee and Minneapolis. And it will continue to market
its own Clare Bedding products.
Balsavich says he’s seizing opportunities in the bedding
market by emphasizing the Restonic brand in the Upper
Midwest. His 50,000-square-foot factory services Michigan,
Wisconsin, northern Indiana, northern Illinois and eastern
Minnesota.
“We are going to be focusing on the Restonic brand, which
has one of the strongest trademarks in the industry - the
Marvelous Middle,” Balsavich said. The Marvelous Middle is a
reinforced design in the center third of the mattress, set off
with visible stitch lines, that provides extra support where
consumers need it most, he said.
Balsavich says he will be featuring several expanded Restonic
product lines:
• The Comfort Care Select line of individually wrapped
coil beds, retailing from $999 to $2,499.
• The Health Rest memory foam line, retailing from $599
to $1,699. The line touts a “100% made in the U.S.” story
that resonates with retailers who don’t want to turn to
Chinese memory foam imports, he said.
• A Restonic line featuring Flexsteel-designed box springs
that was remerchandised this year and retails from $1,299
to $2,999.
There are openings in the current bedding market that favor
companies like Clare Bedding, according to Balsavich.
“Locally owned factories can tailor their beds and their
programs to fit the region and the dealer base that
they serve,” he said. “And the local factory owners and
management usually know the retail store owners and have
open lines of communication with them. That makes for a
stronger, mutually beneficial business partnership.”
“We have already experienced a shift to and a resurgence
of the $1,299 and up retail price points,” Balsavich said. “If
there are real benefits the consumer can see and feel they
are willing to pay the higher price points and invest in better
sleep. Our two-sided mattresses continue to be very strong.
This is an obvious feature/benefit that consumers can easily
Clare Bedding’s Don Balsavich, center, supervises construction of the
Flexsteel-designed box spring used in the Restonic bedding line.
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Working with Restonic
is like a dream come true.
Restonic has been making
your sales dreams come true
since 1938. We are focused
on supporting you through
successful marketing and
strong sales development.
Restonic pledges to become
your preferred supplier due to
our exceptional products,
passionate people and
flexible programs.
The body-conforming sleep surface of our
HealthRest ® Memory Foam mattress reacts to your
unique shape, resulting in a bed that’s customized to
your specific needs. Our HealthRest ® Latex mattress
instantly responds to every inch of curve and contour,
allowing for a customized sleep surface.
Follow Restonic
on Twitter!
High Point Market | October 22-27, 2011
restonic.com
High Point, North Carolina
International Home Furnishings Center | Suite M408
New Restonic HealthRest™ Ad!
Look for our new Restonic HealthRest™ Ad
which will be featured at the High Point Show as a
full-page advertisement in Furniture Today’s opening
day publication. The promotion features the recent
Women’s Choice Award honor and a QR code that
sends readers to our Twitter social media page.
Look for the new “No Partner Disturbance”
Logo on Brand Central
Winter 2012 Las Vegas Market
January 30 - February 3, 2012
Monday-Thursday: 8:00am - 5:30pm
Friday: 8:00am - 11:00am
4
Lights Out, Game On
By Penelope Green, The New York Times
mom or an athlete, everybody has to perform the next day.
We’re making a performance home story. We want to own
the consumer from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.”
Doesn’t everyone? Sleep has always been big business. In
2010, Americans spent more than $5.8 billion on their
mattresses and box springs, up 4 percent from the year
before.
But as sleep studies have increasingly focused on the health
risks associated with lousy sleep, from Type 2 diabetes to
hypertension, obesity and a weakened immune system, the
makers of so-called sleep products have begun marketing
their sheets, pillows and mattresses as fitness aids, crucial
gear to prep for the athletic event that is your life.
Lisa Mercurio, left, and Cindy Bressler want to “own bedtime,” as
Ms. Bressler put it, with a new online community and lifestyle site
called the Bedtime Network.
Last night I slept on athletic shorts. Or more accurately,
I slept on the stuff athletic shorts are made of: high-tech
performance fabric, the sort of super-Lycra that goes into
the uniforms of, say, basketball players.
It looks like a bed, but it feels like a sneaker.
A new mattress called Blu-Tek actually looks like a sneaker,
when its innards are viewed in the cross-section graphic that
mattress makers love to show, with pockets of blue gel atop
crenulated layers of foam.
My sheets were, in fact, made by two former women’s
college basketball coaches, Susan Walvius, 46, and Michelle
Marciniak, 37, who worked together at the University of
South Carolina, and liked the feeling of their athletic shorts
so much that they decided to make sheets out of them.
There are also odor-blocking sheets, like Therapedic
AlwaysFresh (ideal for college students who do their laundry
only on term breaks) and a host of mattresses covered with
CoolMax (the performance fabric the Sheex makers hope to
trump).
Their sheets, which they called Sheex, would be a
“performance” product, imbued with all the properties you
associate with athletic gear: they would wick moisture away
from your skin, stretch and breathe better than cotton, dry
fast and wear long.
Magniflex, an Italian company, says it uses “nanotechnology”
to infuse its CoolMax pillow covers with lavender and
chamomile, turning the pillow into a “vehicle for well-being,”
its brochure promises. And Outlast sheets, made from yet
another performance fabric, “balance the microclimate under
the covers.”
Indeed, Ms. Walvius and Ms. Marciniak hoped to carve out a
whole “performance bedding category” by reminding folks
that sleep is a fitness issue.
You can even find sleep power bars: NightFood is made with
a chocolate extract and melatonin.
“I sleep hot, and I think most people do,” Ms. Walvius said by
phone the other day. “But I don’t think people realize that if
you sleep hot, your sleep is disrupted, and the next day you
can’t perform well.”
“The race to control the bedroom is the great game in
retail,” said Marian Salzman, a trend spotter and chief
executive for public relations operations of Euro RSCG
Worldwide PR, North America.
Ten years ago, she said, “as coaches, we were cotton purists.
Then we saw the whole evolution of performance fabric.
Now, you don’t train in anything but performance fabric,
because of the moisture wicking and the temperature
management. It just helps your body function better. We
thought it would be great to take this technology and apply
it to bedding.”
Michelle Marciniak, left, and
Susan Walvius, former women’s
basketball coaches, are now in
business, making sheets out of
the high-tech performance fabric
athletic uniforms are made from
Ms. Marciniak, who was sharing the phone with her business
partner, added: “Everybody needs sleep. Whether you’re a
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continued on page 6
Lights Out, Game On, continued
And beyond the so-called science, the notion of selling
bedding products as athletic gear seems intuitive, tapping as
it does into the American competitive spirit.
“We are hyper-competitive, even when it comes to stress
and relaxation,” Ms. Salzman wrote recently in an e-mail,
still at work at 9 p.m. “And we want to amp up our lives, to
ensure we have and enjoy the very best, better than others.
Thus, who wouldn’t spring for a few extra bucks for a better,
more sporty sleep?”
is coming. But adults are
falling asleep in front
of the television, or
checking their BlackBerry.
Technology has taken
away that time before
your head hits the pillow
when you should be
transitioning to another
place.”
She continued, “Seriously, we want everything in our worlds
to be high-performance, including our beds, our pillows, our
bolsters, to ensure an empowered snooze and also a better
next morning, a wittier, faster, smoother day.”
The Mattress
Development Company
has taken the athletic
theme even further, by
In his new book, “The 4-Hour Body,” the tango-ing,
looking at sleep itself
testosterone-injecting human guinea pig and lifestyle guru
as an athletic event. Its Ecstasy mattress, which sports the
Timothy Ferriss tries sleep “hacking” — that is, trying to
Playboy label, was designed, said Stuart Carlitz, the company’s
engineer the perfect night’s sleep in the least amount of time. chief executive, to mimic “the ride and the motion” of a
water bed.
Mr. Ferriss packs himself in ice (cooler core temperatures
send you to sleep faster), buys an REM sleep monitor to
Individually wrapped coils are involved, as is natural latex.
tweak his REM-sleep-to-total-sleep ratio (higher is better)
Also, there is a steel bar in the middle of the mattress. Less
and tests the polyphasic sleep habits of super-programmers
bounce, in other words, for better sex.
in Silicon Valley. (Polyphasic sleep is naps, and a blogger/
computer tech called PureDoxyk is the cheerleader of a
The mattress has sold well in independent furniture stores,
nap regimen called Uberman that prescribes 20-minute naps but hasn’t been picked up by larger retailers, Mr. Carlitz said,
every two hours during a 24-hour period, which adds up to
because “the buyers were concerned that Mrs. Consumer
a total of 4 hours of sleep a day.)
might be offended by the name Playboy.”
“You can learn a lot by exploring the fringes,” Mr. Ferriss said
recently. Though these days, he is happiest with 10 hours of
sleep, not 4, he added, and he has replaced the ice-packed
bathtub with a simple cold shower. His most elaborate sleep
aid, he said, is paying for business-class seats on long flights.
Now, he said, you can find the same technology in the
company’s Eclipse mattresses (look for the ones
in the Conformatic series). Who can keep up?
“Sleep fitness” is the buzz phrase from the National Sleep
Foundation, which promotes a “sleep fitness plan” on the
hang tag that comes with Sheex. The sheets are one of nine
branded products the foundation promotes on its Web site,
including room-darkening curtains and shades, and an air
filter.
Meanwhile, the Bedtime Network, an online community
and lifestyle site that went live this week, offers the services
of seven life coaches (including a decorator, a stylist and a
“mind-body expert”), all cozily photographed in white Hanes
T-shirts. The site’s creators, Cindy Bressler and Lisa Mercurio,
are two former music industry executives who got into the
sleep business a few years ago, after reading a study that
suggested that soft classical music playing at 60 to 80 beats a
minute was an aid to sleep.
“We see a lot of products,” said Tom Clifford, the group’s
director of development. “Shucks, we hear from people a
couple of times a day.Yesterday, it was like a far-out thing.
Everything from adult diapers to bedding and pajamas.” Mr.
Clifford doesn’t like the word “endorse.”
Since then, they have made four “Bedtime Beats” CDs,
collections of jazz and classical music that play at the sleepperfect rhythm.
“But it was never just a CD,” Ms. Bressler said. “It was a sleep
solution, something to incorporate into a bedtime ritual.”
“We partner,” he said, in a relationship that requires those
manufacturers to provide a copy of the foundation’s
sleep fitness plan with each product, which includes an
exhortation to “keep your bedroom cool, dark and quiet.” In
fact, most new products are in service to this manifesto.
Their goal now is a familiar one. “We want to own bedtime,”
Ms. Bressler said. “Babies have a ritual that signals that sleep
“Cool gel” has become the rallying cry of many mattress
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continued on page 7
Lights Out, Game On, continued
makers (the biggest complaint with foam mattresses, a staple
for decades, is that they sleep too hot). And the Blu-Tek
mattress might be the swankiest version of that technology.
It’s true that most of these products aren’t going to win
any beauty contests. Aesthetics is the Achilles heel of many
performance sleep “products.”
“We started with Nu-Tek” as a name, said Bob Hellyer,
president of Kingsdown, the company that makes the
mattress. “It evolved to Blu-Tek, because what we were really
after is a cooler sleep surface, and in our consumer research,
‘blue’ seems to hit on the cool-support technology.”
I loved the feel of the Magniflex Airyform pillow, for example,
with its lavender-infused CoolMax cover and orthopedic
humps. But you’d have to hide it in the daytime. (A scene
from “Planet of the Apes” kept running through my mind: As
Dr. Zira said to Charlton Heston, “You’re so damn ugly.”)
His target is women 25 to 35, a new market for an industry
that has been mostly geared to baby boomers. Why would a
young woman spend $1,500 on a mattress?
And Sheex draped flaccidly off a pillow, while the edge of
the top sheet folded over a coverlet looked sort of like
underpants.
“There is a larger number of single females choosing to delay
marriage,” said Dr. Robert Oexman, director of the Sleep to
Live Institute, Kingsdown’s research division. “They are more
affluent and more athletic, and they are saying: ‘If I want to
look good, I want to feel good. I need my beauty sleep.’ And
research is showing them that their cognitive performance
really decreases if they don’t get a good night’s sleep. They
know about all this.”
But they felt better than you would imagine. They were a bit
slimy, and your feet do tend to catch audibly on them, which
is disconcerting on the way in.Yet they were comfy over
all, in the same way those jersey cotton sheets that feel like
T-shirts are.
The stretch factor was fun, too.You can pull that top sheet
up, up, up, over your head, and then let it spring back. Did I
sleep deeper and longer? Did I dream more? Did I perform
like a champ the next day?
In addition, said Karin Mahoney, the director of
communications for the International Sleep Products
Association, a trade group for the mattress industry, young
women “tend to respond to the ick factor when it comes
to mattresses. Over time, your mattress collects dust mites,
skin cells, perspiration, body oils, and they really respond to
those messages.” (Bedbugs, one assumes, have been a boon
to the industry.)
Probably not. I’m the sort of sleeper that conks out the
minute my head hits the pillow, no matter what the pillow is
made of, or what it’s covered in, and I wake with a start at 4
a.m. to gnaw on existential questions.
To my knowledge, there is no product yet on the market
that will answer those.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 1st 2011
CONTACT:
Ron Passaglia
847-241-1130
[email protected]
Restonic
is Awarded
thethe
Women’s
Restonic
is Awarded
Women’s Choice Award by
®
Choice Award by WomenCertified
®
WomenCertified
forExperience
Excellence in Brand Experience
for Excellence
in Brand
Hollywood, FL – Women Certified announced today that Restonic has been awarded the
Women’s Choice Award for Excellence in Brand Experience. Through a Women Certified
Female Sales and Satisfaction survey conducted by Women Certified among Restonic
female customers, we have established that Restonic meets and exceeds her expectations.
Women Certified conducted an audit survey of their female customers to determine if
they meet the high quality standards set by Women Certified, the collective opinion of
female consumers. These included: salesperson product knowledge, women friendly
customer service, high level of product satisfaction, and other aspects that women value
and trust in a brand.
These standards were confirmed through a Women Certified survey with Restonic scoring
excellent in several areas including the likeliness that women consumers would
recommend a Restonic mattress to their family and friends. In fact, more than 96% of the
women polled said they would definitely recommend Restonic to their family and friends.
Restonic CEO Ron Passaglia stated: “Restonic Mattress is honored to be awarded the
Women’s Choice Award for Excellence in Brand Experience. This prestigious award
recognizes the Restonic brand’s overwhelmingly positive experience among female
consumers, and validates the brand’s focus of Supporting Dreams for all who experience
our brand”.
“Restonic is a gold standard when it comes to meeting her high standards of quality and
service. We are proud to award them the Women’s Choice Award by WomenCertified,
which will simplify a woman’s choice when selecting a mattress brand she can trust.” said
Delia Passi, Founder of WomenCertified and author of “Winning the Toughest Customer:
The Essential Guide to Selling to Women”.
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Restonic Marketing Manager,
Brooke Palmieri, Gets Married!
Brooke Palmieri is now Mrs. Brooke Kibrick
Brooke and her husband Sean Kibrick were married
on Saturday August 13th 2011 in Buffalo New York.
The wedding took place in downtown Buffalo where
all of their friends and family were there to witness
their union.
Brooke’s husband Sean is a 6th grade teacher and High School
Track and Field Coach. The couple honeymooned in Jamaica
and plan on making their home in Buffalo, New York.
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