The AVB Summit in Nashville, Tennessee, put mattresses in the spotlight with a well-attended Bedding University and major presentations by vendor partners on the exhibition floor.
Home furnishings veteran Chad Fischer, who joined AVB’s BrandSource division as director of mattress solutions last year, organized the first Bedding University event offered by BrandSource.
“We are building excitement in the bedding category,” Fischer said as he opened the mattress education session. “I am here to help you and to serve you.”
More than 100 retailers and mattress industry leaders were on hand for the session, which kicked off with an insightful presentation by mattress veteran Bob Muenkel, who provides online sales training to mattress and home furnishings retailers through his UncleMuenkel website. His presentation was titled “Journey From the Door to Ye$.”
One of his key points was that while many consumers come into mattress stores seeking a new mattress, they would benefit by purchasing a sleep system and experiencing the attendant benefits it would give them.
“Nearly everything we buy is often one part of an integrated system delivering enhanced benefits beyond the core need,” Muenkel said, citing the fashion industry as one example. A woman buying a new dress may also look at new shoes and new accessories, he noted.
“Standardize your presentations to show and demonstrate sleep systems,” Muenkel advised. “Consumers will most likely buy a sleep system that addresses all their needs and delivers more benefits they never knew existed. Show, demonstrate and sell sleep systems. Don’t be afraid of doing this. It doesn’t matter what brought them into the store. They still have a right to see what products are available to them. Our job is to show them what’s possible.”
(I made the second presentation at the Bedding University session, drawing on findings from our Consumer Insights Now research to address “The Mind of the Mattress Consumer.” I’ll discuss some of my key points in a future column.)
Two major mattress companies, Serta Simmons Bedding and Tempur Sealy International, were among the silver sponsors for the AVB event and had major displays on the EXPO show floor.
Other mattress and sleep accessories exhibitors at the EXPO included Ashley, Bedgear, CabinetBed, Cariloha, Corsicana, Malouf, Spring Air, UncleMuenkel and XSensor, show officials said.
AVB, a $25 billion member-driven co-op that serves more than 5,000 independent retailers in the United States and Canada, hosted the sold-out event at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. AVB provides merchandising, financing and digital marketing services to its members.
AVB’s BrandSource division is a merchandising organization for independent appliance, home furnishings and consumer technology dealers. Its sister divisions and affiliates include ProSource, TRIB Group, Mega Group and HFA Buying Source.
As the Bedding University session indicated, BrandSource recognizes the importance of the mattress category to many different types of retailers and aims to help its dealers strengthen their mattress business — and their overall business as well.
“I consider myself a sleep nerd, and I am an advocate for the mattress industry,” Fischer told Bedding News Now.
BrandSource has four private-label mattress programs, offered by Sealy, Sherwood, Serta and Corsicana. Those programs give members exclusive mattress lines to help them stand out in a highly competitive mattress marketplace, Fischer said.
BrandSource also offers a range of programs that help its members find success.
“If it’s right for our members,” Fischer said, “we want to provide it, whether it be advertising, merchandising or marketing programs. Our goal is to provide tools to help our members succeed.”
He’s working with Gordon Hecht, a home furnishings veteran who is serving as a consultant to BrandSource. Hecht’s decades of experience in retail and manufacturing give him the ability to work with both of those groups to promote win-win strategies, Fischer said. “We are extremely blessed to have him be a part of AVB and to share the vision we have for our members,” he said.
Hecht said one of his goals is to spread the good news about mattresses — a high-margin category providing a good revenue stream — to BrandSource members who don’t currently carry mattresses. Appliance dealers, a group with a strong presence in BrandSource, would find mattresses to be a nice complement to their businesses, he said. “Mattress customers are already in those stores.”
