The licensee business is a unique facet of the mattress industry, as it encourages the sharing of ideas, and — if nurtured properly — it can become a close-knit community.
This is the case for Spring Air, which recently named Nick Bates as the new CEO following the death of previous Chairman and CEO Eddie Bates.
We caught up with Bates to find out how he plans to bring the company into the future, and his long-term experience at the company will inform how he moves the company forward.
Serving as the company’s president since 2017, Nick began his career with Spring Air in 2009 as a sales and marketing coordinator where he learned the business working on the production floor and selling beds to retailers.
He worked his way up to director of corporate accounts where he played a vital role in the development and growth of Spring Air’s key national accounts business. He went on to become vice president and then president a year later.
“It’s exciting taking on a new role and getting embraced by the licensee community,” he says. “And it’s important that the facilities in our network believe in our leadership as well. I’m looking forward to moving the needle in different directions and continuing to push Spring Air in the direction that will help us become one of the leading licensing networks.”
Nick is credited with bringing the unique perspective of the younger consumer to his post, and aims to shift the company’s approach to marketing to appeal to millennials. However, he adds that the company is staying current with all generations and won’t just focus on buzzwords.
“Everybody loves saying the word millennial,” he says. “It makes them look like they know what they’re doing on Instagram and Facebook. But there are more generations than millennials — and they buy beds. We’re focused on always maintaining a balance and saying, you know, we want to be inclusive and make sure that each one of our brands and sub brands speak to one, if not all, of those generations.”
One of the things that sets Spring Air apart as a licensing company is its Licensee Summit. Once a year, all of its licensee partners get together to discuss business ideas.
“We look at where we are now, and then we look even further to see where we want to go and how we want to develop the Spring Air brand together,” Bates says. “What I believe we get out of these meetings is an understanding of our licensees of the voice and direction of the brand. We want them to voice their feelings and get heard at these meetings. And we use many of the licensees’ ideas and requests.”
In fact, Spring Air’s highlight popular Sleep Copper collection was a product of a Licensee Summit think tank in Denver last November. The company worked quickly to bring it to the January Las Vegas Market, and Bates says it’s been a hit ever since.
“Everybody from consumers to retailers gets it, and it’s easy to sell,” he says. “And that idea was 100% licensee-driven.”
Bates sees exciting growth in Spring Air’s future as the company continues to push and build its resources, build its capacity at the facilities it currently has and focus on how it can help its retailers grow.
Internally, the company needs to be able to handle that growth. Bates says Spring Air will continue to do that through special programs, like its brand-new copper program.
“We’re going to continue to focus on health and wellness and our copper lines,” he says. “If we keep innovating and pushing that envelope, we’ll earn great spots with amazing retailers and grow the excellent retailers we currently have.”
