The Big Sleep

Hi everybody,

It's been a long time since I blogged here. I'm letting Ben have all the fun!!!!

Anyway, I was reading a press release this morning about back pain and possible new therapies, the press release enhances yoga and pilates as the best proven therapies. Already interesting!!

But even more interesting I think is the fact that the press release states it is estimated that back pain costs the UK industry £5bn a year (£481m just for NHS).

Now if we consider those facts:

• A good bed lasts 10 years
• We spend one third of our life in bed
• Sleep is usually the period where your back gets "back into shape"
• A bad mattress is the worst that can happen for a back pain sufferer
• A good mattress all your life prevents backpain
• When you start feeling back pain, it is very difficult to heal!

And transform them into numbers:

• 10 years of back pain cost £50bn (!!!!!!) to the UK industry and £4.81bn to the NHS alone
• Just one third of it costs £17bn (and £1.45bn for NHS)
• Per inhabitant, that's £283 (and £25 for NHS alone)!!
• The average cost of a bed is £250 and it lasts 12 year. (whereas we should spend more I think, see here for more info)
• The last year of a bed is the one where the sleeper's backpain increases most.

This drives me to one conclusion:

• The UK industry could spend a further £283 per person to improve their sleeping at no extra cost.
• The NHS could subsidize beds for a further £25 per person

In beds, spending twice the price usually increases the quality 4 to 5-fold!

So, what are we waiting for? I'm sure pilates and yoga works great but what about preventing rather than healing. It's always less expensive: Let's buy good chairs, good beds for our employees!!! And let's get a tax credit to do it! Better this than nukes (or not !!! I'm not a nuke specialist :-))

Have a great WE!!

Julien - Bedeezee

It seems the year hasn't been so good...or that the show is loosing some of its attractiveness. Some of the big names in beds won't be there this year at the show! I'll confirm that on Monday but their names didn't appear in the catalogue and I've already heard some rumours.

You could have a big debate on the real interest of those big trade shows for the demonstrators. It's costing probably a lot of money to be there (although I must admit I have no idea about the total budget of this thing for a demonstrator). And I guess it's bringing less and less immediate orders to account for every year...It's about being seen and spotted. It's more about PR now than about selling! It's not anymore sales expenses but marketing investment for the full next year... What do you think? What's for sure is that passing on this event when you've always been there is a sign!

For us, retailers, it's obviously very handy: we have a quick look (3/4 days) at all the new products. (Last year, concerning beds, you could definetely see the impact of the memory foam story, at least on retailers and suppliers: it was everywhere.) One could say it's a way to meet some new persons...but you usually always bump into the same guys, not necessarily with the same companies :-)

Anyway, I'm getting ready this week end for it. Need to compile a few numbers and prepare my meetings.

Have a good one!

Hi everybody,

Just to excuse myself for not blogging a lot these days but I have an excuse. As some of you might know, the big annual furniture trade show is coming up next week and I hope I will be able to send you out some new designs and the latest in furniture trends (I'll try not to stick to beds). Look out for the pictures from next wednesday!

I can already let you know a few of our objectives for this fair:

1- Increase our bedsteads range with more designs and more products (possibly try to lower our lead time on them)

2- Launch a range of headboards (5/10 designs available quickly)

3- Increase our range of bed linen deliverable in 5 days in order to offer more complex designs than just our plain ones (which are a big succes, especially the Egyptian cotton linen sets range)

4- Increase our service level on quilts and pillows and stock more items in order to get a next day delivery on all products

5- Start a bedroom collection

6- Start a kids collection

Although all of these will take around six months to implement (especially the two last ones), because of other projects, most of the selecting work will be done at the show. The rest of the time will be used to work out how to best present the products to our customers.

By the way, if you're at the NEC furniture show on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday and would like to meet, I'll be more than happy to and you can send me an email at julien.gm(at)bedeezee.com.

C U!