Bed makers

This is a quick post primarily about beds, mattresses and anything else bedding related.

I have been collecting information about the various bed and mattress manufacturers and online and store based retailers in order to get some background on what each of them does, how long they have been around etc. I have started to compile this information (by company), however I can nolonger show the link as it "may" be damaging the site in question. I envisage that this is going to be pretty much an ongoing process as both suppliers and sellers continually emerge and then disappear, but at least it will offer a general picture of some of these companies.

It is also interesting to see the roots of mattress producers as not all started out in the world of bedding. It is also fascinating to realise that some of these companies were the leading lights in areas like marketing, product promotion and the use of celebrities and characters to promote their numerous products. In actuality it would appear that many of the large scale advertising campaigns that we see today were used and in some cases pioneered by companies that made the humble bed. It is equally interesting to see that many of these companies are very long lived, a number have been trading for well over a century and there are not too many industries, let alone players in those industries, that you can say that about.

The big change is of course the multi manufacturer selling retailer who now dominates the bed selling market every bit as much as the manufacturer. These days there are few independent bed retailers and those that remain are often small family concerns. Some sell expensive beds and others try to sell at the bottom end of the market. Both regrettably have a mammoth task on their hands.

The same is almost true of the manufacturers. There are very few small scale bed makers. Nearly all have been bought out by the big companies, or become insolvent due to their inability to compete on price. Even so, many large companies own smaller subsidiaries and this, to a degree, keeps the small companies alive.