COVER STORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Bruce Alexander

Teamwork and Success Boost Gold Bond Dealers

The new signage and floor models were about to debut at the medium-sized city’s newest futon gallery. As the owner and her staff busied themselves, a casual observer could detect none of the preparation, or the hours of planning or evaluation that preceded a glowing transformation of a once stale showroom. A golden bond had been established weeks before, when futon and mattress manufacturer Gold Bond and the retailer sat down to begin their unique partnership.
Today that partnership revealed itself when the doors opened and customers—attracted by a new and highly targeted promotional campaign—began arriving. At day’s end, the owner sighed and smiled. “It’s working,” she said.

Gold Bond began working with futon retailers over twenty years ago and with mattress retailers over 100 years ago, and today the company’s accumulated knowledge, product mix and gallery look are working for retailers of all sizes in all locales. The company’s background and experience helps retailers drive and close sales.

Likening the big futon and mattress factory to a “working laboratory”, Gold Bond VP Sales and Marketing Andrew Freedman says, “Gold Bond is a repository of retail information. What works and why it works. What doesn’t and why not. We work with each retailer to evaluate a market’s potential. We help them define what product mix is appropriate for their area, determine which media mix is most effective, and really roll up our sleeves and work as partners to determine and execute the best case marketing solution for our mutual success.

“That is what is making us stand out as a vendor,” he asserts. “We ask ‘Is direct mail, TV cable or broadcast, radio, newsprint, or circulars the way to go?’ What about the floor plan? Price points? High middle? Middle low? What is the right mix? We can minimize a retailer’s risk by learning from our repository of retail information gained from over two decades in futons and over one hundred years in mattresses,” he says.

Futons: It’s Entrepreneurial

“We help drive our partners’ sales after evaluating each retailer’s potential, by taking a team approach, and we know our retailers are entrepreneurs. For them, risk is inherent. We try to help ‘box in’ our customer’s risk. Since a Gold Bond retailer is our partner, it is in everyone’s interest to manage risk very well,” he says.

Gold Bond’s mattress manufacturing origins began in Connecticut over 100 years ago. Since those late 19th Century days, the company’s management has been communicating with retailers around the region and the world on a daily basis while asking questions such as:
“How can Gold Bond best amplify and present Gold Bond’s unique benefits to your stores’ customers?”

“How can we help you compete more effectively? Help you make greater returns on your mattress, futon and advertising investments?”

Gold Bond’s long-standing efforts to continually keep abreast of leading retailers’ requirements enables the futon mattress maker to lead the industry. Gold Bond’s deep and innovative futon line-up enables retailers to best merchandise their floors and compete vigorously at every price point. It also enables dealers to surpass competitors’ features and benefits and to successfully go head-to-head with sofas, sleep sofas, convertibles and couches.

Attracting consumers to futon retail showrooms is essential. Gold Bond developed an award-winning advertising co-op program designed to pique consumer interest and promote futon quality and benefits. The goal: to “get ‘em in the store”. That effort is ongoing and evolving on a daily basis.

“Consumers expect our futons to be long-lasting and very comfortable sofa sleepers. It must look terrific in a home or office,” company president Bob Naboicheck notes. “Retailers need advertising support to convey comfort, style, longevity and quality messages.” Mr. Naboicheck is the third generation of his family to lead Gold Bond. He is an innovator and pioneer in both the futon and mattress industries, and a staunch futon industry advocate and pioneer.
(Ed. note: see sidebar on page 20)

In ‘Vanguard’ of Manufacturing Techniques

Mr. Naboicheck recently spent about two years researching vendors and technological advances worldwide before authorizing about one million dollars in new production acquisitions and expenditures. New equipment, technology and quilting machinery purchases were made last year. The company re-merchandised existing mattress lines and modernized its historic brands, enhanced the quality, feel and appearance of its products, and added new support technologies. The company now is in the vanguard of manufacturing techniques.

To further boost the company’s assistance to its futon retail base, a sophisticated point of sale program was created to help dress up and inform each retail sales presentation. The idea is to amplify the benefits of futons and Gold Bond as a reliable supplier of high quality mattresses. Colorful hang tags and two 24” x 72” Futon Gallery and Futon Sale banners bring detailed information and a big futon message to consumers.

Four 18 x 24” posters, designed for framing or window treatments, complement full color 11 x 14” counter top easels and full color product brochures are available for each futon model Gold Bond manufactures.

Gold Bond’s overall in-store ambition is to leave some key impressions: superior quality and with real benefits.

Gleaming 48-foot Gold Bond tractor-trailers are adorned with creamy white, gold and pale green graphics. These behemoths glide to retailer’s showrooms throughout the Northeast. Each truck makes about 20 million consumer impressions per year, according to the American Trucking Association, based on an average of 21 days per month running the nation’s busiest highways between Boston and Washington, D.C. Such outdoor advertising predisposes consumers to the Gold Bond brand. The company’s trucks also insure on-time delivery and dramatically reduce freight concerns.

Sales motivation and individualized training are provided by Gold Bond’s experienced sales force, headed up by Andrew Freedman. “We look at our own people in the markets more as territory managers than the standard sales rep. The rep is too often perceived as just another fellow peddling mattresses. We really do wish to partner up, if you will, with retailers, as opposed to saying ‘here it is, it’s great, put it in your mix’. We want to focus on the entrepreneur’s needs and consult with each individually,” he says.

Individual Retail Attention

Mr. Freedman’s professional background brings a proverbial wealth of mattress merchandising and marketing know-how, which is widely shared with dealers’ sales teams.

A marketer by training and experience, Mr. Freedman is an old hand in the mattress business. He is a past president of Serta Northeast and Silentnight USA, the US operating division of Great Britain’s largest bedding corporation. Like Mr. Naboicheck, he is a third generation bedding veteran. Mr. Freedman received his MBA at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

Gold Bond is supporting its dealers with individualized and customized advertising support. Messages and product mix are based on each market’s unique requirements and opportunities. The question becomes, “How best to build your business?” and based on the responses, Gold Bond with the retailer helps tailor a new consumer-oriented ad campaign utilizing Gold Bond’s century-old reputation for quality and excellence.

Award-winning Russ Kramer Creative brings over 10 years experience in marketing and futon promotion. The Florida-based firm, known within the industry for developing consumer-targeted futon campaigns, handles in-store point of sale and ad campaign efforts for the company.

“This promotional ability flows from two key Gold Bond strengths,” Mr. Freedman observes. “One, Gold Bond is a stable, established and recognizable futon and mattress brand yet we’re not so huge that we can’t be very flexible. Consequently, two, we are able to innovate advertising messages for each retailer based on their specific needs in their own marketplaces.

“We are working hard to ‘Think Retail’, and we are listening to what entrepreneurs really require in tough market conditions. We are also amplifying the message of a superior price-quality ratio, longevity, beauty, style and wonderful comfort,” he said.

“The futon is gaining floor space in leading retail operations based on the benefits of the product, benefits that continue to amaze the uninformed. We are Thinking Retail with our established retailers and with new-to-the-industry dealers,” he adds.

A Massachusetts native, Mr. Freedman points to the recent success of the local NFL Super Bowl Champions for an analogy. “The New England Patriot’s success this year came from teamwork. No real superstars, just solid teamwork and keeping their eye on the target. Like them, we like working hard to team with the retailer, the entrepreneur,” he says.

‘Old Hands’ At the Helm

Gold Bond has an enviable mix of “experienced hands” and industry veterans behind the scenes. While the production people are not actively thinking retail in the promotional sense, they do know that innovative products, inspection, quality-control and on-time shipping are essential for their company’s dealers’ success.

Gold Bond recently added Dennis Ferry and Ray Andarowski to its management team. Mr. Ferry, Vice President Manufacturing, came to Connecticut after leadership positions with Mattress Discounters, Simmons and King Koil. He was given responsibility for the development of Simmon’s Beauty Rest Futon, which he created in 1988.

He relishes the competitive challenges and has brand management, product development, and merchandising experience. He developed Mattress Discounters private label mattress program, which grew to nearly half of the chain’s day-to-day sales volume.

Mr. Ferry says, “My current area of responsibility includes the manufacture of our hand-made classic cotton and innerspring Sacro Support premium line with an entirely new upgraded look and feel. Also, we’ve added a new Royalty cotton and innerspring promotional line that’s a winner. Almost simultaneously we started production on our new encased coil mattresses—some of which flow technologically from our successful futon products. They’re all built from demonstrably superior components. Our sales team has a great presentation on those as well.”

“Now we are putting finishing touches on our new Visco Foam mattress line due out in May—which we were told must offer more quality and value than anything else out there (in the marketplace) or why bother? They should be a big hit,” he said.

Mr. Andarowski, the company’s Production Manager, spent eleven years with Sealy Oakville of Connecticut and seven more with Simmons in Jacksonville, Florida. He is charged with increasing productivity while preparing for increased shipments anticipated from the company’s new mattresses, new lines and futon products.

Company executives believe the opportunity exists for an independent bedding manufacturer to have significant impact by providing clearly differentiated products to selected dealers. The company is now doing just that with its futon and mattress lines.

Key Price Points

Market forces and a near total focus on bottom line manufacturing techniques—how to make it cheaper—have had a homogenizing effect on the mattress products that many of Gold Bond’s competitors now produce —it is a given now that most innerspring mattresses are undifferentiated. As a consequence, retailers are forced to compete on price alone.

When I first met Bob Naboicheck it was 1989 or 90. He told me that his family had been making futons (cotton filled mattresses with striped ticking) since 1900. On my first tour of the Gold Bond facility Bob spent quite a while explaining the fundamentals of the cotton used to make batting for the company’s futon mattresses. Picker, gin motes, linters, etc. all blended for body, resilience, and comfort. Over the years Bob has also worked diligently to advance the cause of the industry that supports his family and employees. Instrumental as an FAI board member in 1993 and 1994 and leader extraordinaire during two years as Association President in 1995 and 1996 Naboicheck orchestrated the team execution of a consumer PR program that ultimately garnered hundreds of millions of impressions for the members, finalized the transition of the Association from an organization of pioneers to a professional business enterprise, and brought a level of energy and experience that helped propel our small niche product category into the home furnishings mainstream. —Editor

Gold Bond has deliberately developed those products that enable a retailer to offer consumers a different high-quality story at a sharper price point. The company makes the last of the bedding industry’s hand-made products. Retail price points range from promotional to super premium. Retailers derive far greater margins as a consequence. This competitive position benefits futon retailers as well, because Gold Bond continually works to build the highest quality possible and translate such products into retail advantages.

“Gold Bond’s impressive line up of premium mattresses encompass every style, range of price points, and comfort level. Product differentiation and innovation have always been the Gold Bond way. The basic starter mattresses range up through three super premium innerspring futons. Add to that our new LatexPlus, and Gold Bond’s super plush SoftTouch, and Wool Wrap, our retailers have a potent line up that’s second to none,” Stuart Glasser of the Tampa, Florida-based Glasser Group, which has been working successfully with key Gold Bond futon accounts for over 10 years, said. “Gold Bond is hitting the key price points in futons ($149 to $399) and the high-volume points in the mattress business ($499 to $1,499) with unquestionably the industry’s best-made lineup,” Mr. Naboicheck notes. “It’s successful, and we can help retailers do it with ease and on a daily basis. That’s exciting.”

Gold Bond is located in a 115,000 square foot facility immediately off an interstate highway in Hartford, about half way between Boston and New York City. The company presently ships about 1,500 futons a day or about 30,000 each month.

The sleep surface innovator was the first to add the concept of “plush” to what was, originally, a thin pad and so helped fuel the futon boom of the 80’s, 90’s and new century just underway. It was among the first cotton-batting producers to receive an Underwriters Laboratory (UL) Classification.

Gold Bond continues to listen to consumers and to retailers. The company president and its key executives spend hours each month in furniture and futon stores, listening to what the customer thinks and to what they want. They are listening to the buyers’ every day, and to what storeowners require.

Like Super Bowl Champs?

It makes for a successful, ambitious, and hard-charging corporation. It has made Gold Bond the strong leader in the futon industry, a pioneer since those early days of thin futon mats propped over in a corner, tucked under a table. It’s kept the company in the vanguard of one of the furniture industry’s few true growth categories.

For the New England Patriots, winning the Super Bowl was okay for last year. So what about next year? Likewise for Gold Bond. Being the market leader for the past years in futons was fine back then, but what about next year?

Partnerships, innovation, research and development and faith in the inevitable success of high-quality components is expected to keep Gold Bond at the forefront of the industry.

GOLD BOND FAST FACTS

• Location: Hartford, CT
• One of America’s oldest independent family-owned sleep products manufacturers
• 1980: First Gold Bond futon prototype produced
• 1898: First Gold Bond mattress prototype built
• Futons: 13 models include industry’s deepest premium line
• Mattresses & Boxprings: 25 models, with innerspring, foam and encased coil technologies
• Developed the first and only fully flexible innerspring futon mattress
• Introduced the industry’s only pure natural latex foam futon mattress
• Ships to 50 states and 11 countries
• One of USA’s largest cotton garnetters, carries Underwriters Laboratory (UL) Classification
• Known for extensive use of wool, silk and other natural fibers