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 futon retailer sat down to begin their unique partnership.
Today that partnership revealed itself when the doors opened and futon buyer 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 futons 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 futon galleries 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon retailers to best merchandise their floors and compete vigorously at every price point. It also enables futon 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 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. “Futon 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.
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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 futon 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon 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 futon retailer, the entrepreneur,” he says.