Vivian Weng, chief commercial officer, Classic Brands

As we continue to move the goal post in the second half of the year, the biggest challenge we’ll face at Classic is meeting the significant demand we’re seeing (and anticipating) for our products and services across both our e-commerce and brick and mortar customers. We’ve been making positive strides internally and with our retail partners to get ahead of this challenge.

For example, we’ve expanded our warehouse footprint in Long Beach, Calif.; Houston; and Columbia, Md. We’ve also implemented new internal systems to more efficiently process customer orders, including a new cloud-based ERP system and new warehouse management systems.

We have given various new, high-quality vendor manufacturing partners a digital platform to meet their growing demand both domestically and internationally, and we’ve expanded our delivery resources through supply agreements with both FedEx and UPS that provide greater capacity requirements.

We have also invested in our executive level and mid-tier management to ensure that our experienced team remains well-equipped to steer the company’s growth trajectory and exceed customer expectations.

Phil Sherman, president, Customatic Technologies

Over the past year, we as an industry have worked hard to find ways to overcome the challenges in increased lead times on raw materials, capacity limitations from our factories, vessel availability and freight costs reaching an all-time high in domestic and international charges.

As a company we believe that many of these issues will remain and continue to cause disruption in servicing our customers through the second half of the year. Through the course of this year, we have been able to take a step back and reflect on the things that we can change in our business to evolve with these changing times. Communication with our customers has been key in managing supply chain lead times with providing forecasts and projections for the coming six to 12 months.

Additionally, we have expanded our resources and will continue to do so through the rest of 2021 so we can ensure the best service and quality to our customers.

While we can all agree 2020 has been a difficult year for all, we also recognize these challenges have forced us to grow in a way we may not have otherwise, and it has allowed us to become a better vendor to our customers.

Ed Barrera, CFO and COO, Diamond Mattress

The biggest challenge we face in servicing our customers is adapting to the current scenarios that were accelerated by the pandemic and remain high: more online ordering, more people staying at home and working remotely.

We’re ramping up our e-commerce efforts and offering more BIB drop-ship options to our customers in a wider variety of fabrications. Our newest tufted luxury line Generations is an example. We’re making it easier for our customers to sell Diamond and private-label mattresses on their websites by handling the dropshipping.

We already have the operational infrastructure to meet the e-commerce demand, and we are focused on keeping the process smooth for our customers.

Stuart Carlitz, president and CEO, Eclipse International

The challenges we face over the balance of 2021 will be raw material shortages and various rising component prices. Currently, the greatest challenge for us continues to be the industry-wide shortages of foam and its corresponding price hikes, as well as other raw materials including steel and wood that are beginning to rise to unprecedented levels.

We are fortunate to be able to source globally from our network of licensees and their vendors worldwide. We are also sourcing alternative materials and putting them into new products for our dealers allowing them to maintain price points and offset some of the rising costs.

We will continue to offer retailers new and innovative products at varying price points and with alternative raw materials. As always, our dealers will be our top priority.

Jeff Quinn, vice president, Element Sleep

Our biggest challenge servicing our customers in the second half of the year will be insuring the consistency of our supply chain. To meet this challenge we must continue to work with our incredible vendor partners and find creative solutions that continue to deliver the quality and consistency our dealers expect.

Mark Kinsley, president and CEO, Englander

The shape-shifting challenges surrounding the mattress supply chain have created an opportunity for Englander to deepen our connection with customers through transparent and consistent communication. That’s the key to getting through difficult times together and emerging more connected and stronger than before.

Mark Akerman, president, Enso Sleep Systems

The greatest challenge we are facing in servicing our valued retail partners is different than anything I have seen in my 30 years in the industry. Most of our dealers are doing a great job of attracting customers into their stores, closing sales and providing the in-store experience that helps to make a customer for life. The challenge we are facing, like so many others, is the ability to flow goods to our dealers in a timeframe that the consumer has come to expect from our industry.

To address this at Klaussner/Enso, we are leveraging our domestic production capabilities and aggressively expanding our daily output of goods. On our import business, we no longer simply look to South Asia for production partners, but we now are utilizing our vast global sourcing capabilities to strengthen our supply chain wherever great product, high quality and attractive pricing can be found.

While we handle the flow of import goods for many of our customers, we have extended our relationships with the numerous freight forwarders and carriers that we use to those that have chosen to do so on their own. We continue to believe that supply chain issues will remain with us for the balance of 2021, we fully anticipate great improvements in flow of goods as we enter 2022.

The biggest challenge Ergomotion has faced in servicing our customers in the second half of the year is global transportation issues with both ocean container and domestic trucking, but we’re taking the proactive approach with our shipping partners by levering our scale to pass efficiencies and savings on to our customers.

We’re also actively assessing SKU mix to ensure we are being resourceful with all transportation requirements. Our goal is to always help grow our customer’s business and strengthen our operations that will provide the most successful results.

Jon Stowe, managing director, E.S. Kluft & Co.

While supply chain and logistics are the biggest challenges for our industry in 2021, our products feature more natural components, so we are less impacted than others. However, we are still mitigating these challenges through design and cost engineering. Another challenge we face is having to continue to educate consumers on the importance of investing in a high-quality mattress. After a year of restrictions and spending on home goods, consumers will probably start investing in other activities such as vacations, dining, and gatherings. Given this, it will be key that we continue to educate consumers and remain top of mind as an established leading luxury bedding manufacturer.

To navigate through these challenges, we increased distribution by securing several new accounts, and we’re very excited to launch the largest introduction of new collections in our history. It will include a portfolio of diverse luxury mattress offerings to appeal to different consumers’ needs. We are also significantly investing in advertising throughout the year. And we will continue to educate consumers on the benefits of owning a premium mattress through new content on our website and social media channels.

Overall, we’re bullish in the second half of 2021. We’re receiving a lot of positive feedback from our retail partners. They are excited about our new collections as well as our commitment to exceptional service, and they are telling us that our luxury bedding products are generating enthusiasm among both their sales associates and customers.

Alan Hirschhorn, executive vice president of sales, GhostBed

The industry is facing two real challenges which I think will continue thru the second half of the year. Right now, there are raw material shortages, especially foam which is on allocation. No one is quite sure when these shortages will be resolved, so we are just managing these challenges day by day.

Coupled with raw material issues are considerable logistical challenges domestically with over the road issues and with last-mile challenges. With demand being way up, and supply being limited, we are seeing significant price increases in material and movement. Delivery costs have risen as have foam prices. Containers from overseas are hard to get booking and we are seeing inbound freight costs double for containers.

Fortunately, GhostBed works very closely with our suppliers, some of which we have relationships with for more than 20 years. Given these strong ties and our rapidly growing volume, we were well stocked with both raw materials and finished product. We were able to stay pretty much ahead of any shortages and will continue to do so in the second half of the year.

We are a global partner with FedEx, another relationship for almost 25 years. Working together, we have managed to minimize cost increases yet continue to supply quick shipments to both our DTC customers and to our retail partners. With 15 distribution centers throughout the country, mostly fully stocked, we are nimble and can move quickly to meet the increase in demand we are seeing through the rest of the year.

The second challenge we see is how to get consumers back to our brick-and-mortar locations once things return to normal. As experts in digital marketing and e-commerce, we want to be an asset to our retail partners to not only supply the highest quality products and service, but to help drive traffic back into their locations.

Toward that end, for our brick-and-mortar customers, we are launching a wholesale line of mattresses that is designed to raise foot traffic. This new line will give them premium GhostBed products with all the support and shipping capabilities one can find only with a direct-to-consumer brand.

We give our dealers the option to ship to their DCs, stores or directly to the end consumer, seamlessly using all our shipping capabilities. And with a complete bed in a box program, dealers can now stock the most popular models right in their back rooms, allowing their customers to take their purchase with them.

Bob Naboicheck, president and CEO, Gold Bond Mattress

Gold Bond is still primarily an innerspring-focused manufacturer, and we are, like the rest of the industry, experiencing supply chain shortages. It takes a lot of resourcefulness and leveraging long-term relationships to get the materials we need to fulfill orders for our customers.

To meet the challenge, we are still personally visiting stores — which my son and I do regularly — to stay close to our customers and to provide excellent service, on-site personalized training and firm commitments for four-day deliveries. By doing this we are instilling the confidence the sales reps need to sell knowing they will be able to deliver the best quality product in the timeframe they need. We are not missing a beat on delivery and that is what counts right now in the marketplace.

Tim Witherell, vice president and general manager, Hickory Springs Bedding Unit

We will continue to ride the nesting phenomenon that will likely persist well into the second half of the year as consumers continue to upgrade their homes with new furniture, mattresses and home accessories. A key challenge we will face is keeping our labor workforce robust to support our customers’ increasing demand.

With the increase in federal unemployment benefits, finding skilled labor continues to be a challenge for us. North Carolina — and the greater Hickory area in particular — is a very competitive market for home furnishings, and as such we have put into place a variety of initiatives to make HSM a very attractive place to work.

First, we have adjusted our wages so that they are on par with the industry and within our local labor market. Second, we are being creative in how we are scheduling our production shifts to offer flexibility in work-life balance and to accommodate working spouses and family members. For example: running seven days each week, we’ve moved to two shifts a day, lasting a total of 10 hours Monday through Thursday; and then 12-hour shifts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This new schedule offers our employees either a three-day weekend, or the option to work weekends, providing flexibility to those who may have a second job or a spouse that works throughout the week. Third, HSM is well-known in the industry for our benefits, including comprehensive and affordable health insurance packages, paid time off and a competitive 401K match program.

Recruiting and expanding our skilled labor will continue to be a key strategy for us, as we expand our workforce in our recently established dedicated mattress manufacturing facility in Hickory. Ramping up to full volume earlier this spring, the facility doubled our bedding production capacity, so that we can continue to serve our customers with high-quality, domestically produced bedding products and components in the back half of 2021.

David Binke, CEO, King Koil

We expect a significant upswing in demand in the second half of 2021. While obviously good for our business, this will also be our biggest challenge. Like the rest of the industry, we are still experiencing delays in securing raw materials, although I’m very optimistic that we will get through the foam crisis before the second half of the year.

With that outlook, we are putting some proactive plans in place for the second half of the year to position ourselves to hit the ground running when the situation returns to normal.

We plan to be very aggressive in ramping up production to meet the expected surge in demand. Our team has been working closely with our vendors, communicating with them and tracking critical updates on a daily basis, to help us obtain the materials we will need to meet the anticipated surge in volume.

It’s important to note that when talking to our vendors about these materials, we make it clear that we will not de-spec our products. King Koil is a high-end, luxury mattress brand, and therefore de-specing has never been an option for us and it never will be. We have the disciplines in place to maintain the quality of the products we manufacture as we go forward.

Frank Hood, president and CEO, Kingsdown

Supply chain optimization and diversification will continue being a major focus for Kingsdown.

While many organizations have had to simplify their product designs or reduce their product specifications as a result of limited raw material supply, we were fortunate to have spent the past 36 months building a network of domestic and international suppliers. This confederated approach, in combination with a strategic network of manufacturing locations, has afforded us great flexibility while limiting supply chain challenges. In fact, Kingsdown has continued to offer new and even more feature-rich solutions amidst the incredible challenges facing the industry at large.

The short answer is that service, innovation, and speed-to-market are still the keys to succeeding in the second half of 2021.

Billy Curtright, national sales manager, Magniflex

Going into the second half of this year, we see two challenges impacting not only Magniflex, but the entire industry.

The first would be the ability to keep our inventory at a higher-than-usual level. With an industrywide shortage of raw materials, it is crucial for us to keep our domestic warehouse full of ready-to-ship inventory that is available to ship to our customers at any time. Our sales numbers continue to exceed any of our early projections, so we must take any projection and add 30% to our production cycle to ensure healthy inventory levels.

Since we are a vertically integrated manufacturer, we have a particular advantage over some of our competitors, especially since we pour our own foam. Also, since our production is based in Italy, we do not carry the added baggage of higher tariffs nor the anti-dumping issues some of the Asian producers have.

In addition, our customers need fresh, new products, and we always try to bring this to the table no matter the circumstances. This has been made more difficult because travel restrictions have hampered our ability to physically meet with our customers at their retail locations or in-person events.

While this has become extremely challenging, we have adapted with virtual markets and technology enhancements. Although our virtual markets have been a major success, there is nothing like being able to work one-on-one with our customers and let them experience our products firsthand, which we look forward to returning to this year.

Stephen Chen, president, Mlily USA

Fortunately, because we are vertically integrated, we aren’t experiencing the same level of supply chain disruptions that many of our competitors in the industry are facing. We make our own coils, pour our foam and sew our covers, which gives us a bit of an advantage.

That said, the challenge for us is having enough manufacturing bandwidth to handle the tremendous spikes in demand we are experiencing. We have two solutions in place to meet this challenge, one in the short term, and one that will come to fruition later this year.

First, we are replenishing inventory on our most popular products as quickly as we can across our five distribution centers across the United States.

Second — and most importantly — we have plans to double our production capacity in the U.S. in the back half of this year. We are excited to share more news about this soon and how this initiative will position us to meet the continued rise in demand for our retail partners.

Rion Morgenstern, CEO, Pleasant Mattress

Our biggest challenge for the second half of 2021 will be to help our dealers maintain their continuing sales momentum while managing the challenges of rising raw material costs. We are helping them by broadening our product mix so that they have more options for their customers who may be sensitive to rising prices.

We see our launches of new models under the McRoskey and AirFlex brands as offerings that will help our dealers increase their sales in the high-end, luxury segment. The debut of our 10-bed Spring Air-branded line will be an important addition to our retailers’ offerings in the entry-level and value-price-point categories. We will support all of our brands with one of the most talented marketing teams of any super-regional mattress manufacturers in the country.

Last year, we began the first phase of our move toward lean manufacturing, which has enabled us to ship products faster and more efficiently. In the second half of this year, we will accelerate this effort. Lean manufacturing should add 300 units per shift to our output while reducing our costs, which will be added relief that will benefit our dealers.

Keith Martin, vice president, Precision Textiles

Unlike some parts of the industry, we are seeing an uptick in the business because we are able to help bridge the gap for our customers who are seeking foam alternatives. We have developed EcoLoft, EcoLoft Luxe and our Vertically Lapped Densified Eco-Pads, all of which provide the necessary “spring back” and support that foam products offer. These products are a real help to manufacturers who are looking for alternatives for some of their foam needs.

Since we source raw materials from all over the world, we will be very proactive in planning and forecasting how much inventory we will need to manufacture these fibers. This forecasting has to be done far in advance because our global supply chain is very long.

We’re meeting this challenge by taking our production forecasts from last year and adding to them to be sure we’re prepared. As the foam allocations continue, we are also committed to developing new fiber solutions that can be used in a variety of ways inside the mattress build.

Martin Rawls-Meehan, founder and CEO, Reverie

We expect to see continued volatility with supply chain and logistics through the second half of the year. In order to meet rising demand and prevent stock outs, we are continuing to expand our joint venture in Vietnam and domestic production in the U.S.

Bill Hammer, president, Shifman Mattresses

Price escalation of raw materials and logistic delays (the time it takes to ship) have been our two biggest challenges. While these challenges are outside of our control, our strategic procurement of excess raw materials and management inventory of finished goods, along with our strong, long-standing vendor relationships, have allowed us the continue to ship on time without delays and get us through the supply chain issues.

As the population continues to adapt to COVID-related activities, we expect the costs and logistical challenges to subside.

Nick Bates, president, Spring Air International

Raw material shortages and volatile raw material pricing — from wood to foam to springs — are the biggest challenges we face today, and unfortunately, we anticipate this storyline to continue into the back half of 2021.

As a bedding manufacturer, we are really “stuck in the middle.” The shortages and increasing raw material prices make it a challenge to get the supplies we need at the price we need to properly service our customers. Our retail partners have been patient so far, given these extraordinary times, but are anticipating they will make merchandising changes on their floors to better align their selections so they fall in line with the price points comfortable for consumers.

Across our network of licensees, we have already implemented several strategies to reduce the impact of rising raw materials costs, and we have begun remerchandising exercises with many of our retailers. Working together with our partners, we will continue to look at developing different styles with different materials and redesign our products in ways that reduce cost volatility. As all the tides rise, we are going to do our part to use innovation and design to protect the margins of our retailers.

Bryan Smith, president and CEO, Southerland Sleep Inc.

Raw material availability and the longer-term effects they will have on retail merchandising strategies are the biggest challenges we see for the second half of the year.

While we are optimistic that the industry’s supply chain will begin to course-correct in the back half of the year, we remain focused on continuing to execute on the mitigation plans we put into place when the disruptions began to take hold. This includes working closely with our suppliers, communicating regularly with our customers and being very transparent about our production capacity and lead times.

To do this, we have invested in more data management processes and information systems across our company. This enables us to better analyze our supply chain and identify risks earlier in our sourcing and production cycles so that we can continue to service our customers.

It is important to note, however, that while some manufacturers may be looking to replace mattress components with lesser quality materials to meet a specific price point, we are not exploring this option. Our commitment to producing mattresses with top quality materials and construction is something we simply won’t sacrifice. Rather, we are exploring high-quality alternate materials that are more readily available so that we can supply our customers with products in a timely manner.

Steve Rusing, president U.S. sales, Tempur Sealy International

Supply chain issues have been a continuing challenge, as consumer demand exceeds manufacturing capacity due to limited component availability.

Our global leadership has well-positioned us to address these issues better than others in the industry, with the financial strength and footprint to source components from overseas and alternative suppliers to reduce impact to our customers.

Gerry Borreggine, president and CEO, Therapedic International

Our biggest challenge is maintaining a timely and uninterrupted flow of goods to our dealers. The pandemic has disrupted the raw material supply chain, putting increased pressure on delivery. But as an independent group, our factories are nimble and more flexible in finding ways to keep the orders arriving on time to our dealers.

I’m Sheila Long O’Mara, executive editor at Furniture Today. Throughout my 25-year career in the home furnishings industry, I have been an editor with a number of industry publications and spent a brief stint with a public relations agency where I worked with some of the industry’s leading bedding brands. I rejoined Furniture Today in December 2020 with a focus on bedding and sleep products. It’s a homecoming for me, as I was a writer and editor with Furniture Today from 1994 until 2002. I’m happy to be back and look forward to telling the important stories impacting bedding retailers and manufacturers.

Sign up to get exclusive industry information delivered directly to your inbox.

© 2022 BridgeTower Media. All rights reserved.

Use of this website is subject to its Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell My Info/Cookie Policy

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.