At the recent Las Vegas Market, I was invited to sit in on the Furniture Marketing Group’s Bedding Summit. At the meeting, about three dozen members of the retail buying group gathered to network, get the skinny on new products and programs from key mattress suppliers, learn about online consumer reviews and to share ideas.

While the annual meeting isn’t new — the organization typically hosts its summit during the summer market — I remain enamored of the creativity and the amount of camaraderie the group had. There was a lot of sharing of many things often considered taboo amongst fellow retailers.

Retailers big and small filled the room including outfits such as Walker Furniture, Steinhafels, R.C. Willey, Morris Furniture & Appliance, Miskelly Furniture, Furniture Fair, Del Sol Furniture, Fischer Furniture, Boulevard Home, Beck’s Furniture, American Home Furniture & Mattress, Crest Furniture, Appliance & Furniture Mart and Sam’s Furniture. All the retailers jumped in and joined together to learn from one another.

Due to scheduling constraints, I was only able to spend the Saturday morning with the group; however, during my time in the room, the group was given a pretty cool team assignment. Each of the tables was charged with designing a layout for a new bedding department.

No fancy planograms available, the tools were rudimentary but very functional: a piece of poster board, pens or pencils and a stack of my favorite office supply: brightly colored 3M Post-it notes. Details of the assignment were fluid and allowed the teams to determine how many beds to showcase, how to design the store, where to put a sleep essentials’ display with pillows, protectors and linens — all based on their brand preferences, knowledge of consumer shopping habits and more.

Each table was tasked with a specific market in which their imaginary bedding department would be located, and the FMG staff provided demographics for each area to help guide the planning. Watching the exercise, I was struck by how each team dug into the assignment.

A few jumped in quickly and began placing Post-it notes in random places, while other teams were very deliberate with their approach, preferring to discuss how the “store” would flow and which brands should be excluded from the floor. Others pondered how to get started until inevitably, a team leader emerged with an opening move.

Eavesdropping on the conversations and watching how each group operated started me thinking about the team aspect each of the members have, and who they rely on to help in decision making back home.

As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work, but often in the world of home furnishings and sleep retail, independent retailers don’t have access or haven’t taken the time to put together a board of directors that offer opinions and insight or weigh in on the big stuff.

I’ll admit to enjoying watching the floor plans come together for each of these bedding showrooms, but the coolest part, by far, was seeing how each of these tables, steered by the individual members, came together to operate as a board to solve the puzzle at hand.

Just one last question to ponder: Who makes up your go-to brain trust on big-picture business decisions? If you haven’t yet built that list, now’s the time to start getting on board to build that board.

See also: Try creative ideas to bring consumers through the door | Sheila Long O’Mara

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.

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