Legends Home has been hard at work over the past few years evolving as a company, expanding into new categories and providing independent retailers new and streamlined ways of doing business. Marty Melcher, SVP of Sales for Legends, sat down with us to talk about that evolution and the recent launch of an innovative new line of mattresses and adjustable bases – their new Good Vibes Sleep system.

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Rob Stott: All right. We are back on the Independent Thinking Podcast and excited. I feel like we just talked, Mr. Marty Melcher.

Marty Melcher: I know. It just seems like a couple weeks ago. Oh wait, it was.

Rob Stott: Oh hey, what do you know? It was just a couple weeks ago. Marty Melcher, Legend’s own SVP of Sales. Appreciate you joining us. Are you recovered from Las Vegas market? Is there ever recovering from Las Vegas market?

Marty Melcher: First, I appreciate you having me on this.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: It’s always a pleasure and an honor to get to be on your podcast and they’re fun, or your videos.

Rob Stott: Thank you.

Marty Melcher: You run a very good one by the way.

Rob Stott: Appreciate it.

Marty Melcher: Yeah, it’s been a high class problem.

Rob Stott: Yeah, right?

Marty Melcher: It’s a challenge. We have a ton of follow up. As I said in the show, we were blessed with all the traffic. I always can tell when it’s a good show or a good market ’cause I never leave the space.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: And many times I like to get out on a Monday or Tuesday and walk the hallways and see for myself what’s going on, but I was last man standing on Wednesday and I had three morning appointments from very large respected retailers. That was the only time that they could get in.

Rob Stott: That’s kind of been the sentiment that people couldn’t get away from their spaces or it felt like a very busy show.

Marty Melcher: And the feedback I’ve received was the spaces that these dealers I talked to, that they made appointments or went into, all of them were pretty active. I just would rather ours to be the most active. But I think we got our fair share based on the amount of follow-up. And with follow-up with us, it’s anything from getting somebody a price list to review it to some things, we do some proprietary for product for the bigger guys and we plan Asia meetings. If they’re going over there, we meet them over there and do what we call our concierge servicing. ‘Cause we know people they don’t know because my owner and my head of product development, my owner, Chris Doctor and Sam Curtis, Senior VP of Product, in fact, they leave for Vietnam, China this weekend and they are meeting some big players over there by appointment to take them not only to our own manufacturing but to people we have strategic alliances with.

Rob Stott: No, that’s awesome.

Marty Melcher: And I guess Vietnam Fair is a pretty big deal for international. They’ll be there for that as well.

Rob Stott: Wow.

Marty Melcher: But that’s one aspect.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: But then again, domestically, we make sure nobody steps on each other’s toes and everyone can make margin on our products. Sometimes that means being a little more creative in what we design. And same with bedding, which is my background.

Rob Stott: Right, right.

Marty Melcher: We got our national line and then we do, again, as we’ve mentioned in the past, a lot of OEM designed product.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: That’s really our wheelhouse.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: But then we started with Good Vibe Sleep and I’m rambling, so you need-

Rob Stott: No, I know. We’re good. We’re getting there, man. As you’re setting us up, it’s clear we have a lot to dive into. And before we do-

Marty Melcher: Put however much video games cost at the arcade today, a dollar to play? Just put a dollar in me and I’ll just keep-

Rob Stott: And you’ll let him go. It’ll be the easiest. I don’t have to ask a question. No. Well, before we dive into all of the exciting stuff that you guys have announced and have going on, one thing I did learn at this show at Vegas Market was that are you doing a podcast? Did I hear that right?

Marty Melcher: Yes.

Rob Stott: You are? Tell me about that real quick. Because one podcaster to another, I got to know.

Marty Melcher: Yeah, yeah. And hey, we can reverse it and have you on.

Rob Stott: I’m all for it. I love that.

Marty Melcher: We’ll come up. Really, I’m not into PSAs. I don’t like them.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: And Jonathan Wilson, who’s taken the lead on this, my VP of Strategic Partner Success, he’s very creative guy. He’s got lots of talents and he’s the one that designed the showroom and it’s been the best look we’ve ever had in Vegas. And he will be tasked with doing the same thing in High Point ’cause it’s almost three times the size of what we have in Vegas. And we’re excited about that ’cause he cut his teeth on staging and everything else with AFW. I shared that with you.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: And he is a, I forget, it’s a classification. He is a, he’ll tell you, and he’s done it for years. He has a great eye for it, but very creative thinker. And I’ve always wanted to do, thinking of people’s time, it’s much easier to do for me a Teams meeting or a Zoom meeting at 1:00, and then I send the link out to everybody and the reps because they have a lot of windshield time and most of them don’t open their inbox till the end of the week or some, no offense, some never do.

Rob Stott: Yeah. Right.

Marty Melcher: If we communicate out that way, it gives them a chance as a review going, oh yeah, I need to open that email about Good Vibe Sleep and the initiative there that was sent out on Monday and that’s what I saw. But just for a while, I was a one man band. Now I have an internal sales team in growing to help with all this. The podcast came about as Jonathan’s idea to take on specific topics that could help our rep force really, and dealers. And if you have other people see it, so be it. We’re not going to put top secret stuff on there, but there are no secrets in the bedding and furniture industry anyway.

Rob Stott: No, I hear you.

Marty Melcher: You just like to think they are. But yes, that’s the gist of it. We do that.

Rob Stott: It’s a great time to be able to do that. And the thing I’ve learned doing this is that people digest info in different ways. We could talk about something on here that maybe we also write about on our blog or send out in a newsletter or to our members via email, and if they hear it in every medium or every format, that’s awesome. That’s what we want ’cause then the message is getting across. But sometimes maybe it’s just that they hear from a legend on the podcast and that’s where they get their information as opposed to they see the emails come in and it’s like they may miss it or they didn’t catch that blog because they weren’t on social media that hour when we posted it, that sort of stuff. Just another way to get that information across to people.

Marty Melcher: And you know as well as I do, if they hear it as one thing and see it as another, but if they can hear and see, the retention levels a lot higher.

Rob Stott: No, it’s awesome. Enjoy doing it and I love the idea of cross-promoting across episodes. One of these days-

Marty Melcher: We’ll return it because what we try to, one recently we did, we have a duet team, two ladies that run Texas for us, and they’re professionals grade. And what we wanted to do was just from their perspective, share with the rest of the team what makes a good rep, what challenges do they run up against in the region.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: And that to me is good for retailers as well. One, we want to take up the caliber of our rep force and over service, under promise, over deliver. And it starts with the rep force and then of course customer service internally in our company. And we’ve worked hard to change that culture because in today’s world, customer service to me is a function of sales.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: Maybe they hang on to sales, maybe they help the rep get the sale or get the order done, but it’s a sales function. We want as much perspective as we can get so we can be better, simply put.

Rob Stott: No, it’s incredible.

Marty Melcher: That’s what one of the podcasts where, so I’m thinking with us, we talk about it offline.

Rob Stott: Heck yeah.

Marty Melcher: What can you bring to us to be better for your nationwide members?

Rob Stott: I love it. And that’s, hey-

Marty Melcher: And we can bring on Jeff and David.

Rob Stott: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think there’s plenty to be gathered there. And like you said, we’ll park it. We won’t let this audience listen to the ins and outs.

Marty Melcher: I hate infomercials for that particular brand. Granted, you’re giving me an opportunity here, but my true message is we want you to do business with us because we feel we can grow your business, right?

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: If I can’t, then don’t bring us in. Anything we talk about, I mean if it goes deeper like if I do learning academy, my mindset is how can I be more important to them by giving them some memory anchors to take with them as opposed to here’s a fireplace console, it’s really pretty. It comes in three finishes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And the 50 people in the room are passed out.

Rob Stott: Exactly.

Marty Melcher: That’s always the goal.

Rob Stott: Yeah. And it’s a great medium to do it because I mean, you’ve got that captive… They want to listen. And to your point, at the end of the day to talk about our own podcast. I feel like I’m pitching my own podcast on my podcast, but very meta situation right here. But we’re not-

Marty Melcher: Lots of value.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: It really is.

Rob Stott: Yeah, we’re not selling nationwide, right? We’re telling the stories. We’re talking to different brands about the trends in the space and whatnot. Under the nationwide banner, sure, but there are so many different learnings and things that go on in the independent channel from the manufacturer seat, from the nationwide seat, from the member seat to other industry professionals. There’s so much to learn from one another that it’s a great platform to be able to do it. Look at that. We killed 10 minutes talking about a podcast on the podcast.

Marty Melcher: There you go.

Rob Stott: I appreciate that. But let’s dive into Legends. For those that maybe haven’t paid attention to the brand in a bit, you’ve evolved. In the couple of years that you’ve been there, Legends has really evolved from what people might traditionally think of it as. Give that overview on Legends today from your seat.

Marty Melcher: Well first to get to today, we need to understand the past, how we got here a little bit, I believe. And great legacy manufacturer, well-liked by the industry, the dealers. No one dislikes Legends, which is fun. I mean, we’re comfort food for the industry at the markets and everything because you come in, relax, you may not even buy from us. Some of my best customers are the ones I don’t sell. I mean because it’s like we have a relationship but we haven’t figured out how to do business yet. And that’s fine. What’s true today isn’t necessarily true tomorrow. And you have to take that attitude. And that’s what I love about Legends culture is they’ve always been nice company to deal with, laid back, they pretty much did what they said they would do. But what my read is when I got in here almost two years ago now, wow, almost two years ago, no one really understood where we were going as a company. We’ve been this and no one understood that Legends no longer was owned by the founder. The founder and mentor of Chris Doctor sold to Chris Doctor.

Rob Stott: Mm-hmm.

Marty Melcher: Chris started with Legends, left for a bit, made a success of himself in the import mattress in a box world, started with AFW, American Furniture Warehouse. He did Macy’s and did big boxes around the country and very successful, which allowed him to come back in 2018. I think Rick and Chris were at a charity event and Chris said to Rick, “Rick, when are you going to retire?” And Rick goes, “When you buy my company.” And the rest is history as they say. Really again, I always want to say this because that’s the first misnomer if you will is people still look at us as Legends and we are a very powerful quietly, and not going to be quiet much longer, OEM betting producer that sells some of the top one hundreds and owns a great legacy furniture manufacturer called Legends Home, which we expanded into that because we’re more than just home office entertainment.

We still are the go-to company in that area on medium to higher end. And anybody that’s not familiar with it, we make these beautiful consoles that can have a fireplace in them or not. People felt that was falling off to the wayside, but I’m here to tell you the big box guys, the top one hundreds are expanding the selection in it. And then we make some very nice home office. But then we are bringing in from our strategic partners over there in Asia bedroom and dining room. And we own an upholstery plant, which used to be Chris’ mattress manufacturing plant in just north of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

It’s now been converted and saved 200 people’s jobs a couple of years ago as upholstery. And we own that and we make our upholstered beds from there, we make our little, people used to call them beanbags, these aren’t beanbags anymore.

Rob Stott: Yeah, no.

Marty Melcher: I think you saw them at Market. It’s a piece of furniture, ’cause it’s got memory foam in it, they’re big. We’ve been supplying them for a long time to AFW and we decided to bring it in this last market. But anyway, all that stuff can be direct container to the dealer or it can be mixed in our pan warehouse in Ho Chi Minh City Harbor. And the beauty of that is I’m an average retailer. I don’t need 30 of this sofa, but I take five or six and I can put four bedrooms on there. You can fill up 2,350 cubes, which is two thirds of a truck.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: Now, my little family business, when I was in it in retail, I don’t know if people that know me knew I grew up in family retail, which taught me what not to do. My only value is I know what doesn’t work, which can save you money. That was my claim to fame when I became a rep. But anyway, I digress. But the beauty of that is two thirds of a truck, when you buy your recliners for your store, many guys, average size retailers will fill two thirds of a truck.

Rob Stott: Mm-hmm.

Marty Melcher: We want that stigma. It’s going to be more than I can handle. It’s really not.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: Again, the beauty of that, anything we make in Asia and even warehouse in Phoenix, ’cause we do. All our bedroom and dining room will be at Phoenix plant ready to ship within two weeks, can be bought in a mixed, what we call now effectively mixology.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: In fact, in Vegas Market, you remember the front room was just a sample. Everything in that room could all be mixed together with enough quantities to hit 2,350 cubes.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: Again, the beauty of some of our padded headboard bases, they have a high loadable that if you’re running out of space, but you still have some in the airspace, you can put a bunch of those… The complete bed, it all fits inside the headboard and it zips shut and it’s one box.

Rob Stott: Wow.

Marty Melcher: Again, high loadability that can help fill these.

Rob Stott: Fill that space. Well, I don’t want you to gloss over it either because the mixology, I know we talked about it in July, that’s a big deal in this space, the ability to do that for these retailers, right?

Marty Melcher: Yes.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: And we are wrestling with, let’s talk about the 800 pound gorilla right now with the Red Sea, how it impacts temporarily container prices. But we’re doing our best. It’s almost like going on the, it’s called the spot market, right? And we shop and then a lot of these guys are already, there’s some groups, small retailers that are in a consortium if you will or whatever, they buy together. They already have their own freight forwarders, so they’re dealing with the same thing we’re dealing with and it’s all about that moment locking in the best rate. Some guys that got caught in between show you that we are good partners. While we didn’t want to absorb the whole thing because we run lean and mean.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: We’re very aggressive in how we price, but we also want to be good partners. We figured out how to help them absorb this round and hopefully it’s much lower on the next container. And if you keep flowing containers with me, I’m going to participate in a way to absorb the increase right now. Case by case, we work through it. But what I see with it is definitely, well our CEO sees with it, so therefore I see it. He helps me with that and helps our team. It is a good growth category, because we’re figuring it out. A lot of people have tried and we knew there was going to be a ramp up period and people warned us about it. Some people I respect in the industry that I keep in touch with, and they just said, it’s all about the mix.

Rob Stott: Right, right.

Marty Melcher: And you don’t want to have your most popular item be out and people are trying to load containers with it. That’s a learned skill because you have to go on immediate history, past history, and we haven’t been at it this long. And now we’re starting to get into our next phase where we’re starting to see what needs to be in stock in the pan warehouse and not in production at our upholstery plant or with our case goods manufacturers.

Rob Stott: And what a time to learn too, right? Because you talk about the last couple of years of what just the industry has been like, and I have to imagine a little difficult to try to get your bearings around because of everything that was going on. I felt like every product was popular during COVID.

Marty Melcher: Well, yeah, and that’s a good call out because I think you and I briefly talked about it in Vegas was basically COVID changed the rules of the game. Some of them have not changed back, but the demand has fallen off. But we had a significant player, not going to mention the name, but we had record volume with them, right? And you can just see the trend rate since ’21. And a lot of it was because he tasked his buying force to go out, find anything and everything you can get right away because they couldn’t keep up with, as you know, and everyone’s heard ad nauseum, people came in and would ask, what do you have in stock?

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: And so he made sure he had plenty in stock and he was just killing it in his marketplace. Top 100 player. Since then, it is pared down. I think we’re one of his oldest vendors he’s had on the floor. We’ve been on his floor since 1990 or whatever, but he’s pared down his vendor selection. We’re still there, but it’s not that rampant pace like it once was. And part of that falls on us making sure we’re bringing new ideas to them. But all that to tell you that that is definitely what we’re seeing as a consolidation of vendors. We see that as an opportunity. While it has impacted us on our core business, we feel with our mixology, it’s going to overcome that and we’re becoming more important. And again, I think I touched on this and if I’m not addressing it specifically, redirect me.

Rob Stott: You’re good.

Marty Melcher: The vendor elimination is actually helping to benefit us right now because of some of the products, our bridge or bed program and modern bed based program, for example. Not out to kill anybody at all, whatever, but we make all of it.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: And we make a heavier built product than some of the other sources out there.

Rob Stott: Mm-hmm.

Marty Melcher: And the quality is noticeable. And I’m not saying that as much as the retailers that looked at it for the first time in Vegas Market. They were really impressed and they love the fact they can eliminate three vendors and get it all from one.

Rob Stott: Right. And that gets to the point of retailers are becoming more selective, right, with what they’re doing. But to the point of you guys expanding and becoming a, I don’t want to say more complete ’cause that sounds like you weren’t previously, but a wider offering within the brand itself, right?

Marty Melcher: Yeah.

Rob Stott: Getting into bedding, getting into everything that you have and the evolution of what Legends is today.

Marty Melcher: Well, excuse the pun, but case in point.

Rob Stott: Yeah, right?

Marty Melcher: Case in point. My first market with Legends was July of ’22 and we relaunched Remedy Sleep because it had gone dormant for Chris Doctor did the right thing when we were overpromising and under-delivering due to quality of product, we pulled the plug on it. Not everyone liked that, but we did. And we had to keep our core business alive while he brought the manufacturing over to America, which it’s all done in Phoenix, all made and assembled and foam cut. We buy from foamers locally. We still pour some foam ourselves that we still have yet to find the right ingredient stateside that feels the way we want it to feel. Again, I cut my teeth on the bedding business and we do make a very good feeling memory product, hybrid product with coils and everything. But when I showed up in July, that’s all we were doing.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: It was home office entertainment, it was some bedroom and if you walked in the space it was full, but the front room was Remedy Sleep, didn’t even have adjustable bases yet. And now we have our proprietary bases. We have Good Vibe Sleep, we have upholstered headboards, platforms, beds, we have upholstery throughout. I mean high point really shows well, we had to squeeze… In fact, we opened a separate space at Las Vegas.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: We just called it our fireplace room, which you guys saw space. Beautiful, but it was on the other side of the hallway.

Rob Stott: Great space. Yeah.

Marty Melcher: We needed it.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: It was another 2,000 feet that we needed. But yes, just since I’ve been here, I think the biggest challenge right now for us is getting the word out who we truly are. We are a whole home resource that makes very good quality. We are the value proposition and better goods. And our upholstery, without going into the weeds on it, is built right. Anybody that knows CNC production methods, you can stand on the arm of our product and not worry about the cardboard collapsing ’cause there is none. And I’m serious, there’s cardboard in people’s upholstered products, so don’t get them wet.

Rob Stott: Nope.

Marty Melcher: Our quality, our inner spring cushions, everything we do, there’s attention to detail and value driven proposition but at a quality level.

Rob Stott: Yeah. And it’s-

Marty Melcher: Our case goods, I just walked a big box store in the East Coast and looking at some of their products, we were there for a discovery meeting that we’ll get the next appointment on and our products stand tall next to them even at a better value. That’s the part. The biggest challenge to me right now if you were to ask me is the industry understanding who we are and what we can do today and mainly your member base.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: Understand we can be a one-stop shop domestically and mixology.

Rob Stott: Right. No, it’s awesome. And to your point too, the product itself, I sat on it. I think there’s a picture of me, it was after my last video that I shot. I was face down on one of your giant couches that was in the front room and I was just passed out. I was done. It was a perfect end of market picture. It was incredible. It was a great spot to just collapse and be over.

Marty Melcher: Mondo material on it.

Rob Stott: But the product itself to have been taken through by you, the demo of the Good Vibe Sleep. And that’s something we need to dive into because there’s so much going right with that that I think-

Marty Melcher: Now you’re going to make me put my glasses on.

Rob Stott: Yeah, I know, right? Now you got to get ready for this one. But the way you guys have gone about introducing it too. The product itself, the way it was set up and demoed and showed off in Vegas was awesome. But I know we talked a little bit too while we were there about the way you’re approaching that brand and that line that’s really kind of elevating it. And I wanted to give you the chance to talk about that a little bit to set it up ’cause I think it’s important for retailers to hear that approach so that they know what they’re getting into with Good Vibes, but then also the opportunity that it presents to them by having it on their floor.

Marty Melcher: Sure. And that’s again, just in case I have to look, I have my cheat sheet over here, my iPad.

Rob Stott: That’s how new this is, folks.

Marty Melcher: It’s a lot of stuff, but we won’t go into all of it. We give an easy flyover. But the whole idea of this launch was to do what I grew up doing in my previous days with a top mattress supplier and how we went to market. And I absorbed everything from it.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: And we had a way to go to market and it was, again, iComfort, one of the greatest launches in retail history ever. And our little company is based on my CEO’s vision and direction and my input and Sam Curtis, we put together something similar where it’s not the product. It’s funny, product doesn’t have to be the best out there. I learned that when you probably were still in high school, but when fire blocker, fire retardancy, TD, I forget the legislation in California that the feds quickly adopted and we decided as a company to do the right thing and put that in our beds ahead of everybody else hoping everyone else would follow.

They didn’t. We jumped off that ledge, couldn’t get back up on it. Not Temper, but Sealy and Simmons waved goodbye to us on the way down, which overnight all our products were one price point higher for equivalent product. But I will tell you, a program is a program and we grew in spite of that because we had a program, not just a product.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: We had a marketing program, a product and display program and sales education and a servicing program. And that’s what we’ve done for us first time. Remedy Sleep kind of had it, but this time we’ve got the guns. We’re in all five categories. We will be doing marketing to support reviews, influencers, digital marketing, the markets that carry Good Vibe Sleep so the unique searches start to climb and we can drive it to those retailers participating. We’ve focused on our product display to make sure it will stand out.

It’ll be a breath of fresh air on people’s floors in these tougher times. The sales education, we’ve shot the training videos already, we’re ready to go. We’ll add more as needed. We have the selling method we think is very easy when I share it with you. And that’s key. We can’t just think of the end user, right? We got to think of the person actually presenting it. And if they don’t, and I’ve experienced that before in another life in between Serta and here, that if it got complicated, the RSA is like-

Rob Stott: I’m out.

Marty Melcher: I’m out.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: My brand’s more important than your brand in their mind. I’m not going to go over there when I’m not comfortable presenting it. We had that in mind. As you know, this does involve an adjustable base and all that. We put the demo inside as you saw, as you were falling asleep-

Rob Stott: I know, right?

Marty Melcher: On the adjustable base. It was just I had to press two buttons and you were experiencing it within three minutes the whole thing.

Rob Stott: Mm-hmm.

Marty Melcher: And that was the goal. And then the servicing end of it, we are making it all UPS-able, so your members don’t have to… All I’m asking for is the old rule, one to show one to go, because we can get it back out to them when they sell one, order one or two more. Check what your run rate is once it starts to grow, don’t keep more than three months worth. With us, you don’t even really have to do that. Once we figure out what the run rate is, you keep a couple weeks worth because we can FedEx.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: And those that know LTL, we’ll gladly do an LTL program where they can order more. But again, my cautionary note is only if the demand request that.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: Do not fill the warehouse with it because we’re very comfortable with six months, but we preach to everybody with rolled product three months and you’re rock solid safe.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: Other companies that unfortunately import from overseas, everyone has to say a prayer whether they unbox it that it’ll come back full profile. Ours are all oven fresh to prevent that. I call it oven fresh, but-

Rob Stott: I like it.

Marty Melcher: They come back after six months, but don’t practice that way. Anyway, getting into the program, Good Vibe Sleep is that program I’ve wanted to launch and do it right. And Chris Doctor has made the investment with, again, his vision of this coming about. It’s basically haptics. Haptics is what you see, what you hear, you feel. And it’s tied into, I’m going to kind of read, “Good Vibe Sleep is a revolution bedding experience that combines a specialty mattress, which we made. You’ve got to turn that into a subwoofer, which I’ll explain, an an adjustable base with multiple speakers and subwoofers to create a 3D haptic sound massage.”

And again, whether you’re one of the 71% enjoying TV in their bedroom or an advocate of healing properties of what is called binaural beats and [foreign language 00:34:11] sounds, we believe Good Vibe Sleep is one of the most innovative wellness and sleep solutions in years. And I won’t go into the weeds on it, but anybody who was in Vegas, all we had to bring up is the Las Vegas sphere.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: Anybody that’s gone there and experienced it, that’s haptic.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: Or you’re driving the car and you go, I’m not smart enough to figure out how they know to do that. But as soon as you start to go to left or right, you get the little vibration.

Rob Stott: Exactly.

Marty Melcher: That’s haptic.

Rob Stott: Yep. Our phones too. Think about the haptic engine in your iPhone and whatever it might be.

Marty Melcher: Absolutely.

Rob Stott: You get the little vibration in your phone, notification comes in.

Marty Melcher: Yep, and it’s here to stay.

Rob Stott: Yeah, absolutely.

Marty Melcher: And the thing, Rob, and you saw this, the visuals tell you all about it because it really has three avenues for the retailer to focus on. There’s a gaming element that the aging, aging, I wish I was that age. The aging gamer at 41 years of age has a nice house as I can see and still wants to be comfortable playing his games or her, but they want to have the big screen in the master bedroom because again, 71% of households have a TV in their master bedroom. The households that only have one TV, 50% of them are in the master bedroom. And it’s many because it’s so comfortable. And people have king-sized beds now because the bigger bedrooms and the newer homes, everyone piles in bed and watches a movie. That’s the other avenue is you got the gaming to see it, feel it and experience it. Then you’ve got the entertainment side watching that movie that again, you see it and feel it. And then to me the more important one is the health and wellness, the sleep solutions and wellness. Because solfeggio.

But more than half of US adults, 52% say they need some sort of background noise now to help them sleep at night. And that’s an April ’23 survey. It’s very recent by the sleep doctor. The solfeggio frequencies, I got it, are certain tones that are said to help with mental balance, anxiety relief and quality of sleep.

Rob Stott: In the demo, that’s the stuff… I was looking forward to the, I forget what clip it was that you were playing, but you could feel like the movie scene while you’re in it and the music as it’s playing, you get the base of the music that’s playing. But the white noise really, right? You don’t expect to be blown away by something so simple, but laying there and hearing and feeling white noise is not something you expect out of a mattress or the full sleep system. It’s like to have that and know what that could do to help get to sleep, stay asleep and have a really good sleep, that was kind of the exciting thing to me.

Marty Melcher: And it is not a hype, it’s legit.

Rob Stott: No, it is real.

Marty Melcher: Granted, everyone that comes to Market is on the tired side, but when we started testing this, we actually first introduced just on a test basis, the first iteration was January Market last year. And we knew we had something because our top 100 players that were coming in, top 100 retailers in America, a good amount of them came through our space. Everyone thought this was pretty cool. The feedback was there, but everyone fell asleep mid-demo. And then this Market was-

Rob Stott: That is the biggest form of compliment, right?

Marty Melcher: Yeah. I was presenting to people with their eyes shut snoring. It’s like I’d have to tap their foot jet and say, “Okay, let’s finish this then I’ll let you sleep.” Not really, but it was kind of like that, which was fun.

Rob Stott: The thing is you guys, you’ve simplified the story about it, right? That was the important thing that I also took out of it was as you’re running through it, obviously the way you did it was simple because you pointed it out. It’s only a couple buttons, so that makes it easy for the retailer to run through it. But then for me sitting there and kind of ingesting all this information and when I say all this information, I could feel what you were saying. The story got explained to me in a way that was simple enough that I got, and then also I was experiencing it. It made it easy to understand what was happening and go through that experience on both ends from the retailer perspective and the consumer perspective.

Marty Melcher: Well, this thing has been around, not haptic, but this need for white noise and everything. I remember early days as an adult we were starting to grow our status and I remember when Circuit City first came out, I was around when Circuit City first came out and it was revolutionary shopping for home electronics and everything and appliances and all that. But we bought a clock there that specifically had white noise in it. And I’m going, this is really cool. I would tell you back in the eighties, in the waterbed industry, they used to have these circadian rhythm clocks, right? This need has been around for a while. And so now you look at the advent of Calm and BetterSleep are two that I use and I kind of lean more toward BetterSleep ’cause I figured out how to integrate binaural beats in there too. And what that is you have the white noise playing, but it’s weird. This boom boom or whatever comes through, you think it’d irritate the crap out of you. Excuse me, can I say that on here?

Rob Stott: You can.

Marty Melcher: It actually does something to the brain, I’ve got to read it again, that calms it down even more.

Rob Stott: Interesting.

Marty Melcher: And that’s the whole idea is calm the brain down so we can get very restful sleep. Or a case in point, we live in the inner city of Denver in the Cheeseman Park, Cherry Creek area, and you have street noise. It is, it comes with the neighborhood. But if I had that and I’m going to have it, I’m going to win the debate with my better half and I’m going to get one of these so my white noise, I can feel it as well because that takes it to the next level.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: That’s all it does. What you’re trying to do now, this takes it to the next level for you. It’s not a theory, it’s a proven practice with the levels of frequency and they are seeing with just what I said, reduction of anxiety, better sleep and quality of sleep, mental balance, the whole thing. And we make it simple.

Rob Stott: Yeah. You mentioned the gaming aspect and the first thing that comes to mind when I think of gaming is you want to be immersed, but when you throw immersion into sleep and think about, I can become more immersed in my sleep, that sounds awesome to me. That just sounds like a much better sleep.

Marty Melcher: Vegas Market I was downtown. I was on, not my favorite place, but that’s where we stay on Fremont Street, which great restaurants down there by the way.

Rob Stott: Absolutely.

Marty Melcher: Anyway, you do deal with Fremont Street. No matter how far away in the hotel you get, you’re going to hear a boom, boom, boom.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: And that’s not the type of boom boom I want to hear. I had my BetterSleep app on every night, which is high enough that I couldn’t hear that. And I just focused and I slept very well while I was there. The thing I want to point out though, out on the market right now, as far as I know, we’re the first or only one to have haptic response sonic massage.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: There is sonic massage units in a certain large company has a really nice one. It got a lot of bells and whistles in it, but it’s not haptic driven. The difference is programmed, what we’re going to label program sonic massage. You hit the button and the massage starts. Oh, by the way, they have Bluetooth speakers so you can watch the movie and hear it, but you won’t feel what you’re watching. You only feel that programmed button you hit and the different levels you put it at. Not a bad thing, but the differentiator is ours truly is. If you put the Calm app on with theirs, you’ll hear it through the speakers, you just won’t feel the massage.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: You’d have to leave the sonic massage on, but it’s a little higher level of technology. Our subwoofers have these transducers that take the audio file that comes through and converts it to vibration and massage.

Rob Stott: Yeah. It’s awesome. Well actually, multilevel question for you, right? Primetime being around the corner, they’ll be able to be experienced. I know obviously we’ll be in Vegas.

Marty Melcher: Yeah, we’re probably going to get people yelling at us like some of those electronics guys where they turn up their speaker so loud.

Rob Stott: Oh no, like the party speakers?

Marty Melcher: Yeah. All of a sudden…

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: You know what happens at the show if you’re next to their booth, it can be… We’re going to be considerate of the other vendors. But yeah, we are definitely going to display it at its fullest.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: You can hook external speakers to this thing ’cause it has a 3.5 jack.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: Actually when you’re laying on their bed, the speakers in there are ample, they’re fine, but some people want to light it up even more. And also the reason why we’re pushing for the mattresses, these things are tuned and tested versus others may not be. They’re tuned and tested to make sure that feeling is not dampened in any way. Our beds, while the quality and durability is there, we’ve used the right materials to cut. The goal would be to turn, if done right, the bed will amplify the effect.

Rob Stott: Right.

Marty Melcher: It won’t detract from it.

Rob Stott: Gotcha.

Marty Melcher: That’s a reason. Plus we did a three bed collection, not because we want to dominate floor space or anything but three beds is probably, based on my experience in the past with collections versus not. You want a collection because it gives the RSA more than one chance.

Rob Stott: Mm-hmm.

Marty Melcher: If they don’t like the mattress, you might lose selling the adjustable base, the whole thing. Having three distinct feel differences will just increase the probability the customer can make a decision on that product.

Rob Stott: Yeah.

Marty Melcher: That’s hence why we have a three bed collection.

Rob Stott: No, awesome. And availability for the, and I’m sure question you’ll get at primetime. Are these launching soon, out now?

Marty Melcher: Yes. We import the bases by a very reputable supplier that we have a strategic alliance with. We don’t make our own bases. Nobody really does other than the suppliers they work with. And those are landing now. Much better than last year’s launch with our genius base, which will probably be on display there as well. The voice activated base, we call it the genius base ’cause you have to wake it up. You go, Hey, genius. And it wakes up and starts talking to you and then you tell it you want the head up, the foot up, the whatever. Anyway, that was very frustrating because what was going on a little bit last year we got delayed. We didn’t even really get the launch out until May or late May. Missed Memorial Day for a lot of our dealers. This time around again, that’s that service end of the thing on the five things you want to hit on. Services, we’re going to be ready to go.

We had one slight hiccup, we didn’t like how the cover was reacting to a lot of traffic and we went back to the manufacturer who’s one of the best in the industry making the cover for us. And we wanted that situation resolved before we go live. We were going to start shipping this month. We’ve delayed it into March, but we will be alive and we will be live and we are alive. We’ll be live and shipping in March to everyone that’s placed an order and we’re still holding to the hundred per what I call gate, you date and gate.

Rob Stott: Yep.

Marty Melcher: We want to do a hundred at a time so we perform on those a hundred and anybody can put the order in, but honestly, it’s kind of how we executed back in the Serta days with iComfort and that’s why it was successful because we delivered as promised.

Rob Stott: Yeah, no, that’s awesome.

Marty Melcher: We don’t want to over promise and under deliver. Way overused euphemism, but it is true.

Rob Stott: No, absolutely. And goes to point to the-

Marty Melcher: Get in line people. You want to get it sooner than later is my advice. I don’t want you mad at me when I tell you you’re not going to get it until May.

Rob Stott: You’ve been warned.

Marty Melcher: Yes.

Rob Stott: No, it’s awesome. And just judging by having been on the mattress, I can only imagine what type of success you guys are going to be seeing with it ’cause it was something. I’m excited to see it again up close and in person and to be able to fall asleep on it one more time before they’re out there.

Marty Melcher: Cool.

Rob Stott: Hey man, this was-

Marty Melcher: We will accommodate.

Rob Stott: I look forward to it. This was a ton of fun. I appreciate your time and we look forward to catching up in Vegas and further down the line and then doing that crossover. We’ll get that crossover podcast going before we know it.

Marty Melcher: Let’s talk about that no later than Vegas when we’re together there.

Rob Stott: Awesome. Hey, well we appreciate it.

Marty Melcher: Well same. Appreciate you and it was a pleasure.