The retail winners of the Bed Industry Awards were revealed at the Bed Show gala dinner last night.
Sussex Beds scooped NBF Retail Champion of the Year. Over the past 12 months, the south east of England retailer made a record-breaking profit and seized the opportunities the pandemic brought, demonstrating that creative thinking, solid planning, and a united team can bring success through the most challenging trading conditions. The retailer opened two new stores and a distribution hub, invested in its ecommerce website resulting in a vast increase in revenue as well as a virtual training platform to support staff, and kept in daily contact with employees to check in on their wellbeing.
Winner of the National Bed Retailer of the Year was Dreams. Dreams defied the notion that traditional retailing is dead, opening six new stores and investing in warehouse capacity that in turn created 30 additional jobs. However, the national retailer also expanded its online retail offer, and recognising the growing concern for sustainability, reached its milestone of recycling one million beds and mattresses. Acknowledging concerns around work-life balance after a challenging year for many personally, Dreams also reduced staff’s contracted hours.
The prize of Online Bed Retailer of the Year went to Mattress Online, which made a record-breaking profit and had the largest growth in its 18-year history. It recently reached its huge milestone of recycling 100,000 mattresses and featured on several major TV channels. Demonstrating people are at the heart of the company, Mattress Online launched an employee health and wellbeing initiative, a new training facility, boosted its team by 61% and donated £51,000 to NHS staff. The retailer also showed great use of initiative during the Covid-19 pandemic by avoiding furlough through a restructure of non-remote workers’ shift patterns.
The awards, now in their eleventh year, recognise bed retailers, manufacturers and suppliers and representing the very best in inspiration, design, growth, and innovation.
‘The annual awards are industry-renowned for recognising the standout companies in the bed sector. In a year of change, we congratulate all those who put themselves forward to be judged, and celebrate all the brilliant finalists and award winners,’ said David Moffitt, NBF president.
The retailer awards were judged by Richard de Melim, Furnishing Report editor; Andrew Kidd, Interiors Monthly editor and Bernard Eaton, Greenwood Retail md.