Weren’t able to join us on LinkedIn for our highlights livestream? No worries! Grab a cup of coffee and spend 15 minutes with Beth, Dave and Waynette as they share the inside scoop on the November issue of BedTimes Magazine and a surprise preview of what’s to come in December and January.
Transcript
00:00:00:15 – 00:00:21:01
Kathy Rush
Hello everybody and welcome to our very first Livestream on LinkedIn. We are on BedTimes LinkedIn site. We’d like to welcome everybody. We have Beth, Dave and Waynette here who are going to share some awesome highlights from the November issue of BedTimes Magazine. We will hold any questions and answers if there are any, until the end of the session. Just add them in the comments section and we can take a look at those towards the end if we have time. Okay? So we will kick it off. I’m going to turn it over to Waynette.
00:00:21:14 – 00:00:48:17
Waynette Goodson
Hi there, everybody. I’m Waynette Goodson. I’m your managing editor of BedTimes and Sleep Savvy Magazines. I’m happy to be a part of this LinkedIn Livestream today and to be with my colleagues, Dave Perry, our editor at large, and Beth English, our fearless leader, and our creative director.
So I feel like I should just lob at over to bat for her to introduce our November issue.
00:00:54:17 – 00:01:12:07
Beth English
Hi. Well, thank you. This is so much fun and very different and exciting for us. I hope you guys enjoy the new things we’re trying out. I’m very excited about our November issue and I know Waynette is going to talk about that in a minute, but our cover story is all about gratitude. And, you know, that’s a deeply important topic to me.
I just feel like this month is such an important time to reflect on the good things from this past year. So Waynette, do you want to talk about? I know you talked to several members of the industry and really got their feedback on various aspects of gratitude.
00:01:26:03 – 00:01:47:19
Waynette Goodson
Right. Right. Yes. Well, when I’m going to admit it to everybody, right? When Beth came to me with this idea, “attitude of gratitude”, I thought, you know, hey, and I think you had some concerns to Beth about this one because, you know, we are the bona fide business journal for the bedding industry. So at first blush, we wondered, well, is this a little too softball?
You know, is this too much of a light touch? But then when I got the leaders on the phone who I got to talk with, about seven of them, they really brought this story home because they took their answers very seriously and they put a lot of thought into it and they were very specific. For example, I ask them who in the bedding industry would you like to thank.
So those were some very refreshing answers. I ask them, in the past six months, you know, can you remember a specific time that something happened that you felt just especially grateful and why? And then also, how do you build positivity and create an attitude of gratitude within your company and with your team? And some of their answers were just so inspiring.
Yeah, you know, it just it’s just a feel-good story. And don’t we all need a feel-good moment right now? So. So, Beth, how did you respond? When did it turn out the way you wanted it to turn out?
00:02:49:22 – 00:03:10:07
Beth English
I think more than that. It was exceeded my expectations because everybody was so generous in their answers and so thoughtful. And, you know, I love that when people were able to talk about other people in the industry that they appreciated, I just thought, I don’t know, it was very heartwarming to me and made me feel our community as an industry, which I think is one of the best things about the bedding industry.
00:03:10:20 – 00:03:33:21
Waynette Goodson
Right. Well, now we had to have some fun with this because, you know, we have Thanksgiving right on the horizon. So as the last question, we had a bright and that bright question was the age-old debate, turkey or ham? And, you know, I got some very interesting answers. We had a few folks who were very untraditional at their Thanksgiving table.
So now I’m going to put both Beth and Dave on the spot. Okay. Dave, are you turkey or ham?
00:03:40:17 – 00:03:42:01
Dave Perry
I am turkey.
00:03:42:14 – 00:03:43:00
Waynette Goodson
Turkey.
Okay. No question. Okay. Beth, are you turkey your ham?
00:03:47:01 – 00:03:49:02
Beth English
I love both of them, but we always have turkey.
00:03:49:08 – 00:04:02:02
Waynette Goodson
Always turkey. Okay, turkey. So that’s what we have in common because I’m a traditional oven-roasted turkey, giblet gravy, and dressing. Can you believe that it’s Thanksgiving next week or the week after?
00:04:02:03 – 00:04:03:24
Beth English
No, it’s a couple more weeks.
00:04:04:03 – 00:04:06:09
Waynette Goodson
A couple more weeks. Whew!
00:04:06:18 – 00:04:09:19
Beth English
At least two. I don’t know. I haven’t looked at my calendar.
00:04:09:19 – 00:04:16:17
Waynette Goodson
Another thing we have to talk about next week is the Sustainability Conference, right?
00:04:16:17 – 00:04:17:17
Beth English
That very exciting thing coming up.
00:04:17:19 – 00:04:22:06
Waynette Goodson
16th and 17th. So, Beth, why don’t you just say a word about the Sustainability Conference?
00:04:22:20 – 00:05:02:04
Beth English
Well, I mean, it’s the first time ISPA has done something like this. Obviously, sustainability is just growing as an enormous topic of concern, you know, for everybody, but especially within our industry, you know we’ve had mattress recycling on, ISPAs been on the forefront of that with our MRC, Mattress Recycling Council, but now we’re stretching a little more and we’re going to have this conference and we have these excellent speakers and I’m so excited to learn more because I know I can grow a lot in this area and I’m hopeful that this conference will provide great answers or help be thoughtful, springboards for folks to take back to their plants in their companies.
00:05:02:08 – 00:05:14:10
Waynette Goodson
Right. And to just sort of get started, like, if you haven’t started taking steps toward sustainability yet, you should leave the conference knowing, hey, you know, here’s a good plan that I can start off with. Okay.
00:05:14:16 – 00:05:16:17
Beth English
Even those who are further along will get something out of this for sure.
00:05:16:17 – 00:05:35:01
Waynette Goodson
Exactly. It’s all different levels. In fact, read the October issue because of all the crib notes for every speech and what you can expect. So bring your October issue with you to the conference next week. Okay, so I’m going to turn it over to Dave. Dave, what do you like about the November issue?
00:05:35:24 – 00:06:08:10
Dave Perry
Well, on a personal note, I am going to echo the sustainability theme with my profile, which is Agro Intl. Agro is a German Innerspring mattress producer, and sustainability is one of their big focuses. They talk in the article, we talk about cycles, product life cycles. And I think that’s an interesting way to think of products. You know, it’s got lives plural.
This is not just one and done off to the landfill. They have pocketed coil products in which all the components can be recycled. So I love this idea of multiple lives for the product. And so thinking in terms of cycles is important and this is part of circular manufacturing thinking where you think about using these components in a circle and continuing to use these products over and over, and that extends their life and of course that reduces the mattress industry’s impact in landfills and things like that.
So excuse me, very interesting what Agro is doing. And then I want to echo on the theme of gratitude. I want to talk just for a second about a kind of surprising finding that I write about in my column, which is strong retail optimism. You know, this year has been a tough year for retail, as I said in one of my columns.
We’ve had a couple of quarters of retail declines and that sounds like a recession. And yet after Labor Day and Labor Day was flat to maybe up a little bit, but after Labor Day, retailers were asked, well, are they more or less optimistic about the rest of this year? 45% of retailers are more optimistic after Labor Day.
So I think there is enduring optimism. There is an enduring spirit of gratitude in the industry. And I think we, you know, shrewdly tapped into that. And I could easily see this being a regular feature. I love the idea of who are some people that you are grateful for. I think it’s really great to have specifics like that, so I am looking forward to seeing that report.
And I know as Beth, as you said, this is an industry that is a very tightly-knit community. And the fact is every time the community gets together, even during somewhat maybe scary COVID markets, there’s always an upbeat nature to those meetings. And looking ahead a little bit, I have to tell you the High Point market was off the charts and optimism and gratitude and it was just an absolute breath of fresh air. Waynette, was that what you saw in High Point as well?
00:08:45:12 – 00:09:11:02
Waynette Goodson
I mean, it was just like I mean, 2019 all over again. I mean as far as traffic and there weren’t you know, people in any mask and everyone shaking hands and hugging and just having all that fabulous, you know, the aftermarket things are great with the cocktail hours and the and the parties. And there was just a very happy spirit, upbeat spirit about the whole thing.
So I had such a great time and I had a great time with you. Dave, We did some fun videos with the videos. Watch them.
00:09:19:05 – 00:09:41:22
Dave Perry
We did some fun videos. More of those are coming. You’ll see me put together all metal bed based using no tools in just a matter of seconds. There might be a little bit of speeded-up photography there. Beth, what did you what kind of takeaway did you come out of the High Point market with in terms of just kind of are we back to normal or almost back to normal?
Is that kind of how it felt to you?
00:09:44:01 – 00:10:05:01
Beth English
Yeah. Yeah. That one actually felt like the most normal market I’ve been to in a while. And you’re right, the attitudes, everybody was very positive. I felt like people were out and about. I thought there was good traffic and I was only able to make it out on Sunday. But it was a great day. I mean, the beautiful weather and, you know, it’s gorgeous and High Point at that time of year and it just felt good.
It felt really, really good. And there are lots of great products. And I can’t wait to share all this with you in the December issue.
00:10:11:15 – 00:10:35:20
Dave Perry
Yes, we have been working on the new product coverage coming out of High Point, and that’s also a good chance for us just to quickly look ahead to January. Hey, I got to think January is going to be off the charts for optimism, for excitement, for new products with the momentum we saw on High Point. As everyone knows, January really is our big mattress market.
And I just have to think the industry really has some great momentum going into January, which looks great for next year.
00:10:43:20 – 00:10:47:06
Beth English
I know. I’m excited. I’m always excited for the January market. That’s great.
00:10:47:15 – 00:11:08:19
Waynette Goodson
Well, just for the viewers out there, just so that, you know, sort of the behind-the-scenes of being at a magazine. And one of the reasons that these previews are so hard for me personally is that right now the three of us are deep into producing December. So we’re reading all the December stories and we’re in a December mindset.
November happened a month ago for us, so, you know, for us to switch gears and talk about what happened a month ago, so we always have like one step a month ago, what we’re doing now and then looking forward to the January market and planning January. So if we if you talk with us and we don’t know what day it is or.
00:11:31:13 – 00:12:00:13
Beth English
I have this calendar, I keep flipping because I’m like, okay, which yeah, it is a little challenging. Yeah, absolutely. I did want to mention two other pieces that we have in the November issue. I asked Mark Battersby, who is a finance writer. He’s written about taxes and finance for more than 25 years to tackle a story about coping with inflation because obviously, prices are going up everywhere and also, you know, steps you might want to take to survive a recession.
And he has some really great practical advice here. I thought one piece that was particularly interesting is if, you know, whether or not we even have a recession is to be aggressive with your marketing. You always want to stay in front of people and you know and you want to keep connected with your customers. Obviously, good advice at any time.
I think so. That was great. And then we also had a piece from Susan Robertson, who is – I got myself a note here. She is an instructor on Applied Creativity at Harvard. And so she wrote about ways to get the most out of a brainstorming session like there are ten rules to follow. And I know back when our staff met in August, we had a staff retreat.
We followed some of these and some of these I wish I had known. So I will be logging that in my brain for the future. But yeah, it’s very useful way to generate great ideas and how to act on them. And I know that some of the things we talked about in August we will be starting to implement come January.
Not enormous changes, but incremental changes that I hope will make the magazine better for our readers.
00:13:07:13 – 00:13:34:13
Dave Perry
Yeah, we had a great session and I think brainstorming is always a fun thing to do. And we thought about different ways to present the news. We kind of went through the publications and looked at some of the different sections. We talked about ways maybe we could make it easier for our readers to follow some themes. We talked about ways to maybe in Sleep Savvy have an even stronger retail focus.
So yeah, we had great brainstorming sessions and you’re right, Beth, it would have been nice to have, you know, an Ivy League list of group suggestions. But excuse me, sounds like we had excuse me.
00:13:52:05 – 00:13:54:00
Beth English
Yeah.
Okay. So, yeah, I think we’ve discussed most of what was in the issue. Kathy, I don’t know if we have.
00:14:01:04 – 00:14:04:11
Kathy Rush
I think we’re good to go about hit our time, almost at 12:15.
00:14:04:11 – 00:14:07:05
Beth English
So we can chat, can’t we?!
00:14:08:04 – 00:14:13:21
Waynette Goodson
Who saw the lunar eclipse last night? Was anyone pretty into it?
00:14:15:03 – 00:14:18:06
Beth English
Yes. I got up early. My daughter helped me get up and watch.
00:14:18:12 – 00:14:35:16
Waynette Goodson
So yeah, this is why I looked so raggedy, because I just had to get up at like 4:30 and go outside and see what was going on. So anyway, so it’s such a big day today. We have the lunar eclipse and everybody’s out voting and then there’s a full moon tonight. So? So such a big day today.
00:14:35:16 – 00:14:40:08
Waynette Goodson
Such an exciting day.
00:14:40:16 – 00:14:44:02
Beth English
Thank you all so much for tuning into our Livestream. We really appreciate it.
00:14:44:16 – 00:14:46:19
Dave Perry
We did great seeing you guys.
00:14:47:04 – 00:14:47:15
Waynette Goodson
Have a great day.
00:14:47:24 – 00:14:51:04
Dave Perry
Stay tuned for more fun things to come.
00:14:51:13 – 00:14:53:03
Beth English
Look for the issue in your mailbox.
00:14:54:09 – 00:14:55:10
Waynette Goodson
Bye.
