Valerie Stranix has moved from music to mattresses to medicine and now machinery. Here are a few things she’s learned along the way.
Valerie Stranix says she never pictured herself in the bedding industry. The notion seemed hard to imagine, given that she’d eventually become one of the first women in bedding manufacturing to hold the CEO title.
So, how did she get there? Stranix’s circuitous path to sleep products started when she was just 18 years old, managing retail stores in her native Canada. After graduating from Concordia University in Montreal, she transitioned into the music business, working for a record label, a division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment.
Living in New York and Miami, Stranix spent five years selling records and managing artists. But something was missing. “I was enjoying the high life in the U.S. in my 20s, but something was calling me back to Canada,” Stranix says.
She connected with a recruiter looking to fill a sales manager position for the Spring Air Canada licensee based in Toronto. Although Stranix admits she knew little about bedding at the time, she had transferable skills, like negotiating effectively and dealing with people, particularly those with artistic temperaments. After getting the job, she recalls thinking: “I could see myself doing this for about five years or so.” But to her surprise, “Five years turned into 10 and 10 turned into 25.”
When she joined Spring Air Canada in the 1990s, the company’s leadership wanted to position it for a sale. Within 1 ½ years, Stranix helped grow sales from approximately $8 million to $16 million (Canadian dollars). Shortly after, they sold the company.
Another boost to her career? Helping to make mattresses more stylish. “I was one of the only females in the business in a management role and one of the things people wanted to see more of was a fashionable look for bedding,” she says. Working alongside the late Earl Kluft, owner of the Spring Air/Chattam & Wells division in California, and David Binke, her then boss and current CEO of King Koil, she helped design the company’s high-end Chattam & Wells line. “That was the start of a more elevated, elegant-looking product,” she adds.
Fast forward to 2007. Just before the 2008 financial crisis, Spring Air Partners North America was sold to Consolidated Bedding, but it was in a cash crunch. Spotting an opportunity, Stranix, some partners and private equity bought Spring Air Canada from Consolidated Bedding and created a management team for the company. “We were bucking trends because everybody was taking a dive in sales,” Stranix says. “Our sales were going up because we created a line of products that were very reasonably priced but looked beautiful. So again, fashion played a big role.”
At the time, she was the company’s chief marketing officer. In 2010, Stranix became CEO of Spring Air Sommex Corp., until the company’s sale in 2013.
She then became the Canadian vice president of The Flex Group, which owned E.S. Kluft & Co. and Vispring. After six years at the helm, she became general manager of Flex’s new acquisition, Marshall Mattress. Although Stranix exited the sleep products industry in September 2022, when she went to work for Toronto-based Salient Medical Solutions, she concedes that she is “slowly being brought back into the mattress world.” She is now working with Quarrata Forniture, a Quarrata, Italy-based supplier that makes automation machines for mattresses and pillows.
Reflecting on her career, Stranix has wisdom to share. “Our industry needs to catch up in certain ways. We’re wonderful, but I think we also need to be a little quicker to evolve.”
Her recommendation? Make a point to hire people outside of sleep products, like she once was. This reminds her of another piece of advice she would give to someone new to any industry. “Don’t be too shy to put a good idea forward for fear of rejection,” she says. Just look at Stranix’s career — proof that it pays to speak up.
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