Our Story
Waterbeds to Factory-Direct Mattress Retailer
Sleepers was founded by Barbara Hodges and Ron van Meenen in 1983. The story of how a fitness advocate and elementary school teacher ventured into the bedding business is too long to tell here. Let’s just say we had an “entrepreneurial moment.”
We were in our early thirties, with two children, age 8 and 13, when we started our business life as waterbed retailers. The family lore is that it took us somewhere between three days and three months to realize that the waterbed wave had crested and that we weren’t going to ride that tide to business success. Timing, as they say, is everything!
When in doubt, listen to your customers. As we struggled to position ourselves as specialty sleep retailer during the department store era, our customers planted the seed of an even more unique concept … factory-direct mattress retailer. Now hard could that be?
Well, it was harder than we ever imagined, but the idea of “we make what we sell, so you save,” seemed to resonate with people. We opened a tiny factory in 1988 with the help of Al Collins, a bedding industry veteran from Columbus, Georgia. Al set up the equipment and gave us a week of training. We were on our way. Talk about a steep learning curve!
We quickly outgrew the first factory, and two more, as we immersed ourselves in the sleep products industry. Continuous improvement became a way of life. Finally in 1999, we built our current factory, here on Apex Street in Saskatoon’s north end. It’s a lively place, with customers playfully testing products in the showroom, while our staff are busy in the factory just a few feet away.
We truly appreciate the dedication and contributions of our sons, Chris and Rob. They worked with us from Day One. (Apparently we still owe them a treehouse and more than a few summer vacations). Chris was instrumental in figuring out how to get things done in the factory. At age 22, he opened our first store in Regina and managed it for three years. Always the man-of-action, Chris was a member of Canadian Navy Reserves and later graduated from Mount Royal College with an Aviation Diploma. He is now an Air Canada pilot. Chris lives in Calgary with his wife, Monique and their two little girls.
Rob is the voice of “Sleepers Radio.” We actually don’t own a radio station, although we might have paid for one based on the amount of advertising we have bought over the years. Rob has written and voiced almost all of our messages. The Mattress Man is a professional actor with credits in theatre, film and television across the west. He is a veteran of the Saskatoon Soaps, and a co-founder of Theatre Ecstasis and Live Five in Saskatoon. After 22 years of working at our side, Rob has “retired” and is pursuing his acting and writing careers in Vancouver.
Barbara and Ron
P.S. Have a listen to a few spots from our Radio Ad Bank. They will give you a pretty good idea of who we are.
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