Published on : Thursday, September 25, 2014
Five bed industry champions were celebrating last night as they scooped the top awards at the National Bed Federation (NBF) Bed Show Gala Dinner, plus a special lifetime service award was presented to an industry stalwart.
Peter Keen, chairman of Hypnos, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement award, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the bed industry.
Now in their fourth year the highly sought after awards are designed to recognise the companies considered as ‘best in class’ over the past 12 months.
The winners were chosen, from a record number of entries, by an independent panel of judges which consisted of editors from the industry’s trade journals (Chris Peck, Cabinet Maker; Richard de Melim, Furnishing Report; Paul Farley, Furniture News; Andrew Kidd, Interiors Monthly) along with Bernard Eaton, Managing Director of Greenwood Retail and Jessica Alexander, Executive Director of the NBF.
The awards were announced by Jeremy Vine at the Bed Show’s Gala Dinner at the Telford International Centre.
This year’s Bed Manufacturer of the Year winner went to Hypnos which not only is putting in a strong growth performance and significantly increasing exports in the qualifying period but is taking an innovative approach to further developing brand awareness and proving itself a worthy benchmark for the higher end of the market.
Runners up were Silentnight and Sweet Dreams, coming very close in a high calibre category. Silentnight was praised for its highly professional targeted marketing to meet the needs of every type of customer, individualising and differentiating the offer and working hard to meet the challenge of being a market leader. The judges felt Sweet Dreams also deserved recognition for its investment in UK manufacturing and a strong year-on-year performance, as it branches out into new retail markets.
Winning Bed Component Supplier of the Year was J De Walleg, a small company manufacturing another innovative product, which saves mattress makers time and money and which has seen significant export growth in the past 12 months.
Bekaert Textiles was a close runner up and was highly commended in recognition of its research into cradle to cradle production and some potentially groundbreaking technology in its development of biodegradable mattress covers.
Scooping the Multiple Retailer of the Year was Furniture Village. For bravely revitalising and reinventing its bed offering and for its leading approach to retailing, it proved to be a worthy winner.
Tags: 2014 National Bed Federation (NBF), Furnishing Report; Paul Farley, Furniture News; Andrew Kidd, J De Walleg, Jessica Alexander, lifetime achievement award, Peter Keen, Richard de Melim
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