What Sells: Trendwood’s Story: From Waterbeds to Bunk Beds

July 19, 2017  by HFBusiness Staff in Bedding, Product   

Phoenix-based Trendwood, now a major player in youth furniture, got its start in 1985 in an entirely different furniture category – waterbed furniture.

Capitalizing on the flotation frenzy of the 1970s and 1980s, the company did a brisk business making waterbed frames and headboards for waterbed specialty stores. The furniture was made of Ponderosa pine, a wood known for its strength and durability that could support the heavy bags of water that made up waterbed mattresses. 

Scott Coor, Trendwood’s vice president of marketing, recalled that many in the waterbed business were convinced the frenzy would last forever, but by 1990, he said the company began to see indications the industry was peaking.

“What we did best was cut long pieces of pine, so when waterbed sales began to stall out, I started looking for other applications for that process, and we settled on bunk beds,” he said. “There were a ton of guys making little cheap bunk beds, and there were some real expensive ones out there, but nothing in between. So I thought if we could make a really strong, durable bed … we might have something.”

So, in 1992, Trendwood secured a small, temporary exhibit space at the now-defunct San Francisco furniture market to show its first three bunk beds – while still making its line of waterbed furniture.

Coor said it took a couple of years for Trendwood to establish credibility as a bunk bed producer – after all, the waterbed business had more than its share of questionable operators – but the program finally started humming.

The timing couldn’t have been better. Waterbed sales began a breathtaking decline in 1992, and by 1996, the once booming industry – not to mention Trendwood’s waterbed furniture business – had all but disappeared.