Boyd Mattresses 1st to Carry SSA Seal

August 18, 2010  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Bedding on August 19, 2010

Mattress manufacturer Boyd Specialty Sleep is the first U.S. mattress maker to adopt new safety and environmental standards from the Specialty Sleep Association.

SSA designed the standards to help consumers better understand what is inside their mattresses. Boyd is placing the SSA Safety & Environmental Program (SEP) seal on its NaturalFlex latex mattresses, and its PlanetSleep, visco-memory foam mattresses. The mattresses are expected to be on retailer floors in the next few weeks.

The SSA's SEP is the first time the mattress industry has come together to better educate and inform consumers of the components in the sleep products they buy. After more than a year of research and industry involvement, the specialty trade association has created a two-step seal and contents label program that will appear on mattresses from manufacturers who voluntarily join the program that informs the consumer about the minimum environmental and safety compliance levels the particular product adheres to, along with a label that lists components in the mattress.

Consumers wanting further information beyond the seal and label can go the SSA's Web site for more detailed information and contact the organization if they wish to learn more about a specific manufacturer's component filing.
 
The Boyd mattresses in the program display the group's Level I seal, which means the company has met all federal safety flammability requirements; provided a warrantee for the product; met all safety requirements for children€™s products if applicable; disclosed material construction with a descriptive label content; will participate in an annual survey to identify carbon footprint issues and has committed to continuous improvement; and met standards set by the Montreal Protocol Act when applicable, for reduction or elimination of ozone depleting substances.

"The first time I learned of the seal I was ecstatic and wanted to be a part of the program," said Dennis Boyd, the founder and president of Boyd Specialty Sleep, St. Louis. "The SSA's SEP seal is a real breakthrough for the consumer and empowers them to see what a manufacturer is doing to actively assure the safety and environmental friendliness of their products. The retail response we saw a few weeks ago in Las Vegas to our products carrying the seal exceeded our expectations and I believe a further indication that the SSA has really solved one of the great challenges our industry has faced in recent memory by finding a way to bring us all together around the issue of safety and environmental sensitivity to the products we sell."

Boyd Specialty Sleep, founded in 1977, has a manufacturing center and eight retail locations in the St. Louis area, and a second manufacturing facility in Fontana, Calif.