It’s a Theater, It’s an Office, It’s... SUPERBED!

June 30, 2008  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Bedding on July 2008 Recession, reschmession. Leggett & Platt is betting there are shoppers of means out there who will be willing to pay up to $50,000 for its new Starry Night™ bed.

They may be onto something. When it was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, attendees lined up to see the new product. Its second public appearance at Las Vegas Market a few weeks later met with equally rapturous response.

So what makes a bed a hit at both electronics and furniture shows—and more importantly, what makes a bed worth fifty grand? Read on.

Sleep-In Theater

Starry Night’s™ sexiest feature for the electronics crowd was most likely its high-end audio-visual offerings. The headboard contains an LCD video projector, and the four corners of the bed have four surround sound speakers (boasting eight-inch subwoofers) that work with the video operation to create a home theater you can sleep in.

The headboard can store multiple DVDs and CDs to enable you to access your favorite movies or songs, but the built-in hard drive holds 1.5 terabytes (in laymen’s terms: a lot) of information—about 400,000 songs or up to 2,000 hours of video—so you may not need to load any media at all. The unit also has an iPod dock/charger and offers Digital Video Recorder capability.

The bed’s electronics capabilities don’t end there, however. According to Leggett & Platt Group Vice President of Sales/Marketing Bedding Mark Quinn, who demonstrated the product at Las Vegas Market, Starry Night™ is designed for telecommuters who’d prefer to work from bed over a home office setup. That’s why it’s equipped with Internet connectivity and wireless RF via Microsoft’s Media Center system.

Rating Your Performance

The prospect of having your bedtime performance rated may not seem appealing, but in this case it may be good for you. Starry Night™ is one smart bed. While you sleep, it monitors how much you toss and turn, and when you wake up in the morning, a screen hung on your wall shows how well you slept. It compares these findings to a 30-day baseline measure and offers tips for improving sleep quality.

The bed also uses a vibration detection system (developed for the U.S. military) to sense snoring and adjust sleep position to help alleviate it.

It’s All About Control

In keeping with its “never need to leave your bed” high concept, Starry Night offers unprecedented control capabilities—not just for the bed, but also for other aspects of your home. Using its wireless remote, you can program the bed to interact with your lights, and also control your thermostat and security system.

The bed also offers a choice of three “modes” to suit your bedtime plans:

• Read mode, which raises the bed’s head to a position suitable for reading while turning on the lamp, turning off the TV and lowering the ceiling lights.

• Relax mode, which programs the bed to give a welcome massage, lower the lights and room temperature, and play soothing music at the end of a stressful day.

• Romance mode, which—ahem—creates an “atmosphere of intimacy” (Leggett & Platt’s words, not mine) by dimming the lights, drawing the curtains and calling up some romantic music (Barry White, anyone?)

Oh Yeah, It’s a Bed Too

Let’s not forget that besides being a theater, office and health monitoring system, Starry Night™ is also a top-of-the-line bed. Its Joey™ Coil innerspring system uses pocketed coil-within-coil to maximize comfort. The exterior coils respond to body movements, while the interior coils are pressure-sensitive and adjust firmness based on the weight of the sleepers.

By nature, Starry Night™, which should be in stores in early 2009, is not for everyone. Even in its no-frills form, it will cost $20,000 (customizable based on features—like a new car—up to $50,000 for the full-throttle model). But for the well-heeled customer looking for a bed that screams “luxury” and “privilege”, this product could be a big hit at retail, especially considering its rapturous reception at the recent trade shows. For further information on Starry Night™, go to starrynightbed.com