Case Studies
Issue No. 30 - August/September 2006
Dream on
How long has Dreamland bedding stores entrepreneur Dean Bendall been dreamin’? The answer comes back without hesitation: 17 September 1978.
"It's like a birthday to me," Dean says. "We leased a shop of about 300 square metres in Grote Street. It didn't have the same history back in those days in terms of furniture retail."
The struggle for recognition went on for some months. "It was a gradual process. We couldn't afford TV," Dean says. "It wasn't until we went on TV in mid 1980 that we started to get the numbers through the doors."
Opening Dreamland was a career change for Dean, who until then had worked on the manufacturing side of the bedding industry. He worked for Simmons, the mattress manufacturer, and there was an element of frustration behind his move.
"I could see that people were getting the wrong impression about what was good," he says. "It was all about price. There was no bedding specialist in town to tell them, there was no Sealys, etc, with a wide range of sizes and styles, and when they bought from a department store the choice came down to 'Do you want a pink one or a blue one?
“Coming from the manufacturing side I had the skills and I started to build our brand by telling people what good bedding could do for them."
Drawing on his manufacturing experience, Dean became steadily more selective about his stock, specifying materials and mattress designs. He made a point of explaining how different types of bedding suited different people — heavier bodies and lighter, perhaps elderly bodies that might be subject to bedsores.
“A lot of our (early) market success came from people who got the right bed, recommending us. And we got a lot of repeat business.”
The early days were hard slog. Dreamland sold beds during the day and delivered them at night. Dean remembers a customer waiting on the footpath for the bed to be delivered, so he could go to sleep!
“Until we were t...
