![]() “When our customers see the owner in the store, they are impressed,” added Tom’s wife, Kathy, the retailer’s vice president. “When our customers are dealing with the guy they see on TV, I close the sale.” “I know half of the people who walk through the doors,” Wholley said. ![]() ![]() He appears in the company’s TV commercials and is a regular on the sales floor. Tom Wholley is now a brand in his own right. Tom and John Wholley became the face of that business. He died in 2011, the year that Tom Wholley made his return to the mattress business with the opening of Connecticut Mattress.īetter Bedding, founded by John Wholley Sr., at one time operated some two dozen stores in the state and established a reputation for honest, straightforward dealings with its customers. His brother, John, who ran Better Bedding with him, had brain cancer. He was out of the business for a year or two after Better Bedding, the business founded by his father, closed in 2009, the victim of brutal competition. His name is on signs in the stores and in the company’s logo on the store walls, where it is accompanied by two words that characterize the business: Integrity and value. Wholley is in his element at Connecticut Mattress. Wholley remembers the time when a young boy looked in amazement at his new bed. The retailer’s charity is Beds for Kids, which is supported by the company’s bedding removal fees.Ĭonnecticut Mattress has donated more than 900 beds to charity in the past three years. “When the consumer goes online today they are more confused than when they are in a brick-and-mortar store,” Wholley said.īorn and raised in Connecticut, Wholley is dedicated to serving his marketplace. It’s the Baby Boomers who have money and who understand the importance of sleep, and who have aches and pains.”Ĭonnecticut Mattress doesn’t sell online. “People often ask me, ‘How do you get Millennials in your store?’” Wholley said. While Wholley says he and his employees are happy to sell beds to anyone who walks in the door, he admits he’s not focused on Millennials, those darlings of many bedding retailers these days.
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