It should be noted that I in no way represent Serta or its affiliates. This story is completely of my own design and does not reflect the stances or opinions of any company anywhere.
In selling furniture and bedding, I have some very entertaining and resourceful coworkers, and we look for interesting and unique ways to remember the differences between furniture and mattress models. This was my attempt at helping us remember which of Serta’s four available bases sports which features.
Please, no one sue me for this. Enjoy reading.
Once upon a time, in a faraway and mystical land known only to its residents as “Ohio,” a lonely little mattress company called Serta sat by the side of a long, dusty road of bedding sales. “Why do we all sleep flat,” Serta asked itself, “if our spines curve?”
Walking down that dusty road, kicking at the gemstones of opportunity, Serta mulled this over. “Surely there’s something else that a beautiful mattress could rest on besides a simple box of springs… but wait! What if your box wasn’t necessarily a box, but a moveable base? A base… of motion? Not just moving, but adjusting to your comfort level? Yes, something adjustable! An adjustable base!” Serta began running down the road, whooping for joy all the way.
“If your bed didn’t have to lay flat, what would you want it to do?” Serta asked its two best friends, the inimitable stand-up comedy duo known only as Renufaldo (or ‘R’ for short) and Dellagostronamus (alternatively, ‘D’). Together, the three of them dwelled many fortnights on this penultimate question. “Well,” R & D finally determined, “it wouldn’t do to just be able to sit up in bed. The Perfect Base would have to be able to lift up both your head and your feet.” Serta heard this and sighed, slightly dismayed.
“Just elevation?” it whined. “People can do that with foam blocks!” R&D nodded, but insisted: “People are lazy! Why use blocks when they can have motors lift them to a Perfect position?” Serta began to get frustrated. “Motors? Heck, if we’re using motors, we may as well go all the way! Give them a massage while we’re at it!”
The words were no sooner out of Serta’s mouth when the bulb of brilliance clicked on in all of their minds. “Elevation and massage! Genius! That’s, like, stupid fresh! But what will we call it?”
The ultimate question of sales and marketing hung in the air exactly like a can of soup doesn’t. They fell into pensive speculation, muttering to themselves, “Well, it’s clearly the Perfect adjustable base, with motion and massage both included… Perfect Elevator? No, that’s just terrible. Perfect Motion? No, that sounds like a 70’s soft-rock band. But… wait, reverse Perfect Motion and you get the MOTION PERFECT! Aha!”
And thus, the Motion Perfect base was born for Serta, and the people rejoiced heartily.
After a time, Serta called his friends R&D over to hang out. “Guys,” he excitedly began, “I was at Burger King this morning for breakfast and they have a double-meat croissant sandwich! That’s crazy! Double the flavor profile! Double the goodness! More companies should double their stuff, it’s really brilliant work! And so, I’m thinking… hm…” R&D exchanged a glance as Serta posed its query: “What if we made a motion base with double the motors?”
R&D, being as well-funded and resourceful as they were, jumped at the idea. “Bro, like, totally,” they exclaimed, “this will rock the bedding industry, like, whoa!” You see, they had been receiving reports of people loving their Motion Perfect base, except for certain people who really like sleeping on their side. The ‘dip’ in the spine created by elevating the upper body caused a little discomfort. “What if we let them adjust their base’s elevation in the lumbar region? That would alleviate an issue for side sleepers!” Serta nodded, and encouraged them to continue: “Yes, but that’s only one extra adjustment. I want double the adjustments! Double meat, baby!”
R&D puffed a little on that wonderful smokin’ drug called Life Experience and sighed. “Chill, baby,” they cooed. “Let’s think about it for a second. After back pain, what’s the next biggest complaint people have about how they wake up? Bro diggity, you know it’s neck pain, by, like, a super-wide margin. Let’s do a neck tilt adjustment! Serta, baby, there’s your double motors!”
Serta, needless to say, was ecstatic. “If we can double the motors, what else can we do? This is nuts! Put some speakers in there! Give it some USB chargers! OMG U GUYS, a built-in NIGHTLIGHT! Make it bluetooth compatible! Give it a soulmate detector!”
R&D quickly slapped Serta across the face. “Get a hold of yourself, man! We’re still working on soulmate detection!” The room grew quiet. “But we can do the rest,” they said quietly. “It will be a totally decked-out base, with all the Custom position you could want! Wait… that’s it… Custom… Motion…”
And thus, the MOTION CUSTOM base was born for Serta, and the people rejoiced heartily.
The years passed, and prosperity spread through the land. Serta seemed restless, though, so R&D called a meeting to discuss what might be on its mind. “It’s my grandparents,” Serta confided in its eager friends. “They… they don’t like our bases. I don’t know what to do… they say the massage is too loud and it shakes them too much! Most of their friends don’t like it either, and I just want to do something good for Nonny and Pop-Pop…”
R&D sympathized. “You know, we can just… turn it down… like, cut the massage power in half, or something?” Serta’s brows furrowed. “I’m not going to sell them a base that’s half-as-good-or-something as our Perfect base! That would be a rip-off!”
R&D fired back: “Serta, hang on. We didn’t say half as good, we said half as strong. And we won’t stop with just fine-tuning the massage! What did we learn from the Custom base? We can add an LED night light underneath so your Nonny and Pop-Pop can see the floor if they get up in the middle of the night. And surely you’ve given them a tablet or a smart phone to stay connected? Right? So we can add the USB ports in the side so they can plug in at night!”
Serta loomed over the table, “Do you think, for a second, that my Nonny and Pop-Pop are going to bend over every night to plug in their phones? That USB port is on the base of the bed! It’s too low for their generation to get down and back up every evening!”
“Okay, so we’ll bring it up,” R&D cooed. “What if we make a cradle for the remote, so they won’t lose it? We can put the USB port on the cradle! And hey, while we’re at it, we’ll go ahead and put two outlets on the cradle, as well, so they can plug in their lamp and their clock without having to get back to the wall outlet!”
The relief was visible on Serta’s face. “That would make Nonny and Pop-Pop very happy, indeed. Let’s do it, team. I’ll sign off on whatever design you feel is best for this cradle and massage. A base that’s quieter, gentler… a night light, a cradle… any buyer would sign off on that! You have my signature!”
And thus, the MOTION SIGNATURE base was born for Serta, and the people rejoiced heartily.
Finally, after many years of success, R&D approached Serta once more. “We have an idea,” they chimed. Serta’s eyes lit up: “Is the soulmate detector finally ready?”
R&D shook their heads. “No, Serta,” they said softly, “we almost had the perfect algorithms to match people up for life, but some new website called eHarmony had the same idea and beat us to the patent office, so now we have to start from scratch again. But we’re working on it.”
Serta, crestfallen, muttered “all those years… Fine, continue with your idea.”
“Many customers,” R&D went on, “insist that they don’t want to pay so much for an adjustable base. They just want the essential features: raise the head, raise the feet. Plain and simple: they just want elevation in bed, and they want it at a good price.”
Serta stared blankly. “You mean… exactly like you lobbied for in the very beginning of this terrible fan fiction?” R&D nodded solemnly, “Yeah, and it’s really weird timing, too. We just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink,’ which is a great book on trusting your gut instinct.”
Serta took this to heart. “You know,” it began, “Seth Godin recently said in an interview with Tim Ferriss that his dad always told him that when you come to a fork in the road, you should take both paths. Maybe we should have done that: created both a massage and non-massage version of a motion base for our customers.”
R&D countered, “Well, there are two ways of looking at it, pal. First, consider this: if we’d done that in the beginning, think of all the things we would have missed! USB ports, speakers, night lights, cradles… these are all ideas that we got because we wanted to keep improving! If we’d done just the basics at the beginning, I don’t know that we would have tried to improve anything at all. We took the path of discovery, and we’ve grown wonderfully for doing so.”
Serta nodded in agreement. “What’s the other way of looking at it?”
“The ancient Chinese proverb,” R&D said softly, “that says ‘the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the next-best time is now.'”
Serta beamed at its best friends. “Wow guys, it’s so good to be part of a community of well-read and like-minded individuals! Go ahead with your idea. Let’s bring motion bases back to the Essential qualities that make them great…”
And thus, the MOTION ESSENTIALS base was born for Serta, and the people rejoiced heartily.
Meanwhile, in Switzerland, a certain mattress manufacturer began to Tempur its resolve…