I think the bed market changed when we started in 2008; we gave it a real wake-up call thanks to our background in engineering, innovations and our high-quality standards,” claims Martin Bishop - one of the partners at Smart Beds, alongside Michael Coward. When you learn that many people will just transplant their Smart Beds across when they upgrade their vans, you have to think there might well be some substance to that statement.
Martin has a background and years of experience in fabrication, welding and CAD design, while Michael is an ex-lift engineer. In 2008 Mike bought a rock & roll bed for his T4; he wasn’t impressed and they decided they could do a much better job of building their own. At the time Mike says nobody was using gas struts on beds or powder coating them. “We went to a local breakers yard and picked up a gas strut from a Peugeot 205 tailgate and fitted that to our bed and it worked,” he remembers with a proud grin. The rest, as they say in all the best clichés, is history.
This story is from the Issue 90 edition of VW Bus T4&5+.
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This story is from the Issue 90 edition of VW Bus T4&5+.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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