They're Sleeping Giants

A small family company is starting to cause a stir in the luxury beds market.

- Roger Borrell

MARCH has been designated National Bed Month, an event which seems ripe for ridicule along with World Towel Day and National Smile Week. There is even an organisation called The Sleep Council dedicated to helping us all have an uninterrupted eight hours in the land of nod.

But, when you think about it, spending a little more time considering how we sleep and, of course, what we sleep on, isn’t so daft.

As bed maker Chris Cannon points out, most of us spend a third of our lives in bed but give little thought to our mattresses until we are forced, usually by back pain, to buy a new one.

‘People spend tens of thousands on a car they might only use for an hour a day,’ he says. ‘Yet, people are reluctant to invest a fraction of that amount in a mattress that can really make a difference to their lives.’

Chris, aged 22, and his family – his parents Nicky and Jon from Bare near Morecambe are fellow directors along with brother Ben, who is in charge of their Lancaster retail outlet – run Feather and Springs, one of the north’s fastest-growing bed manufacturers.

With their production base at White Lund, Morecambe, they unashamedly cater for the top end of the market using up to 3,000 springs and a mixture of anything from top quality cotton to cashmere and silk, much of it put together by hand, including the stitching. Prices can be as high as £3,700 for their top of the range models.