We met the Commercialsofabeds team at the Independent Hotel show when we were looking for a Murphy bed or similar but their fold out chair bed and sofa beds convinced us to try something else. Their products unlike most (cruel and unusual torture devices) were simple to use and very comfortable and believe me we tested them thoroughly! Swatches were looked at, colour decided and order put in – item delivered exactly as seen and we are very pleased with it. Mike and his team were clear and helpful and we would order from them again without hesitation.
Yours Kim and Simon (The Camberley and The Lodge B&B’s Harrogate)
Whether you run a boutique hotel, a chain of hotels, a guest house, bed and breakfast, a pub or restaurant with overnight accommodation, our range of sofa beds delivers style, space and most importantly, a perfect, undisturbed night’s sleep. With robust, box mesh systems and substantial, pocket-sprung mattresses up to a unique 18cm thick
he Martindale is a unit for quantifying the abrasion resistance of textiles, especially when used for upholstery.
The Martindale method, also known as the Martindale rub test, simulates natural wear of a seat cover, where the textile sample is rubbed against a standard abrasive surface with a specified force. The test equipment works in intervals of 5000 cycles, totalling the wear number (unit: Martindale) of abrasion cycles that leads to the material being worn to a specified degree. The higher the value, the more resistant the material is to abrasion.[1]
The national German textile institute specifies a minimum requirement for various applications, and here are some examples:
| Soft padding [Martindale] |
Hard padding [Martindale] |
|
| Private use | 10,000 | 15,000 |
| Office use | 25,000 | 35,000 |
| For public transportation | 30,000 | 40,000 |
To the owner of a luxury B&B the idea of equipping a bedroom with a sofa-bed may sound incongruous. You want to offer your guests a good night’s sleep on a high quality bed. The idea of putting a sofa bed to use conjures up images of trying to get some kind of rest while supported by a mesh of knotty metal poking through a mattress not much thicker or denser than a duvet, with the sound of creaking springs jolting you awake each time you finally make ti to sleep. This of course is after the tiresome and often farcical process of fathoming out how to pull out the mechanism that makes the bed without doing yourself serious injury or knocking into masonry or fragile objects in the room that ought not be disturbed.
In short, why on earth would a luxury B&B owner even dream of inflicting such an experience on his or her guests?
As it happens not all sofa beds are either so uncomfortable or so cumbersome to assemble. At last month’s Be My Guest event in Southampton Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine chance upon Mike Pickett from Commercial Sofabeds. He told us that his company, with showrooms across the south of England, offers sofa beds that generate extra revenue to all types of business within the hospitality sector. We were initially skeptical, given our exposure to sofa beds in the past and the limitations they impose not least with regard to luxury. But he assures us that his range of sofa beds sdelivers style, space and, he claims, a perfect, undisturbed night’s sleep.
First off he tackles the issue of complexity of assembly that forms a lasting impression on many people who have had to turn a chair into something resembling a bed. Citing the company’s Easy Glide range he tells Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine: “With Easy Glide there is a two-fold unique proposition. It has a unique mechanism that simply glides. It does not roll, and it is not a click mechanism.”
Within that system, he says, there is a 13 cm thick pocket-sprung mattress, which he claims is unique in a sofa bed. “There are no other pocket-sprung sofa bed mattresses,” he says.
“There are many other features besides that are the same for all the ranges we sell beside the Easy Glide mechanism including commercial fixtures and fittings, space-saving design and stain-resistant fabrics that are put to extreme durability tests.”
Citing the kind of sofa bed that is responsible for perpetuating this perception of sofa beds he says: “A lot of sofa beds get damaged because not everyone knows quite how to open them, and over time generating friction over the wrong part of the system can damage the mechanism,” he says. As the owner of one such sofa bed I write this with a sense of bitter personal experience.
As a company he says Commercial Sofa Beds has tried and tested the units over the past four years domestically while selling to the public for that period. “This equates to four years of market research,” he says. “The units are built to an exceptionally high standard with commercial fittings, and the fabrics are exceedingly high wearing, stain resistant, easy-clean and some of them are water-resistant, as well as pet-friendly.
“They are designed for everyday use, and they pass high grade tests on durability. They are not just for the occasional sleep. We haven’t put a tiny little thin mattress on an uncomfortable base as an afterthought, for instance.”
In order to put the product into the context of a luxury B&B environment he explains: “Most B&B guest rooms have a chair. If the property owners were to replace or supplement that existing chair with one of ours then they will get a fabulous return on investment,” he claims. How so? “With the ordinary chair they are never going to get a return,” he suggests. In other words, he says, a standard double room can upgrade to a family room without the inconvenience associated with collecting and hauling a spare single bed from another room or from storage and then maneuvering it into the bedroom.
Furthermore he says: “A lot of the B&Bs often bring low-grade beds into the bedroom when families book in for a night. With our sofas If they wish to turn it into a family room then they can. There is a compact sofa and a large sofa.”
The Ascot Chair Bed for example is like a large single bed, with a mattress sleeping area of 72cm x 204cm
He acknowledges that a sofa bed would not suit all bedrooms. “In a perfect world the B&B would have one in every guest room but not all rooms have the space. I envisage that in a 10-bedroom guesthouse I’d envisage there would be three guestrooms with the space and potential to upgrade,” he says.
Moving up from the entry level of the Easy Glide, the next upgrade is the easy revolve and the evolution ragnges, which are very similar nbut from two different suppliers. The Evolution range entails the easy revolve system, a box mesh that aids the comfort os oyu are not sinking into any webbing and with the option of having a 12cm or a 16cm thick mattress, you don’t feel your back hitting anyting. That is a big deal. With the normal ones when you sleep on them you can feel every detail of the webbing on your back and we dfon’t use the webbing – the majority of the sofa beds we sell are a box mesh system. We trhink this is the most comfortable sofabed to sleep in.
The beds are British standards compliant. Our fabrics are (?) fdire retardant. A lot of B&Bs don’t know they have to have furniture to such specification. They will go toi the cheap corner shop and buy a cheap sofga bed and their fire officer would go beserk.
Low maintenance, high return.
