Thursday, May 24, 2012

Why a Mobile WallBed?

There are lots of reasons why many people really need a mobile wall bed instead of a conventional wall bed.   Here are just a few:

Size - the Xtrabed is half as tall (43" full size, 46" queen size).

No Installation - Some folks have an obstacle (of any kind) the makes bolting a conventional wall bed or Murphy bed (same thing) into their house.

No Assembly - Much like the 'no installation' - the Xtrabed comes right out of the box ready-to-use.  (This is not an Ikea product!!)

More Economical - The Xtrabed includes a memory foam mattress, and when you consider that, with the Xtrabed, you don't have to buy a new mattress or pay for assembly and installation - the Xtrabed is about half the cost of an installed Murphy bed.

It's Mobile - ONLY the Xtrabed allows you to store the bed in one room, and roll it into another room.   Sometimes the place where you have space to put it against a wall, is not the same room where there is space available to open it up and sleep on it.   No problem with the Xtrabed!

Xtrabed is Well-Made - The Xtrabed has a lifetime warranty, and is made of real Birch solids and veneers on Plywood core panels - no paper, no plastic, no particleboard!

Hidden Wall Bed - unlike a conventional wall bed or Murphy bed - the Xtrabed looks like a beautiful chest of doors, just sitting there looking like a pretty piece of furniture - until you roll it out and open it up!  It doesn't sort of 'take over' the room with a massive 84" height like a conventional wall bed.

So, to sum it all up, Murphy beds and Wall beds are great - but some folks need a mobile wallbed that does what a Murphy bed will do, but without all the size, installation, and cost issues.

Thanks for reading!
jeff

Thursday, March 8, 2012

The new "Xtrabed II" has arrived!!

The new updated version of the Xtrabed has arrived!
There are many new features:

  • Memory foam mattress
  • Larger caster, side handles, and lighter frame for easier movement around the house
  • Asymmetrical  bed trays - one end of the bed has a lower tray making it more comfortable to sit on, and the other end has a raised tray to act as a 'headboard' and keep your pillows from falling off!
All of these features are great improvements to make the bed easier to use and enjoy!

Friday, June 3, 2011

Stepping into the blogosphere with a story...

Well here's my first blog post.   This is all new to me and I hope I don't screw it up too badly.   Please be merciful.

THE XTRABED STORY:
A few years ago, a great friend of mine told me that the Wall-bed (Murphy bed, whatever...) business was doing well.  And that was in a pretty nasty economy, so my ears perked up.   As a long-time furniture designer and manufacturer, I figured it was worth a look at this very old, but kind of new, business that was thriving in rough economic times.

So, I built some wall beds.   Hmmm.   Kind of a pain in the butt to handle, with all the assembly and installation and such.   Plus, once installed, the normal wall bed is there to stay - committing that space where the bed would fold down.

Don't get me wrong - I think Wall Beds are awesome.

The wall bed is the 'Cadillac' of Intelligent Sleep - and by that I mean a person can sleep on a wall bed every night of their life without sacrificing comfort...AND...that big footprint a mattress takes up is out of the way during the day, making room to practice your Yoga, Pilates, and Krav-Maga.

But I kept thinking "there's got to be a better way" - or at least "another way" - to accomplish the same thing and achieve the same benefits of a wall bed, particularly for customers who cannot directly commit a room in their home where a wall bed would be installed.

Perhaps something smaller, less expensive, and... well... MOBILE.

With a bunch of research and the advice and help of many friends, a concept began to emerge, and the Xtrabed was born.  At least conceptually I knew what I wanted it to do.

It had to have very few moving parts (complexity is always evil).   It had to have a small 'footprint' so it wouldn't overpower the room in which it was kept.   It had to look like a chest or a dresser so that it could 'hide' among the other furnishings in the customer's home and not appear as a bed.  It had to be built so strong that future civilizations would dig it up intact in archeological sites.

And it had to MOVE so that you could keep it in one room and use it in another room with ease.

Simple, right?

Well, then the design process ensued.

Product Development has two main themes that permeate every single step along the way:


The most powerful and overwhelming force at work is DELAY.
Even if you're doing things pretty well, the basic mathematical concept of "statistical fluctuation upon dependent events = degradation from plan" means that everything in life (other than Fed/Ex) is pretty much going to be late.

The other major force at work during the product development cycle is best expressed in the sentence, "Oh !#@*&, why didn't I think of that before?!!!", (which is actually another cause of DELAY, because you have to go back and re-do everything since you just discovered something really obvious.  Again.)

And then one day...we built one.

And it worked (which is always weird).  I mean, everything always looks good on paper, but you don't know what you've got until you actually build it.   Finding major flaws (like the product explodes when you assemble it or something) is the norm.   At least in my experience.

So then we built a bunch and made an internet site to sell them on.  (Everything I said about product development above is at least doubled when creating an internet site.)  Sigh.

And then the most amazing and surprising thing of all happened...People started buying the Xtrabed online!

Once the Paramedics got to my office and revived me, I did my happy dance.  No, it is not now, nor ever shall be, on you-tube.  And no, the Paramedics didn't like it.

Anyway...in grossly simplified terms, that is the story of how the Xtrabed and Xtrabed.net came to be.

In closing, (yeah, i know..."finally", right?), I want to say that I am amazed and ginormously (yes, that's a word as far as I am concerned) grateful every day that people buy our product.

When one considers how many less-than-awesome products are sold online, and one considers the price of an Xtrabed Mobile Wallbed, (because even though it's the best VALUE in the world, it is hardly a small investment under any terms), I remain amazed and grateful for the blessing of the Xtrabed, and the customers who trust us enough to buy one.

Only in America!!

>Jeff