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