"Shogun" Influenced Sit 'n Sleep

I went on a trip to Japan in the late 1970’s and one night I ended up sleeping on something called a Futon. I’d never heard of one or seen one before. It was a soft mattress on a frame that you could use as a bed and then adjust to become a small sofa.

At the time I thought that was pretty neat.

I got back to California and the mini-series “Shogun” about Japanese warriors was a big hit, Americans were starting to eat sushi … so I figured maybe they’ll sleep on this bed/chair thing from Japan.

At the time there were only two other places in all of Los Angeles where you could even find a Futon. One was a tiny store in an area called Little Tokyo and the other was an even smaller store in a predominantly Japanese area of west Los Angeles. So I went ahead and imported a Futon from Japan and had the mattress part copied.  But I had an impossible time finding anyone who could make the adjustable frame. Finally, after many frustrating calls and trips, I found someone who could make the frame … in Brazil!

Meanwhile, my dad (who was also my business partner) thought I was completely nuts. He told me, “Nobody is going to sleep on that bag of cotton!”

But dad agreed to let me try selling these weird new beds because, at the time, we really had nothing to lose! We were just scraping by month to month trying to keep our little store open.

Well, thankfully the response to our Futons was incredible. Most days I’d be selling five or six customers at the same time! We sold thousands over the next few years. And because of those “bags of cotton,” and the mattresses we sold, the store was called Sit ‘n Sleep. By the time the Futon craze died down years later, Sit ‘n Sleep was a very established name due to our radio and television advertising.  And, look, it’s “business 101” that you don’t just change your brand name to keep up with trends.

Who knows? Maybe the Futon craze of the late 70’s and early 80’s will strike again someday and our name will make complete sense.

I’m often amused when people are baffled by our name. I think almost everyone in Southern California knows by now that we sell mattresses because they’ve been hearing our ads since the early eighties, and we’ve sold more mattresses than any other chain in America. So they have no problem with the word sleep in our name but why would we throw the word sit in there if we’ve nothing to  sit on in our stores except for a couple of chairs for our customers … and they’re not for sale?

Instead of giving you the answer right away, I thought you’d enjoy reading some of my favorite guesses customers have come up with over the years.

• “Didn’t it used to be called Sit ‘n Eat? I thought you used to sell dining room sets and then changed to beds so you added the word sleep.”

• “You used to sell chairs ….but then you stopped…but you thought you might start selling chairs again, so you kept the name, right?”

• “You can sleep on a bed but you can also just sit on one and watch T.V.”

• “Lots of people start out sitting up in bed and end up falling asleep. So it’s Sit ‘n Sleep.”

• “The name of the store already existed and it was too expensive to change the sign.”

• “You were going to sell chairs, but once you put a lot of mattresses in the store there was no more room left for chairs.”

• “Don’t they have those beds with a motor where the back goes up so you’re kinda sitting up in bed?”

• “You used to sell those Japanese futon things that could adjust to be a bed or a sofa. But why wasn’t the store called Futons and Beds? That’s what I would have called it.”

• “Some people actually sit while they sleep because of a bad back. I do.”

• “You used to sell chairs and beds… but there’s more profit in beds so you got rid of the chairs but kept the name just in case you wanted to start selling chairs again.”

• “You stopped selling chairs but changing the store name to just, “Sleep”, sounded stupid…or like a clinic or something.”

• “I don’t get it. I didn’t see any chairs.”

I could go on and on with customers explanations for the Sit ‘n Sleep name but I’m going to  let you use your imagination to figure it out.  But don’t worry: I’ll give you the actual reason we’re called Sit ‘n Sleep in my next blog post.