We moved! Of course, we’re still in our hometown of Houston, Texas, but this week we finished transitioning all of our employees to our new corporate office space. Most companies call their space a headquarters, but we’ve paid homage to our company’s mission by opening our new BEDQuarters.
Our goal was to create a space that reflects and promotes our company’s culture and values. We literally built these values into our new office environment in order to inspire creativity and collaboration among our employees, while also building a culture of fun.
We asked Cory Ludens, Mattress Firm’s VP of Culture and Events, to add in his thoughts on some of the inspiration behind BEDQuarters’ most exciting features.
Siesta Rooms
There are four nap rooms at BEDQuarters – two of them has a “cocoon” pod (imagine a 360-degree hammock) and the other two have a twin size bed. We encourage our Mattress Firm employees to spend about 30 minutes in the Siesta room at a time to maximize a nap’s potential to improve productivity.
Cory says: “The inspiration for these rooms was simple. If we believe that better sleep can improve your life, then we need to give all of our team members the opportunity to get more sleep. It’s also a great reminder of what we do for our guests: improve lives one night at a time through better sleep.”
Building Materials
Many of the building materials that are used throughout the space were chosen specifically to evoke a connection to mattresses. Our whole team tried to make thoughtful decisions about details like furniture and finishes in order to make a real, physical connection back to our industry.
Cory says: “We made choices that were reminders of the elements that traditionally go into a sleep set—things like wood, wire/metal, fabric and more. The references are subtle, but they are a great subconscious reminder of our business.”
Meeting Spaces
In order to keep the most important parts of our business at the forefront of our thinking, we’ve chosen names for our meeting spaces that relate to our industry or to Mattress Firm’s strategic pillars. For example, our team members will regularly meet to come up with new ideas to help our guests sleep better in rooms named “Service,” “Dynamo” or “Rushmore.”
Cory says: “We really just wanted our names to be fun, to be memorable and to connect back and serve as a reminder to our team members of the things that we find most important at Mattress Firm.”
The Pl8 & Octane
The Pl8 is the name of our on-site café where team members can have lunch or a snack. With enough seating for 150 people, we’ll serve a combination of traditional and non-traditional restaurant items with an emphasis on healthy eating. We’ll even have a few items that are free, including soft serve frozen yogurt.
Octane is the coffee bar that will help keep us caffeinated and alert. We're looking forward to seeing what creative ways the 1,000 interchangeable coffee mugs on the wall will be moved around to make timely messaging for our guests. We also built Octane to be able to offer beer or wine so that we have the option to host social functions that might call for something other than coffee.
Cory says: “The three most important aspects of a person’s health are diet, exercise and sleep. Although our business is built around helping people live a healthy life through a good night’s sleep, we’re excited that at BEDQuarters we’ll also be able help our employees have a healthier diet.”
The Square
Right now, we’re calling this space by several different names—The Square, The Commons, The Yard and others. Soon, we will give our team members the chance to vote on what the permanent name for this space will be.
This is definitely one of our favorite spaces in BEDQuarters. It’s fun, functional and its design was meant to inspire creativity while also maximizing the many different ways our team members can connect with each other. Have you seen another corporate headquarters with a set of swings in the common area?
We're thrilled that we’ve been able to create a space where our people can use a community work station for a change of pace, or even take a mental break with a game of ping pong or Jenga.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our entire Mattress Firm family for helping us see this dream become reality. We couldn’t have done it without you, and we look forward to working together at BEDQuarters to offer great customer service and to help our guests sleep better.
