Lisa Scorziell was born in Ohio. She proudly holds a BA degree from Ohio State University. Lisa met her husband, Geno Scorziell, at the International Sleep Products Convention in San Antonio Texas. Lisa joined the Scorziell family in 1990, and added her business acumen to the family business, too.
Entrepreneur Interview Q & A
—
1. What is your business/Business Name? What does your business do?
Banner Mattress is a manufacturer and retailer of high quality mattresses. We also retail other national brand name mattresses.
2. Why did you get into this field? What opportunities did you see?
I’ve held various employment positions with the State Of Ohio, including OSHA Inspector, HR Director of the Ohio Department Of Industrial Relations, and Chief of Furniture and Bedding for the State of Ohio. In 2010, I applied my skills and in-depth knowledge to my current position as co-CEO of Banner Mattress.
3. What have been your biggest challenges?
I am a systems freak. I believe in constant evaluation and improvement. All things must be measured and monitored for systems improvements.
4. What has been your greatest reward?
Using Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) as a business management tool has made a direct, positive impact on business. There are so many areas to measure and monitor in a retail and a manufacturing business. One must understand through analysis and review how these items measure and how efficiencies affect the profitability of your organization. Identifying and understanding KPI’s tells you where to look and what to monitor what equates to healthy or harmful impacts on your business.
5. If you could change something, what would it be?
The one thing I’d do over again is run my business like a business. Failure to recognize that family members may not be the best legacy for your business often causes issues for many businesses. Hire the best people to do the job. Blood is forever, but resumes speak louder than bloodlines.
6. If you could give a new entrepreneur advice, what would it be?
My advice to entrepreneurs is to hire a good accountant and learn everything you can from them. Watch the numbers and budget on a daily basis.
7. Social Media. Yay or Nay?
The value in social media varies by industry and company. There is no black and white answer to the value of social media.
For Banner Mattress, we are effective with engaging customers face-to-face. That allows us to show them the entirety of the value in our products. That being said, social media helps us with brand awareness, but we succeed dealing one-on-one with customers.
8. How do you market your products?
Banner Mattress continues to sell directly to the consumer from our factory to your family, and hopes to grow its business nationwide.
9. Is your business a service or a product? If you are a product, how do you handle production?
My ideas come from all over. I lean heavily on our trade associations and raw material supply partners.
Banner Mattress is a member of manufacturing trade organizations made up of an international group of suppliers and manufacturers in the mattress industry. Everyone from steel suppliers to fabric designers is part of the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA).
As a mattress manufacturer, we often see product innovations at trade shows and through suppler relationships before they are integrated into national brand products at retail. Innovations and designs for national brands is a big project. Issues like supply chain challenges and investment costs necessary for SKU product line changes is monumental. Banner can scale easily at our local brand size.
Our unique manufacturing ability and skill lets us bring technologies to the public often quicker and more easily as a factory direct to the consumer than national brands. Being of strategic size and expertise, Banner Mattress is nimble and able to react quickly. We can incorporate technologies and innovations into our products and designs ahead of the curve.
10. What is unique about your business?
The most exciting trend in our mattress company today its the re-design and innovations being introduction with the new Lifestyle-Adjustable Power Bases.
If you haven’t heard about the revolution starting in the Lifestyle Adjustable Power Base products, you are missing a wonderful product innovation in the science of sleep products. As we like to say, “it’s not your grandmother’s bed.”
The safety and regulatory changes, product advances and comfort design innovations in the mattress industry have opened a whole new opportunity for the advent of the new Lifestyle-Adjustable Power Base revolution. These products have adapted to how folks live and work. Nowadays, people sleep with their laptop or have them just close by recharging. We often use them in bed to read, work, watch movies and programs to relax or learn. Over 60% of master bedrooms have a TV.
The introduction of the newly designed Lifestyle-Adjustable Power Bases and new mattress designs gives the user the luxury of adjusting to incorporate these master bedroom activity lifestyle changes. Lifestyle-Adjustable Power Bases provide the user with personalized comfort and enhanced ergonomic performance. They adapt to our bodies as well as how we live and work in our bedrooms today. It is not your grandmother’s geriatric bed. It is the bed of the future.
11. Sell me your product/service.
How about a Smart Bed that can monitor your resting heart rate and track your sleep hours and motions while you sleep? It can tell you not only how much you slept but how well you slept, too, with the built-in data and tracking. That should help you sleep at night, right?
Today, beds can come with built in sound systems, electric outlets and computer ports to recharge our electronics as well as our bodies. Some come with under lighting to set the mood or activated via motion sensors to help light your way to the bathroom or baby’s room in the middle of the night. Lifestyle-Adjustable Power Bases can even rock you to sleep, give you a massage, or wake you up in the morning with a gentle rocking motion. Yes, please!
12. How can people get in touch with you? What’s your website/Contact information?
- Phone: 909-835-4200
- Website: www.BannerMattressOnline.com
- Email: lisas@bannermattress.net