Entertainer’s Dream - enjoying the view from Miller’s open kitchen / family room space.
Larry Miller The Man Behind a Good Night’s Sleep
by Pamela Corante-Hansen
What you may not know is that Miller is crazy in love with the South Bay and is putting the finishing touches on a custom home overlooking the ocean in south Redondo Beach. South Bay Digs spent a weekday morning with a well-rested Miller at his company’s Gardena headquarters, where snoozing on the job is not an option, but laughter is mandatory. SOUTH BAY DIGS: How did you sleep last night? LARRY MILLER: Slept like a baby. What made you decide to build your new home in Redondo Beach? I can’t imagine not living in South Bay. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world, especially Redondo Beach. From my house, it’s a block to the bank, and a block to 10 good restaurants. I used to live in Manhattan Beach, but it gets so congested there. I love to entertain and I have basketball parties and Halloween parties. I want people to be able to come to my house and find a place to park.
24 SouthBayDigs.com | 02.18.2011
What is it that you most enjoy about your work? The people. I love my people. I get here at 6:30 in the morning and it’s like a family atmosphere. We’re a big business that hasn’t lost sight of humanity and the individual. You spend more time with your coworkers than you do with your family, your wife, your kids. We work hard, we service the customer, we have fun and we laugh. Speaking of laughter, Sit ‘n Sleep’s radio ads have gained a level of notoriety, but I understand that your new advertising strategy is more informational than humorous. Why the shift? What our ads have done so far is let people know we’re big, we’ve got a sense of humor and we give great service. What they don’t know is that we use a consultative approach in finding out what their specific sleep issues are. [In our stores] we have the Body Diagnostic Machine, a computerized system with sensors on the bed. We get information from the consumer — whether they sleep alone, their relative age, where their pain is — and enter it into the system via touch screen. Different beds are recommended based on their input. Our aim is to help them get a deep, restorative sleep. Most of our population is sleep-deprived.
Photography by Paul Jonason
Unless you’ve spent the last several years under a rock, you’re probably all too familiar with the Sit ‘n Sleep radio commercials featuring Larry Miller, the company’s president and CEO, and the fictional accountant who bemoans Miller’s radical pricing strategy with a cringe-inducing whine, which we’ll spare you here. Love them or hate them, the ads have played a key role in branding Sit ‘n Sleep as a leading mattress retailer in Southern California.
When did you launch the technology? Three years ago, and we’ve been improving it. We’ve put millions of dollars into research. It’s also reduced exchanges. It used to be 1 in 13 comfort exchanges, now it’s down to 1 in 30. Nobody wants to get