Simon Mumford
11 February 2023, 6:51 PM
We spend a third of our life in bed with many people chasing the mattress that will give them the best night's sleep they have ever had. Dave Martin from Instyle Sleepcentre is a pioneer in mattress design changing industry-accepted practices to find personal solutions that lead to a change in manufacturing and the materials used.
Instyle has been out of their traditional home in Woodlark Street since the February 28 megaflood and is looking to reopen in March or April depending on the rebuild. The Lismore App had a chat with Dave Martin to talk about bedding and his life.
I was born in Bathurst. Dad was a Mulum boy, his young years were spent there but his family is well-established in Ballina. Mum was a South Lismore girl, she grew up in North Lismore until '54 then it was Union Street after that just up from the Catholic Church.
She went to Our Lady Help of Christians which is where our girls went to school.
Dad was in banking so they moved to Bathurst where I spent the first three years of my life. My two older brothers were born in Bathurst too.
After Bathurst, we moved to Tamworth where we owned a pub and then moved back to Lismore three years later. Back in those days, if you were in banking it was either news agencies or pubs.
It was the start of country music, I remember country music was kicking off back in those days. It was obviously a fair bit smaller than it is now. I swore I would never listen to country music again after those three years but we do as a family.
When we got back to Lismore, dad tried a couple of other businesses like vending machines and Lismore Sport and Toyworld which was in Woodlark Street and then he bought the bed shop which I've been involved in since he bought it.
(Instyle Sleepcentre has been in Woodlark Street since 1977)
I went to St Carthages and Trinity when we moved back to Lismore. I played cricket for Marist Brothers as a wicketkeeper/batsman, played a bit of squash and then took up golf in my mid-20s. There are those that say you take up golf so you can drink and play sport at the same time but I would neither agree nor deny those claims.
When I graduated I worked a few different jobs working for other people while still working part-time for dad. I worked in bearing services, that was my first job right out of school. I had a background in automotive and industrial work so I applied and got the job, it was just a job at the time.
I love fiddling with cars back then, rebuilding them, and anything mechanical or related to that industry I enjoyed.
I grew up racing go-karts, rebuilding engines, that sort of thing. Working with my brother. There are just not too many six-foot-two Formula One drivers.
My first car was a Ford Escort, it was one that I could afford to get. It was a case where I had to rebuild it and fix it up to make it reliable and improve it. I was never into suping up cars, I just didn't want it to break down plus I didn't want to waste the money.
I worked in real estate in Byron Bay too for about three months.
Instyle was a family business so I was asked to work in the shop regularly but I also wanted to work with dad. I had worked in it, gone away doing other things then would come back to it.
I got really serious in the business when I bought into Instyle in 2000 so dad could retire.
(Working out of their shed, Dave and Sharon can't wait to get back into their Woodlark Street shop)
By that stage, I'd already been fiddling and doing some design work with mattresses with manufacturers because of injuries from water skiing. So that probably started in the mid-90s.
I had been water skiing since I was six. Dad had a little boat we would use, in fact, I've still got the little wetsuit I used to use in the cupboard at home.
It came about because I had dislocated each shoulder about 80 times through learning to do backward barefoot water skiing when I was about eighteen. That is just part and parcel of what happens unless you learn when you're a young teenager.
I was very broad and very fit, big across the shoulders from all of the water skiing I was doing and it was difficult to get a mattress to suit me. Traditionally, mattresses are soft for you to sink into. The problem I was having was that I would sink into the mattress and it would still be hard on the shoulders and when you've got joints with a lot of instability it was just excruciating pain.
Getting the bed to mould around you is probably the simplest way to explain what I was trying to do so I could get a good night's sleep with no pain.
I started working with manufacturers and making the mattress just for myself and that turned into a range and it sort of evolved from there in terms of doing more and more and more. I started originally doing stuff for myself and we've evolved it into creating ranges with the basic philosophy of the bed moulding around you rather than you sinking into it.
Originally these types of mattresses were only sold in my store but then by the early 2000s it was starting to be sold elsewhere as well.
It was never about having my name on the mattress, it was purely and fundamentally about trying to get a good night's sleep without pain. We did have the Instyle name on some mattresses while others had the manufacturer's name.
This ended up being the start of what is the mainstay of the business. The mattresses that we produce are quite uniquely different to everything else that is produced out there. People like the longevity. We have less warranty issues than anything else in the marketplace and the people we help speak for themselves.
That is what it was all about, trying to help people get a better night's sleep.
(Dave at a bedding expo displaying his Ezi Make invention)
I've been in about 30 floods in my lifetime in various businesses. There comes a point where you just don't even try and keep track of how many floods you've been in. It's just another flood.
We didn't lose a lot last year, not when you compare it to what other businesses lost. We were lucky, some lost everything and had to throw it on the street so we lost minimal.
We are aiming to be back in our store again in March or April, at least that's what the builder has told us but they never tell you the truth.
(A stark reminder as to how much water was in the CBD in March 2022)
After 14 months out of our shop, it has had an impact on the business. It's been hard but no harder than many others have suffered. The focus before COVID was trying to move on-line which has helped, it's kind of kept things going whilst we've been dealing with the flood.
The difficulty is that people still want to touch and feel a bed. I can explain it but until you actually lay on it it's hard for people to really understand.
It's one of the challenges we're going to face, I still have my ideas of what we're going to change with the site but that requires time and input. We don't do a typical soft, medium and firm mattress. So, you might say I want a firm bed but because we are getting the bed to mould around you and we're all vastly different shapes, sizes and weights so beds tend to feel a bit different. So, what is typically soft is not always soft for everybody. We're producing beds, deliberately, so that some people lie on it and say that feels quite soft while others will say oh no, that feels medium/firm.
Literally, the one bed will feel quite different to two different people. That in itself becomes a bit of a challenge to try and explain that via the internet medium. So, that's another reason we do want to try and get the shop back up and going as soon as we can.
The biggest change in bedding over the years is probably the materials we are now using. We are using soy-based foams in our mattresses so they are not a petro-chemical based foam so you don't get heat retention. We are using materials on the surface of the mattress that are made of eucalypt fibres. We were the first people in this country to try that and now it is more widely used. We are introducing fabrics and ideas and methods that even the big multinationals have never thought of or used. We use materials with an organic-based approach so that's been a big change for us and makes us incredibly unique.
What drove that organic idea was my best mate's mother had really acute chemical intolerances. I saw the effects that it had on her first-hand, it wasn't a psychosomatic thing. We produced a mattress to help her out so her body can detox. It was completely organic based, even the fabrics, just to get away from any baseline association with any chemicals and that allowed her body to detox. I have seen the difference from before to now in terms of not being overloaded to chemical sensitivity.
What I discovered through that process was the transfer of heat. Take an organic cotton versus a standard cotton, the difference in terms of the ability to move and transfer heat is greatly increased on the organic version. I was doing some testing with a manufacturer and even they were stunned. Even compared to wool there was still an interesting difference in terms of how it helped humidity and heat. The difference people notice is the temperature in bed, how hot people get in bed.
So, we moved to use organic material not because it was trendy but because it helped people out. It does have an environmental benefit as well but that is not why we started going in that direction.
(Sharon and Dave on their wedding day in 2002)
I met my wife, Sharon, through a friend. It was a blind date back in 1999. We were married in 2002 and then three years later our twin daughters Amy and Sarah were born in 2005.
In terms of the girls taking on Instyle to take it to a 3rd Generation, I only want them to do that if that is something they wanted to do and they were passionate about it. I don't want them to feel the urge or the need to have to follow in someone else's footsteps. I want them to follow their own path.
(Amy and Sarah Martin have started the 2023 school year in Year 12 at St John's College Woodlawn)
The reality, there probably won't be. One is looking at architecture and the other one is looking at physio or becoming a personal trainer something sporting-based. I want them to do what they love.