Having spent most of my adult life living in Cayman I learned to speak in the measurements of the good ol’ US of A. Gosh, there are so many, from the use of the 12-hour clock to writing dates in a different order, to not using the metric system. Well, an oddity in the UK is that the somewhat archaic world of mattresses (where manufacturers don’t really sell online and instead make special label products for the large retailers) still has some confusion on sizes even though the UK went to the metric system some 50 years ago. Most UK mattresses are therefore still in sizes (for Standard, Queen, King) that date back to pre-metric times.
Let me then go back to early 2021 when I had moved house and needed new mattresses and bed frames for my house. As my testimonial above notes, I first found Nodax as I already had a metric (160cm) mattress from, yes indeed, one of the new online mattress companies, so needed a new bed frame that was metric. Nodax had one and I loved it. Soon after I decided to buy a “Double” bed from them for my spare room and, naturally, then went to a mattress shop to buy a double mattress.
However, when the mattress arrived it did not fit in the bed frame. It turned out that though the standard size for a double mattress in the industry is now a metric one (135cm wide), this particular major retailer still used the old “imperial” measure and so their mattress was too wide. After chasing down that mattress company for customer service for over a week without success and with a mattress that did not fit the bed, I had a bright idea. I could contact Nodax (who are super responsive, always!) and ask them to send me two new parts (the headboard and footboard) for the next size up (width) of the bed, then the mattress would fit in there (with a few cm to spare). Nodax felt bad for the way the mattress company had treated me so, even though none of that was their responsibility, they insisted on sending me the two new parts free of charge. What service!
After that call, a few hours later I had another bright idea. I realised that I would be left with two unusable bed parts, so I contacted Nodax again and asked if I could just get all the parts to have two bedframes, of course, and as before, offering to pay them for this. That way I could avoid waste and sell on one of the bedframes. To my surprise, they elected to send me a whole new bedframe free of charge as they wanted me to finish the whole bed and mattress buying experience feeling good about it. Again, what service! I then committed to selling the spare frame on eBay with all proceeds going to charity, which I then did, so a feel-good story all around.
Now, after all of that was resolved around a year ago, I asked Magda at Nodax if I could bring them on my podcast to tell their story as a family-owned and growing business. Magda was both really busy and a little shy, but just this week she emailed me to both share that they had a new landing page (with my testimonial) and to send me the story of their journey. I share the Nodax story with you below, and if you are in the market for a beautifully made bed frame from a family business driven by service, visit Nodax.co.uk!
The Nodax Story
Our journey is one of growing enormously, from starting our business in the back of our garage to (now) a large warehouse and thousands of loyal customers! Here at Nodax caring for our customers is our utmost priority, which has made our business the success that it is today.
We started selling our beautiful wooden bed frames in the year 2011 as Magnat Furniture. This was a massive risk as of course it is very common that in the business world not everything started will flourish. However, we took the risk, as what is life without them?!
Our family business, once begun, rose and rose. Starting only with a one-car garage, things were definitely challenging. Taking joy in the happiness of our customers we slowly got bigger and better until the point where we took the decision in 2012 to rent a small warehouse to store more beds for our growing business. We were still a small business and things were tough. How were things tough? Sometimes we felt very much like Sisyphus, the only difference being that our boulder did eventually reach and exceed the top of that hill!
With more interest and desire for our bed frames, we also started selling under bed storage, bedside cabinets, chests of drawers, accessories, and decorative wall panels. More demand meant more delivered to our customers and consequently, we had to find then invest in a bigger warehouse. These searches are always time-consuming, but it was worth it. We found a beautiful large warehouse with friendly landlords in the historic town of Thaxted in Essex, which is where we are currently situated.
We are so grateful for having such dedicated staff who live and breathe their customers’ satisfaction.