“There’s only one Mary’s Futons and that’s because there’s only one … Mary!”
If you were around in the 1990s and even up until two years ago, you may have heard that on local television.
You may also remember Mary Alice Hughes, the enthusiastic futon fan and storeowner, dressed in one of her 300 Hawaiian shirts either in her showroom or perched on its rooftop, who, along with her two Pomeranians, Tiny and Oliver, were featured in the quirky commercials.
Hughes, a longtime resident of Santa Venetia and the owner of Mary’s Futons for almost four decades, says she’ll close the store at summer’s end, or whenever the last of its inventory is sold.
“I have a lot of one-of-a-kind items and closeouts that I have to to sell first,” she says. “In the meantime, I am keeping my best sellers on the floor. A lot of things have been back ordered for a long time. Due to COVD it’s been really hard to keep stock.”
Initially, she started sewing futons for someone else, but in 1983, she started Mary’s Futons and made them herself in her garage.
Before that, she says that she didn’t even know what a futon was, but from the first cut of the cloth until the last tuft was all done by hand. “I could hand make a futon in 45 minutes,” she says.
Three years later, she opened her retail store.
“Futons were very versatile, a couch/bed that are easy to take apart and transport” she says. But futons eventually gave way to pull-out sleepers and so she gradually added sofa sleepers, wall beds, cabinet beds, tatami beds, and dressers and nightstands.
That’s when Mary’s Futons morphed into Mary’s Hide and Sleep: Small Space Sleeping Solutions.
By that time, her store at 4100 Redwood Highway in San Rafael was fairly well known even outside Marin, thanks to her lighthearted TV spots, and the KFTY Channel 50 TV salesman who made a surprise visit to her showroom in the late 1980s.
“He walked right up to me and pointed at me and he said, “You, you should be on TV,’” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Wow, someone thinks I should be on TV. Little did I know that was his opening sales pitch, but I was so complimented. I asked him much it cost.”
He quoted her a figure of $1,000 to write the spot, provide the voiceover and shoot it.
She countered by asking him how much it would cost if she wrote and directed her own commercial.
And, that, she quips, “is how a star is born. I have been running commercials ever since.”
Believing that TV commercials and cable gave her the most bang for her advertising dollar, she says she bought air time throughout the Bay Area at a good price.
“My commercial was played on the news right before the OJ (Simpson) trial ended, and also right before Lance Armstrong crossed the finish line,” she says. “That gave me a lot of exposure. Another thing that got me great publicity was when the Yellow Pages left me out.
“Pacific Bell was famous for saying that “if it’s not in here (the Yellow Pages), it doesn’t exist”.
Naturally, she made an TV spot out of it, coating a Yellow Pages with bacon grease, tossing it on the floor and letting her two tiny dogs rip it to shreds. “I got a ton of press,” she says.
Because of those ads, people throughout the Bay Area found their way to Mary’s Futons.
“My message was simple: I have a good product, I stand behind it, I deliver it. And, I am funny,” she says.
She also was well known for hosting comedy shows at her store, often featuring gay comedians, and where many audience members returned to buy the futon they sat on during the show.
Although she’s survived four recessions during her 39 years in business, the impacts from the advent of Amazon and COVID, and the attendant inflationary costs of the current supply chain, have cut short her plans to make it to her 40th anniversary.
“I’ve always enjoyed my work,” she says. “I like to stay busy so I’m not sure what I’m going do when I retire.”
She knows she she’ll miss her customers. And many may miss her.
“I had one customer bring in her receipt from 20 years prior showing that she had bought her baby son a futon at my store and now she was back to buy one for him to send with him to college.”
Show off
If you have a beautiful or interesting Marin garden or a newly designed Marin home, I’d love to know about it.
Please send an email describing either one (or both), what you love most about it, and a photograph or two. I will post the very best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.
PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.
