Clint Engel
More than 600 take part in West Coast tournament
COTO DE CAZA, Calif. — Industry members and guests turned out in
record numbers her to play a little golf, pay tribute to Sit ’n Sleep leaders Nelson Bercier and Larry Miller and raise a record sum for the City of Hope in the process.
More than 600 people took part in the 15th annual West Coast Golf & Tennis Tournament, dinner and auction sponsored by the City of Hope’s National Home Furnishings Industry Chapter.
The event raised more than $1 million for the City of Hope’s Cancer Center, a record for the event, which in the previous 14 years had raised a total of just under $3 million.
Bercier, Sit ’n Sleep senior vice president, and Miller, president and CEO, were honored with the City of Hope’s Lifetime Achievement award.
Larry Miller and his father, the late Phil Miller, founded Sit ’n Sleep in 1978 in Culver City, Calif. With help from a move to radio and television advertising — including spots on the Howard Stern show — what had been a small struggling unit grew to become in 1995 the highest-volume mattress store in the nation, according to the company.
Now based in Gardena, Calif., Sit ’n Sleep was ranked No. 75 on Furniture/Today’s latest survey of Top 100 U.S. furniture stores with 2012 sales of $94 million at 15 stores.
After dinner, the City of Hope audience heard from the family of Marshall Cotta, who at 13 months of age was diagnosed with a rare and brutal form of brain cancer. He was treaded successfully by the cancer center. Now 8, Marshall was greeted by a standing ovation.
An after-dinner auction drew bids on everything from a Hawaiian getaway to Los Angeles Lakers tickets. Michael Amini, CEO of importer AICO, made the highest bid at $10,000 for a lunch with Larry Miller. That was on top of the $6 million that Amini recently donated toward the City of Hope’s planned Transfusion Medicine Center.
At next year’s event, the Lifetime Achievement award will go to GuildCraft of California partners Larry Quilling, Sid Blitz, Art Fink, and Bob Papazian.
