Living rooms converted into gyms or bedrooms into offices. In the last year, the ingenuity has been sharpened to transform habitual rooms of the house and give different uses in which to carry out different activities. What if one of the solutions to optimize space is to raise the bed to the ceiling? This is how Tu Lecho al Techo was born, the first company to market raise-to-the-ceiling beds in Spain with the aim of offering comprehensive solutions that resolve space issues in all types of homes and which expects to exceed one million euros in turnover for next year .
This Spanish startup emerged in full confinement, when its founders, the lawyer Cristina Hernández Lería and the entrepreneur Sébastien Chartier stumbled upon the solution of the beds that go up to the ceiling when they tried to convert a bedroom into a teleworking area. Not finding any supplier in Spain, they decided to contact four of the main European manufacturers.
Less than a year later, the company has the exclusive distribution of the four market leaders, with whose designers it develops customized projects. These are the French Espace Loggia, the German luxury firm Liftbed, the Swedish Bedaway and Slovenia-based Voga.
The clients
Your product is aimed at two markets. On the one hand, to individuals, where their clients are not only those who have small flats. “We have many clients with homes of 100 or 200 m2 but who have a room that is only used for guests on rare occasions and want to transform it for another use,” says Sébastien Chartier, co-founder and CEO of Tu Lecho al Techo.
On the other hand, there is the B2B market and since they launched the company commercially, they have aroused the interest of several operators of student residences, coliving, real estate developers focused on the Build to rent segment or tourist flats. “Currently, we have clients such as Mi Casa Inn or Micampus, for example, who are starting to install some beds in Spain in their residences to test the product,” says Chartier, who adds that in the coliving segment “we are talking to several actors who are in the study phase for projects both in Madrid and Barcelona”.
Tu Lecho al Techo entered the market cautiously. “On a particular level, our goals were to sell a hundred beds in this first year and we have already met 30% of this figure. In the B2B part, our idea is to close two or three large projects a year,” says the CEO.
As for saving space, the co-founder indicates that, for example, if it is a 1.5×2 meter bed, in addition to the 3 m2 it occupies, the size is actually doubled, almost 6 m2 are gained, since there is no You only have to take into account the surface of the bed, but the space to access it. With this system, as Chartier explains, “the great advantage is that everything that is below you can leave it during the day, that is, you can have a work table or a sofa and at night lower the bed that is on top, so the usefulness of the room is doubled. The bed rests on the floor or not, the user decides to what height it goes down. This is the big difference compared to other systems such as the folding bed”.
From 2,600 euros
In most of the solutions, the price ranges between 2,600 and 4,900 euros, “depending on the options that you want to put on the bed,” says Chartier, “some can have a small folding office, a dining table, a sofa under etc.”, he adds.
In terms of operation, the vast majority of models are manual, in the case of a simple counterweight system that makes raising or lowering the bed effortless. Of course, there are also electric models that are powered by a small motor.
a french invention
This system has been operating for more than 25 years in France, where it was invented, to which Germany, the Nordic countries or England have joined, in addition to being exported to places where the square meter has a very high price, such as Singapore.
In France, more than 3,000 beds are being sold each year, so they have a park of between 60,000 and 80,000 installed beds. In fact, the French partner of Tu Lecho al Techo, Espace Loggia, “has been leading in this segment for more than 20 years, having installed thousands of elevating beds in dozens of student residences in France, Switzerland, England or Canada”, highlights Chartier .
Although it is not known if these figures will reach Spain, the co-founder highlights that in our country “this trend regarding space and how to optimize it is a booming market with a lot of growth”.
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