A panoramic view of the inside of M&N Mattress & Sofa Shop
PARKSVILLE – When it comes to customer service, award winning M&N Mattress & Sofa Shop continues to carry The Torch on Vancouver Island.
Owner Mark Nagra notes the furniture outlet, which celebrated 21 years in business last fall, has captured more Torch Awards for Customer Service than any other Vancouver Island retailer from the Better Business Bureau for every year since 2017, including one for 2020-2021 for all businesses, as well as a Grant Thornton LLP Vancouver Island Business Excellence Award in 2019, and a Parksville Chamber of Commerce Retail Service Award in 2020.
The Nagra family at M&N Mattress & Sofa Shop: Mark, Neelam and Natasha
“We are honoured by these awards, and it is very gratifying to see the number of our positive reviews on Google, BBB and Facebook continue to climb, averaging 4.9 stars,” Nagra says. “Our team offers customers the best service you can provide, and I don’t know how you can fail if you do that. If you give your customers confidence, they will trust you.”
Customer service has been the top priority since he started in the business 35 years ago, when after only three months in the business, he was offered a management position for a new store.
“When I started in the business, I said to the owner ‘give me a week or 10 days and let me study the warranties and how products are made, and let me take the information home and memorize it’,” he recalls.
That became the foundation of how Nagra and his wife Neelam train their staff – product knowledge expertise.
“We train our team on product knowledge so they can answer questions with confidence,” he notes.
It was also in his earlier days that he began focusing on Canadian-made furniture and mattresses, something that is a strength of M&N Mattress and Sofa.
Neelam, Mark and Natasha Nagra celebrate a recent BBB Torch Award win for M&N
“All of our solid wood cabinet beds and bedroom furniture are made in B.C., and 90% of our sofas, love seats and chairs are made in Canada by Palliser and other companies,” he notes. “We carry local products as much as possible. It doesn’t make sense to send money so far away from your community.
“If there’s warranty work, speedy service is the most important. Who wants to wait around months for parts?,” he asks. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re an authorized Ergo-Motion dealer, as they’ve authorized us to service our customers, and we have enough parts in stock for adjustable beds for about 10 years.”
Another prime product offered by M&N is Ironman Pure Energy mattresses and cabinet beds, which are alternatives to wall beds. Also, the success of the NewGen mattress led Nagra to open WR Mattress Gallery in South Surrey, and three years ago, the Sofa Gallery in Parksville.
It was upon his father’s urging that Nagra opened M&N in Parksville in the first place, as he had worked so hard to establish the family on the Island after arriving from India in 1971.
