When David Martin’s mother, Dot, lost her arm in an horrific car accident when he was 4, little did he know how much this would impact his life some 25 years later.
 
Bed-making company, Ezi-make, just celebrated a momentous business milestone with the sale of its 10 000th set this week.  Started by David Martin, who also owns a bedding business, Ezi-make straps are an ingenious solution for people who struggle to make their bed due to age, illness or infirmity.
 
Designed in and manufactured in the Byron Bay hinterland, the Ezi-make straps provide the added leverage many people need to help them achieve this everyday task that so many of us take for granted.
 
“Before I had Ezi-makes it was impossible for me to make my bed.  Now it’s easy,” said Dot. As Dot’s son and Ezi-make founder David proudly boasts, “Ezi-makes are so good they will almost make the bed for you!”
 
Like many great inventions, this one was born out of necessity.  “When I was six my entire family was in a car accident.  We were all fine, but Mum’s arm was amputated just below her elbow.  Never one to embrace victimhood, Mum learned to do almost everything she could do with two hands with only one.  However, making the bed had always eluded her, “ David said.
 
Many years later when David bought the Instyle bed shop, he was amazed at just how many older people would come in and select a bed not on the basis of how comfortable it was, but on their ability to be able to make it.
 
“The average double bed mattress can weigh up to 45 kg.  A queen or king size can be much more,” David said.  “For many people the weight of even a single bed was too difficult to manager, let alone a double, queen or king size.  However, many people can’t opt for a more lightweight bed either because it just doesn’t offer them enough support.”
 
So, David soon set about designing a solution not only for his customers, but also for his Mum as well.  After much trial and error, the Ezi-make was born.
 
Ezi-make is a series of straps which are ergonomically designed to give you the additional leverage you need to lift even the heaviest of beds, without breaking your back in the process.  Taking less than two minutes to install, suitable for any size mattress and compliant with all the latest WHS guidelines, the Ezi-make has also proven to be popular in aged-care facilities, hospitals and even hotels and motels.
 
Studies show that making your bed everyday gives you an increased sense of purpose and productivity.  It gives you a greater sense of well-being, better decision making for the rest of the day and even means that you are more likely to stick to a budget[1].
 
However, it isn’t just older Australians who have embraced a latex mattress.  It is estimated that up to 90% of people will suffer from low back pain in their lives[2].  For these people, Ezi-make has it made in terms of affordability, reliability, ease and comfort.
 
While David’s Mum Dot was definitely thrilled when she first received her Ezi-make, the irony is that while David now makes his Mum make her bed, for many years the opposite was true.  “He was a bugger of a kid when it came to bed-making,” Dot reveals, “I’d yell at him and threaten him with no tv until he made it… and that went on right up until he was 18,” she said.
 
Sold primarily online, David feared that Covid-19 would bring an end to his online sales.. but the opposite was true.
 
“In my bed shop we obviously suffered a loss of business due to lockdowns and the like, however, the complete opposite happened with the Ezi-make.  I think because people were isolated from their loved ones, often for extended periods of time, there were searching for other ways that they could help them and show them how much they were loved… and Ezi-make was the perfect fit,” he said.
 
So, what is the Ezi-make future?  “It’s been an extremely rewarding process… to be able to help people and to know that you have made a difference to people’s lives,” David said.  “It may seem like a small thing to some people, but for people who are ability-challenged it’s the little things that mean a lot.  I’m currently working on some other ability aids, but at the moment I’m concentrating on changing people’s lives one bed at a time.”