Jason Clary hasn’t met many interior designers who long to design bunk rooms.
“I had a designer from Texas who reached out to me (recently) and her exact words were, ‘I am so glad that you guys were referred to me because if I have to draw another bunk room, I’m going to pull my hair out,’” Clary, president and CEO of ICON Bunks, recalls her saying.
Bunk rooms may not be the sexiest spaces, but they are valuable. For owners of resorts, hotels and vacation rental homes, bunk rooms increase the number of guests a space can accommodate, driving up revenue. For owners of private homes, they allow more family and friends to gather, expanding opportunities to spend time together and make memories.
ICON Bunks strives to elevate its category, offering luxury, customizable bunk beds hand crafted in Bozeman, Montana.
“We want to turn ordinary spaces into beautiful places where people can lay their head,” Clary says.
For designers, ICON Bunks provides high-end bunk beds without the price tag, timeline or hassle of designing a fully custom-built bunk room for each client.
Clary happens to know something about those bespoke spaces. His companion company, RN Design, has been constructing custom-built bunk rooms for more than 20 years, primarily in the Mountain West. Because such projects are complicated and time consuming, price tags for those projects often start at about $50,000.
“You can go online and Google ‘bunk beds’ and a black hole opens up,” Clary says. “It’s just all these cookie-cutter-type bunk beds from $300 to $3,000 and then, from that, there’s nothing until you get to a company like RN Design, where you get a custom bunk room for $60,000, $70,000,” Clary says.
ICON Bunks fills that gap and has helped expand Clary’s reach into the Upper Midwest, New England, the Southeast, the Southwest, the West Coast and the Caribbean.
ICON Bunks are made from solid woods, including ash and white oak, using hidden joinery — no veneers or exposed screws, the company notes. Made to order, they ship in about 10 weeks, most in a single crate containing components that can be assembled in about two days. The beds are available in a variety of wood finishes but can also be painted in any Benjamin Moore or Sherwin-Williams paint color. Upgrades include all-wood ladders and a stair cabinet with drawers.
The company offers three main product lines.
- ICON Standard: This is the traditional bunk bed with wood rails and a metal ladder, available in three finishes.
- ICON Elevated: This line includes classic, lofted and stackable bunk beds with multiple customizations, finishes and colors.
- ICON Luxe: These are canopy-style bunk beds in a wide range of customizations and upgrades, including upholstered panels.
And the company offers three configurations:
· A “classic” configuration is two same-size beds in the same orientation or, as Clary says, “What people immediately picture when they think of a bunk bed.”
· In a “loft” configuration, the length of upper bed is parallel to the wall and the lower bed is opposed, extending from the wall as a traditional bed would.
· A “stackable” configuration features beds of different sizes oriented in the same direction. The company’s most popular configuration is a stackable with a twin XL on top and a queen-size bed underneath, Clary says.
Prices start at about $7,049 for a classic configuration in white oak. A canopied Luxe model starts at about $12,099. All ICON Bunks exceed federal and ASTM International safety standards, the company says.
With its customizable finishes, bed sizes, bunk configurations and ladder placement, the company estimates it offers some 10,000 options.
“An ICON can go coastal, it can go mountain modern, it can go rustic, it can go open and airy and feel very contemporary,” Clary says.
Last fall, ICON Bunks added mattresses, teaming up with a producer in California to offer its customers U.S.-produced mattresses designed to fit perfectly in the company’s bunk beds, simplifying purchases for designers and others.
From firefighting to furniture
Clary was once a wildland firefighter who worked in construction to put himself through the fire academy. After a particularly brutal fire season, he took a job at a cabinet shop and later worked at a mill shop. He eventually started building his own furniture out of reclaimed barnwood and was hired by a resort owner to furnish three cabins. After Clary started his first company, Rusty Nail Design, specializing in barnwood furniture, a designer approached him to build a bunk room. He felt up to the challenge and later transitioned Rusty Nail Design to RN Design, specializing in custom bunk rooms.
“I’d estimate we’ve done probably over 1,000 custom-built bunk rooms in this area alone to date,” he says.
ICON Bunks was born when a resort chain approached Clary’s RN Design company about designing a freestanding bunk bed that would accommodate specific mattresses the chain was already contracted to buy. “I said, ‘Absolutely, we’ll design a freestanding bunk bed that will do that and, basically, the prototype for ICON was created,” Clary says. “We thought, ‘If we change this and that, we could make them reproducible and create a whole line of furniture on its own.”
“I don’t know of any other company that’s been specifically doing bunk rooms as long as we have, so I feel that really adds to our clout,” Clary adds. “There’s no better way for us to stand behind ICON than to say, ‘We have 20 years of blood, sweat, tears and ingenuity (behind it).’”
Clary says his family had challenges when he was a child and there was a time when he slept on the floor. That memory stuck with him and led him to start a philanthropic effort called Bed for a Bed. For every bunk ICON sells, the company donates a bed to an organization serving those in need.
“I was inspired by Bomba socks and TOMS shoes and the idea of a ‘pair for a pair,’” Clary says. “… I wrestled with the idea of how we could take that to the next level and match that mission of generosity in the furniture world.” Clary and his team designed an easily shippable twin-size bed with interlocking components, including headboard, that is simple for a person to put together without tools. Recipients of the beds have included Beds for Kids in Charlotte, North Carolina; and Better Together in Tampa, Florida. The company’s most recent large donation went to victims of last year’s wildfires in California.
When Clary decided to create the Bed for a Bed program, several employees donated their time and other resources to build the beds.
“I say this with all humility, but I have an amazing team,” Clary says. “There have been numerous times that I’ve had to pinch myself and I think, ‘How in the world did I get this lucky that I have these incredibly creative, thoughtful, giving human beings work with me?’”
