Heritage Sleep Concepts booming in big new plant
The family revives the old Spears Mattress Co. under a 21st century banner.
Leaders at Heritage Sleep Concepts are not sleeping on their laurels after making the move to a new production center in Armuchee.
The bedding manufacturer purchased the former Capitoline Products building adjacent to Richard B. Russell Regional Airport last year, making a $2.4 million investment in the future of the company.
The company started more than 90 years ago in Polk County as Sanford Mattress Co. It morphed into Spears Mattress Co. and moved to Rome. At one point, the company was the largest independent mattress maker in the Southeast, producing as many as 1,700 mattresses a day as Spears Mattress.
Spears operated from the early 1970s through 2008, when it was sold to an Ohio-based private equity group.
“They bought it and we ran it for them until 2011,” said Frankie Beck, chief operating officer and son-inlaw to Terry Spears.
Beck and Spears were let go with the sales manager in 2011. Three years later the company filed for bankruptcy.
About that time, a noncompete clause in the sales contract went away and Beck was able to find property on Excelsior Street, where Heritage Sleep Concepts was born.
Terry and Glenda Spears met with other industry executives in 2015 to develop Heritage Sleep Concepts, which also manufactures the Eastman House and Eclipse brands of bedding.
Eastman House was founded in Burlington, Iowa, in 1866 and grew from a regional manufacturer and distributor into a nationally recognized company. It was acquired 13 years ago by Mattress Development Corp., the licensing and marketing arm of Eclipse and other brands. Eclipse Sleep Products was founded in 1905 and has 21 plants around the world.
When the company revealed plans to acquire the 120,000-square-foot Capitoline Products facility, COO Frankie Beck said equipment would be moved in phases. The idea was to create as little disruption as possible to the manufacturing process and capacity to ship the product.
At that time Beck said he had added another 30 or so employees to the workforce and anticipated bringing on more.
“A lot of the people that had built relationships with Terry over the years figured out we were back in business so they came back on board with us,” Beck said.
In the last year or so, the company has picked up deals with Macy’s, The Dump and Farmer’s Furniture.
“This has been a phenomenal year that we have had,” Beck said. “I would say we’re at about 60 employees now.”
The old Capitoline Products building is more than double the size of the property on Excelsior Street and has another 10 acres of property, so there is plenty of room for the company to grow.
Beck said the new company set sales records every month in 2019 and their own Heritage Sleep line has really taken off in the last two years.
“The whole process of making a mattress has changed pretty dramatically over the years,” he said. “Separate box springs are pretty much passe. Everything is now included in the mattress, from the springs to the foam.”
The company also shifted its target buyer slightly, from economy customers to the middle and middle-upper end.
“We make a better product now,” Beck said. “There is such a huge demand for a better product because people don’t want go out and buy a bed and replace it in a year.”
Now some of the mattresses are as much as 13 inches thick. Others are as thin as eight inches.
Another big change is that many mattresses now are one-sided, with a thin wooden base on the bottom. Beck said the issue with that is, when a customer wears out that side of the bed they have to go out and buy a new mattress.
Heritage has resurrected the doubled-sided mattresses and he said they’re enjoying considerable success because there is still a strong demand for them.
Beck also said that just about every mattress the company makes can be used in newer adjustable bed frames. A big factor there involves use of 100% natural latex in the foam.
“It is antimicrobial, antifungal and antiallergenic ... Air is able to pass through the foam, which keeps the user from getting all hot and sweaty while laying in bed,” Beck said.
Heritage has also made significant investments in equipment and maintenance. And many of the employees have been with the company for many years.
Beck said a lot of former employees who were put out of a job when the private equity firm folded the old plant in the Celanese community have come back and rejoined the Heritage team.