Mattress Firm: Rest assured that you’re getting the best.
March 25, 2023
Mattress Firm has been helping people get a good night’s sleep for more than 90 years.
The story of Mattress Firm
The story of Mattress Firm starts some 92 years ago, in 1931, to be exact. The Mattress Firm company began as a chain of retail mattress stores known as Sleepy’s.
But, let’s go all the way back to the beginning. . .
In the mid-1920s, Louis Acker worked in France where he learned how to hand-tie and make mattresses. Originally from Austria, he left France on the SS Rochambeau, a French transatlantic ocean liner of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. Louis opened his first mattress store in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1931. Sadly, in 1955, he passed away suddenly from a heart attack, leaving the business to his four sons, Harry, Melvyn, Lenny and Jack. Harry and Melvyn took over the Bedding Discount Centre and Lenny and Jack soon came on board.
The business was incorporated in 1957 as Bedding Discount Center and renamed to Sleepy’s in 1977.
In 1986, Sleepy’s relocated its headquarters and distribution center to a 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) building in Port Washington, NY. Throughout the following decade, Sleepy’s acquired Kleinsleep and Mattress Discounters in New York and New Jersey. By 1994, the chain had 75 retail stores and the corporate headquarters and distribution center moved into a 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) building that was expanded in 1995 to 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) in Bethpage, N.Y.
In October 2014 Sleepy’s opened its 1,000th store.
Fast-forward to 2015, acquisition by Mattress Firm
In December 2015, for the tidy sum of $780 million, Sleepy’s was acquired by competitor Mattress Firm. Throughout the following year, Sleepy’s stores were slowly rebranded as Mattress Firm, with the last of them completed by January 1, 2017. Mattress Firm eventually reused Sleepy’s name for their own brand of mattresses.
Mattress Firm employs more than 6,500 passionate Sleep Experts®, each one of which receives 80 hours of training to become qualified to provide the specialized service that Mattress Firm employees are known for.
At Mattress Firm, the common purpose is to change people’s lives through better sleep.
The Mattress Firm’s selection of products includes leading brands such as Beautyrest®, Nectar®, Sealy®, Serta®, Simmons®, Sleepy’s® Stearns & Foster®, Tempur-Pedic®, Tuft & Needle®, tulo®, and Purple®.
Gloria Sauvé
Communications