The team at Original Mattress Factory on Virginia Beach Blvd can craft about 80 mattresses a day. And it all happens in the cavernous assembly floor behind the showroom.
“This whole shopping center used to be the Great American Outlet Mall years ago,” said Eric Van Essendelft, the company’s vice president.
The far back of the factory wouldn’t be out of place in the fairytale “The Princess and The Pea,” with stacks of foam stretching a few stories high towards the ceiling. Shelves of materials like cotton and jute line the walls. Box springs and rolls of quilted toppers are stored towards the front.
“All of those are combined together to give you whatever feel we're trying to get,” said Van Essendelft, who's been making mattresses for 40 years.
The company started in Columbus, Ohio in 1993 and has six stores in Hampton Roads. Van Essendelft was part of the team that opened the Virginia Beach factory in 2001 — and he still remembers the first ever sale.
“A Regency luxury firm full size set and a frame.”
The company has since changed its products and upgraded the materials they use, said Clinton Johnson, the company’s sales and marketing partner in Virginia Beach. But the process is roughly the same.
“We go through (the customer’s) specifications of what they're looking for, review the pricing, the materials, all of that good stuff,” Johnson said, noting the company often gets orders for custom mattresses for antique beds, RVs and boats.
Once the order is in, assembly begins, starting with the box spring. What goes in next depends on how firm or soft the customer wants the mattress.
The quilted topper is sewn shut and then attached to the side fabric panels with red thread, which acts as a flag during the inspection process, Van Essendelft said.
“When you're seaming things together, and you miss it, you see red,” he said. “Then you know you made a mistake.”
Once all the ingredients are sandwiched together, they need to be secured. Zacchaeus Green and Justin Bogel worked together to staple all the layers to the box spring. Then, they heaved the mattress onto the next table, where Erik Quarry used a tape edge machine to sew the border.
At this point, it’s ready for inspection.
If inspectors can see red thread, the mattress is taken apart, put back together and re-inspected, Johnson said.
The Virginia Beach location has six employees, Van Essendelft said. Green and Quarry have each worked at the Original Mattress Factory for more than two decades; Bogel just started last fall.
It takes about three days from the time an order is placed to a finished mattress, Johnson said.
Johnson pointed to an oddly shaped mattress propped against a nearby shelf. Made for a boat, it was rounded in some places and angular in others.
“That's a customized mattress that pretty much nobody else around here would even think about doing,” he said.
Van Essendelft said they made an identical mattress for the same boat owner about 20 years ago.
