March 24, 2025 • 31 mins
John Merwin is the CEO of 3Z Brands and founder of Brooklyn Bedding, a leading sleep product manufacturer. His journey in the mattress industry began in 2000 while attending college, where he joined his brother’s liquidation business. Over time, John transitioned to manufacturing, pioneering the bed-in-a-box concept and launching BrooklynBedding.com in 2008. 3Z Brands stands out for its vertically integrated approach, ensuring quality and innovation across its manufacturing process. In 2021, Brooklyn Bedding merged with Helix Sleep, expanding its portfolio with brands like Bear, Nolah, and Leesa. Outside of work, John is an avid golfer and family man.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to CEOs. You should know this is my first
venture down this road of CEOs. You should know my
name is Rich Parry. You can hear me on the
John Gy and Rich show what our guests today I
have spent a lot of time with in the past.
It is John Merwin, the CEO of three Z Brands
and founder of Brooklyn Betting. I am a proud owner
(00:20):
and sleeper on a Brooklyn Betting bed. In fact, Lemmy,
I am on the Sedona yep, which is if I
know this right, because you and I talked about this
before I picked out my bed about what three years ago.
It is some memory foam and then really good springs
in there too, in.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
What couple lairs and micro coils in there.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And that's the one you don't turn over. You flip
it kind of like around the corner, and it makes
a huge difference. When you do, too, you realize that
your sleep gets a little bit better that night. And
I even bought I even bought the the bedframe that
goes up and down, which John, I never thought I
would use. I use it five times a night, use
(01:01):
it all the time. I use it all the time. Yeah,
it's great because you think like, well, I might want
to work on my laptop a little bit, so you
raise it up a little bit, or like well, I
want to watch TV show, but I don't want to
be totally elevated. Or sometimes it just feels good to
kind of half nap.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You get in that zero gravity position. Yeah, your head's up,
your feet are up a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, tell me about that. Like it's great, that's the
whole thing. Yeah, But let's go back to the beginning,
because we're gonna we're gonna talk about Brooklyn Betting and
all the other brands like Helix that you were involved with.
But how does a guy like you graduate and decide
that mattresses or beds are where it's going to.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Be at Yep, yep, So I didn't graduate. We'll start there.
I was, uh, I was going to college trying to
figure out what I wanted to do. I thought I
wanted to be a teacher and a coach, and was
going down that path.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I was kind of coach.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I wrestled in college, okay, football in high school, just
you know, grew up in a real small town in
eastern Montana and and just thought that I wanted to
be a teacher and coach. I you know, idolized my coaches.
My high school coaches had a big influence on it.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I mean they teach how to be a man. Those
coacharis like you really a community, all that being responsible
for things other than yourself, right all that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Ye yep, very small town, eighteen hundred people in our town.
So you know, I looked up to to my teachers
and coaches that I had, so I thought I wanted
to go down that path, and you know, realized that
I wasn't very good in school. I think I was
on my fifth year and had just become a junior,
(02:44):
so impressive. Yeah, it was good, It was, It was
really good. I was in love with my high school sweetheart, Kristen,
who who I married and got engaged to her. And
that was when my brother called and said, hey, you know,
what do you what are you doing? And he was
down here in Arizona and had previously started selling mattresses
(03:06):
and he started selling them. We were liquidators, so he
would buy scratching, dent, overstock, discontinued, whatever he could get
his hands on.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Was that just kind of like a hustle like to
kind of it was?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It was a side hustle for him. He was he
was selling insurance at the time, and to try to
supplement and make a little bit of extra money, he
would go to an auction auction house and it was
here in Phoenix, and he would buy furniture, scratching, dident.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Furniture, mattress so not just mattresses.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Just mattresses. He started with with furniture and mattresses, and
then he would place ads in the Penny Saver and
different things like that and and sell them out of
his garage. And the auctioneer took a liking to him
and said, you know, you should focus on mattresses. I
can get you truckloads of mattresses and I'm gonna date
myself here. People won't remember do you remember Montgomery Wards?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Of course yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So turned out that's where all this product was coming from.
It was comfort exchanges, returns, different things from Montgomery Wards.
And and so he took the took the the auctioneer's
advice and just started to focus on mattresses. And and
he was selling them out of a wonderbread truck and
driving around and this is right.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, how do you do that? Is he selling them
to like swap meets. Is he selling them to people
on the streets?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Just selling them to selling them to people? He would
place ads. You know, there was no Internet back then,
so he would place ads in the Penny Saver, in
the in Arizona Republic and different spots.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
What's the catch on those ads? Like great new mattresses
for a fraction of the price. Like what was his move?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, you know, why pay more?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
You know mattress price? Okay? And then what attracted you
to this? Like so like let's go yep.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So he he's he's selling these beds out of out
of a wonderbread truck. And and he would go through
all of his inventory. Then he'd go back to the
auctioneer and and the auctioneer's like, hey, how are you
selling these beds? And he told them, you know, I'm
driving around playing ads and the Penny Saver. I drive
over to someone's house. I start throwing out beds in
their driveway and they buy it, and then I take off.
(05:08):
And he said, you know you need to He's like,
you need customers coming to you. You know, how many
customers can you hit in a day. He's like, you
know you got to you need a retail store.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
That's smart.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And so he took his advice opened up a retail store.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And that's risky right there though, too, because now your
hustle has turned to now you can't you got to
sell him for a little bit more because you got
to pay rent, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
You got to pay rent. And so he opened up
a store here in Mace, Arizona, and and he was,
you know, six months to nine months into it. And
that's right when I got engaged. And and he called
me up and he's like, what's your plan. I told him,
you know, going to school, trying to trying to finish school.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And within six years.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, and and so he just he just threw it
out there. He's like, hey, you know, I got this
mattress thing going on. After you get married, why don't
you and Kristin move down to Arizona and we'll open
up another store. And you know, you can run a store,
I'll run a story. He's like, you know, I think
we'll get really big. I think we could have four
stores in the Phoenix market.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
That's a pretty good vision for back in the day.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Is yeah, this is nineteen you know. We got married
in ninety nine and a week later, We were in
a U haul and I moved my wife. You know,
she grew up, you know, like I said, we grew
up in a small town in Montana. Moved her down
to Arizona in August. Not the best time to move there.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Oh my gosh, that's insane. If you can move to
Phoenix in August and stay here for that first month,
and I think you're foenician right away, Yeah, you can
pushed it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It was so, you know, we lived in Mesa. We
had a little, tiny, little place in Mesa. And you know,
I hate to tell this story, but you know, we're
five days into our stay in Arizona and she goes
and puts on a pair of workout shorts and there
was a scorpion in her short and she got stung,
and so, oh me, she's just freaking out, and so
(07:00):
we're we're you know, I'm lucky that she stuck it
out and we were able.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, it's a good woman right there.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
So that's what happened. We moved down, We opened up
store number two, and we lived in in the liquidation
world for for a long time. You know, we would
buy from Montgomery Wards. We would We also started reaching
out to the different manufacturers sort of Siley Simmons, and
we would start to buy their comfort exchanges, returns, different
different things.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
So you were still kind of trying to do the discount.
You weren't trying to be a high end retailer at
this point. And I wonder, just as uh, I know,
I'm going to jump forward, but we'll go right back
to this. I wonder how important to the success of
what you guys have been able to achieve is doing
it from the ground up like that, because you understand
(07:50):
every facet of how it gets made, how it gets distributed,
what the value of it is, even like how to
manage people because you've done the heavy lifting for real
a lot of the times.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, where we started and where we are today is
you know, such a huge evolution of you know, just everything.
I mean, we started started selling you know, one hundred
and fifty two hundred dollars mattresses and then you know,
as I said, we started buying from sort of Seley Simmons.
And when we were doing that, I got to go
(08:26):
into their factories and you know, the plant managers they
would show me around and just show me how to
you know, how do you build a mattress. Yeah, and
they would show me how to do that. And it
was in in one of their office, in one of
their factories one day that we were looking at finished
goods and they said, you know, over here in the
corner were some raw materials, some springs and some foam
(08:46):
and different things like that, and so what you know,
what are you doing with all that stuff? He's like, Oh,
it's obsolete material. You know, we're not using it anymore.
So well, you know, what are you going to do
with it? If we can't find anyone to buy it,
we're just going to scrap it. And then that that's
when the idea was was, Hey, you know, maybe if
we could figure out how to make a mattress, there
might be an opportunity to buy the same way we
(09:08):
were buying finished goods, there could be an opportunity to
buy raw materials, and if we could learn how to
build them, then we could sell them.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And so are you looking at how they're doing it
at that point and going this seems inefficient and therefore
makes it more expensive. We could maybe do it a
little better and a little cheaper. Yeah, I don't know
as ultimately that ended up happening but were you thinking.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
That, Yeah, for sure, that's what happened. That That isn't
you know in the beginning, that certainly wasn't how you
know we were looking at it. It was you know,
there was you know, there might have been enough fabric
to make you know, twenty five mattresses, and there might
have been twenty springs, and so we were able to
buy those components and those raw materials at a steep discount.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Have you yourself put together a mattress from scratch? Oh
for sure, like many times.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So why this is so crazy to me because the
first time I meet you is when you know, we
started talking about doing commercials for Brooklyn Betting. And that
first building I walked into is what like a couple
of acres big.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's huge, it was the first building was well this
that was our second factory. Yeah, one hundred and fifty
thousand square feet.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
But still that's massive.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, it was a big facility.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And like to go from that from nineteen ninety nine
in starting to see like the other thing too that
that I see is that I know I'm going to
jump around. I think that's okay. Though for this though,
is how much you care about the people that work
for you. In like that, there's a little combination I
see when I look at you as a CEO, I
look at somebody who knows all six hundred employees that
(10:46):
work at his place. You care about how they're doing,
what they're doing, how much they work, their job. Satisfaction
looks like you really you've got their attention. You somehow
make kind of fun for them because you know, take
yourself that seriously with it right yet and yet it
still keeps on growing. And I remember being in that
(11:06):
one hundred and twenty five thousand square foot thing and
you saying to John Jay and I, like, we need
more space in our next one is going to be
that much bigger.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yes, yeah, it was. You know, the minute we moved
into that, that our second facility, one hundred and fifty
thousand square feet, I think I was six months into
it and knew, you know, we just we didn't go
big enough. And so that was when I started, you know,
in my mind, you know, building the next facility. And
you know, fortunately enough, it's been four years now. Four
(11:39):
years ago we moved into a six hundred and fifty
thousand square foot facility. You can't see the end of
it in Glenville. It's it's a large facility.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But tell me this on an emotional level, because I
know you're a family guy and I know you care
about that kind of stuff. How when you walk into
a place and you remember the wonderbread truck and now
you see a place that you and your brother came
up with, Yeah, that is six hundred thousand square feet,
How does that affect you when you walk into work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
You know people have asked me that, and you know
that at times you sit and you look and you know, one,
I'm really really proud of the company that we've built,
and but you know, it's it's the people that we
employ that those are the guys that are that are
getting the work done and doing it. So we have
(12:26):
we have we have an amazing team. And you know,
this company wouldn't be anywhere without the people that we have.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
What kind of people do you look for? What kind
of people find you?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
So? I am not a big micromanager, So you know,
we have a we have a team full of just
really highly motivated. You know, I don't like to sit
over anyone's shoulder and give them direction. It's like, hey,
you know, let's get together. This is this is you know,
I feel like I've done a good job of laying
out the vision and where we want to go. And
(12:58):
then it's like, hey, how do we get there? And
I and I realized, you know, I think we were
I think we probably had, you know, seventy five employees.
You know, we were about you know, a quarter of
the size, not even that's still a lot of people,
you know, and not even you know, And that that's
(13:19):
when I kind of realized that, you know, I can't
you know, I need to hire. I need to just
continually up the game and hire people that can can
help drive the business. And certainly done that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I've seen you kind of be impressed by your employees
where you would bring when you brought me over into
the factory, Like, see, these guys, these are master sewers
right here. These guys are the guys that are like
you seem like you're kind of in awe of the
things that they do well. Even though they got machines,
they're still the guys.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I mean, they're they're really really good at what
they do. You know, now we're pouring foam, so we
have you know, we have a couple of chemists and
and it's just amazing to see, you know, giving the
opportunity and the equipment that you put in place, and
you know what they're able to produce and do every day.
It's it's like I have I love going to work.
(14:10):
I have the best job in the world. I get
to go in.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You get the best office too. It's cool.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Office is cool. We like that fun. You know, I
got the putting green.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, you got that. That's that putting thing. That's a
that's a whole show by itself.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, and you know, and then a little gym if
you want to get a little workout in. But yeah,
we just we you know, we try to not take
things serious even though you know what we're doing. You know,
we're we're building. You know, we're building twenty eight hundred
mattresses a day.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And is that right? Twenty one hundred days. And we
should mention too. It's not just Brooklyn Betting. I mean
even back in the day, I kind of think I
saw wayfair boxes and things like that. So tell me
this is it all a few of the same mattresses
or do you do many different builds now as well?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
We're you know, the the evolution of the company, we've
kind of become a house of brands, and so, you know,
obviously we have Brooklyn Betting Helix Sleep is one of
our largest brands. Lisa is a great brand, Bear Nola.
We just recently acquired another company called Sutherland Sleep.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And that amazing that you started out buying like used goods,
and now you've acquired entire companies. Yeah, yeah, and rolled
them underneath yours. It's been a ton of fun.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And you know, so, you know, with with the Sutherland acquisition,
we now have a three hundred thousand square foot manufacturing
facility in Nashville, Tennessee. Oh wow, we have one hundred
and fifty thousand square foot facility in Oklahoma. And so
it's just it's opened up a lot more opportunities to
get to get our house of brands out to more customers.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And I don't know if you remember this, but the
last time we spent any time together, it was probably
about three years ago, and that was the plan. Yeah,
that was your vision. You're like, I'd like to have
one hundred thousand square feet here, and you told me
around the country that that was kind of the plan.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So have you have you thought of anything that hasn't
happened yet.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Or yeah, so you've been in the facility, you saw
the foam phone operation.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, just when it started actually when you were first
getting him. In fact, you might have been just starting
to do the foam thing, because I think there was
some some excess foam on the side, kind of like
maybe experimenting with the frosting a little bit. The consistency
of how it came up, and I think I crawled
up to the I climbed up the ladder to the
top of the machines even yep, yeah, a little walkway
(16:38):
over there.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, so you know, pouring foam was kind of the
last vertical step that you know, through this whole process
and becoming a manufacturer and doing everything. You know, the
liquidation world allowed me to go into a lot of
different manufacturing facilities, and every time I would walk into
a facility, you know, whether it be one of our
(17:01):
competitors is trying to sell me goods or one of
my suppliers that that made the product for me, I
would always you know, just kind of take it in
and and look at the equipment, and then I would say,
you know, why can I do that and because I've
always wanted to be as vertical in the supply chain
as possible, and and that, in my opinion, would help
(17:23):
us build a very very strong foundational company that can survive,
you know, whatever economic times come our way. And so
we we in the industry.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
But when you say vertical, do you mean independent of
relying on other people to build what you're selling.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So you know, when you've walked in the Phoenix facility,
we do all of our own cut and sew. You know,
we have sewing machines.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I've seen them, hundreds of sewing machines.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
We make our own coils, so you know, every you know,
not all mattress of coils, but a lot of mattress coils.
We make our own coils. And then the last step
was was pouring our own foam. So and you know,
domestically in the US we're the most vertically integrated mattress
company that there is. And so after, you know, after
(18:11):
we built Phoenix and had that done it, you know,
three years ago, I think I said to you, you know,
the next step will be to you know, build this
same facility on the East coast. And then the Sutherland
acquisition presented itself and fell in love with what that
company was about and was able to acquire.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's kind of amazing when you when you think about
the the lessons you learned from starting this thing that
you had no idea other than your brother having that
little light, Like I was told this could be big.
Let's do it, because it seems to be working a
little bit to now where you're actually changing the ingredients
of the soup altogether, right and making your own soup.
(18:53):
What do you sleep on? By the way, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So I am sleeping on prototype. Okay, drives my wife nuts,
but uh, we're always.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
You know, you switch out your beds a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
To try to switch out my beds a lot, and
and she's always the barometer. So when when I bring
home a bed, you know, because well, we're pouring different foams,
we're pouring new foams, we're you know, we're making some
different coils, and so it's like, hey, let's let's you know,
put that in a bed and I'll put it together
and you know, lay on it and like, hey, this
feels good. And the only way you know is to
(19:25):
take it home and sleep on it for you know,
a couple of nights, and so Kristin has always been
you know, when I can impress her and she's like
this is really good, then that I know that we
kind of have something and and we'll we'll move that
along the.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Your pillows are amazing too.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Pillows are great.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Not that this is just a commercial for Brooklynthetic, it's more.
But I mean the pillows really, I mean they've they've
changed my life. Yeah, I don't. I think my neck
just stopped hurting.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Mattress purchasing is so you know, it's it's it happens
you know on a you know, you buy a new house,
you get married. It's it's kind of like a it's
not a purchase that most people think about.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, and it's the.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
One thing that that someone can sleep on and use
that and it's completely wore out and shot and they
just don't change it.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Like shoes, shoes, but we changed shoes.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, shoes can rip and tear and and you know,
but I could take next time you come to the factory,
I'll I'll take you over to the to our pile
where we haul away old mattresses and and you'll see
some of those beds and it's like, oh, man, you
should have changed that bed out.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Ten years ago. But I don't understand like some of
the technology you have where like it's say you're trying
to recover, there's there's surfaces that you have that help
help your body recover. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, it's it's in the yarns, there's some cellulent material.
Like you know, I'm again I'm not a scientist, so
I don't but it works.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
But it does work.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yes, there's FDA claims that that it certainly improved circulation.
And then the big thing, the big advances that we've
had in the last couple of years is around temperature.
So you know, when memory phone first came out, it
kind of trapped in heat and absorbed heat and it
made people sleep hot. It was a great pressure relieve
(21:21):
in material, but you slept hot. And so now there's
been advances where you know, now you get into bed
and you know, we have some phase change material that
that just creates a perfect temperature for you to sleep
at all.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
No, that's kind of amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I I love going to bed.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Me too, So if I'm not, I don't get enough
of it.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, And so you know, and that's that's our mission statement.
You know, we're we're here to provide you know, our
customers with the best possible night sleep. We we don't
get to where we want to be without you.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean, I'll tell you this, it's one of the
few places that I've gone to and all of my
travels and what twenty five years of being on the
radio where I would tell people about those field trips
and just be kind of like almost couldn't wrap my
head around the massive production in how efficient it was.
(22:14):
And I think maybe even the first time I might
have been in there, it might have been during COVID,
but there was still you still found a way to
operate and kind of continue to do that we did.
And how did you do that with because you don't
you need a lot of people to make a lot
of mattresses.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, you need quite a few people, you know. During
COVID was a crazy time for everybody. We you know,
the state approached us and asked if we could make masks,
and so we had all the sewying equipment, We had
everything the materials that we needed, and so we we
started to produce to produce masks and then you know,
(22:50):
we sell a lot of our product on the internet,
and we're an e commerce you know, mattress company. So
what happened was when when everyone was at home and.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
More not traveling. Yeah, they're at home a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Uh, you know, people started to to put more money
into their home and and so our you know, we
were one of the businesses that that really took off
during COVID.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You took off, so you were able to like pivot
a little bit and make it make it even more
makes sense, which is pretty rare. Yeah, So then that
means your your business is pandemic proof ish, but kind
of recession proof too. You feel like to or do
people not spend money on mattresses when the when the
market goes down, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
After COVID and and the last three to four years
are you know, our industry has been it's been tough.
So you know, we're you know, when when people aren't
buying houses or you know, moving, and you know that
that spurs a lot of a lot of mattress sales
and so industry wide, you know, from from a from
(23:58):
a economics persons of our industry has been been down
for the last three to four years, and you know,
I'm going to knock on wood here. Fortunately enough for
for three Z and our house of brands, we've we've
continued to grow, so we we feel like we're you know,
we definitely know that we're taking some market share and
and we're able to grow because of because of the
(24:19):
great product that we're able to provide and the value
that we provide to customers. So you know, feel very
very fortunate.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Do you see Freezy being around in thirty years?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
For sure?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
For sure?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
And and I hope that I'm still involved.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I mean, you're a young guy, you should be that
you need to sleep.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Though, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know, we feel like
we've built it, you know, built it, built a company
and a house of brands that that is going to
be around for a very very long time.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I almost don't know of another category. Maybe cars. I
guess if you drove a super per old car and
then you walked in and saw something new with screens
everywhere and like the mattress tech in the past twenty
years is mind blowing. So if you say, like, you know,
what I did for many years is when I moved
out of my house, I took my you know, my
(25:15):
twin bed with me, and really until I got married,
that was the bed that I slept on because I
never thought about switching it until I got married, and
then even from then to you know, twenty twenty five,
the mattress tech. You can get a real good night's
sleep in the mattress and the pillar have a lot
to do with it, right.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I mean, in my opinion, yes, it has everything to
do with it.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
That and then you know, also I'm a I'm a
bed snop, So one mattress, pillows and then sheets. Yeah,
so you know when you slide into bed, like you
should slide into bed and you should just.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Be like, can you even go to hotels anymore? I
don't like it because it's like, oh, come on, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Struggle. I never sleep good.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
When I'm on the road, I bet not.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah. Yeah, And now you know, obviously, you know, we
still travel back to Montana in laws and friends and stuff.
But you know, we put our mattresses in a box
and ship them all over. So if I'm staying anywhere
for a long time for more than five to seven days,
I've I've already shipped a mattress up to that.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh that is so such a perk. That might be
your greatest work perk. That might be the greatest work
perk I've ever heard. Actually, So that's better than like
if you work at Starbucks and get free coffee everywhere.
I would rather have the good mattress to sleep on. Yeah,
that's pretty awesome for more than five days. So you
would even do a hotel because you're not tipping. You're
not shipping a hotel a mattress, are you? I have
(26:41):
not done that. But if you're like in an airbnb
or something like that, or with a relative, it's like, Hey,
if I'm gonna be in the guest room, here's the mattress,
and you keep it when I'm gone, and I'll use
it when I get back, Yes, until I find something better. Correct,
And what's your what's your? Give me a couple of
hot tips if I'm gonna go, So you know what
mattress I have? What kind of sheets do you guys
have that I need to be on?
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So we uh, you know, we have we have ten
cell sheets that are phenomenal, okay, and then we have
some bamboo sheets that are oh yeah, really good.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I love those.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
The ten cell sheets are my favorite.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Ten cell Okay, are they thick?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Uh yeah, I'm not sure what the thread count is,
but they're there. They just it. They just feel phenomenal.
And every time you wash them, they seem to get
a little bit softer. Okay, feel just a little bit
better now.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
When it comes to other entrepreneurs, I know, you know,
you get probably tapped a lot because people see what
you've accomplished in such a short amount of time and
they want to know what that secret sauce is. And uh,
I know that you talk to a lot of people.
I know you're a giving guy to very much. You know,
you're not a hold all the information secret. You're very
(27:50):
much like, hey, you can learn from this too. What
do you tell people that are trying to start their
own thing?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, you know, early on and I would go to
a lot of seminars and and different things, and and
you know, it was always about, you know, find your passion,
find what you're passionate about. And and so you know,
I was building mattresses and doing this mattress thing, thinking
that you know, maybe, you know, maybe I need to
(28:19):
find my passion. And and it took me a while
to realize that one For whatever reason, I was good
at the manufacturing side and laying out a factory floor
and and just I fell in love with the mattress business.
And it took me a little bit to figure out that.
I mean that that is my passion. So you know,
(28:39):
for me, it would be, you know, find find what
you're really really good at.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And then become passionate about.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It, and then become passionate about it and and so yeah,
that that's that's worked for me. Do you.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Do you? Uh, also get a great sense of accomplishment
because I know you guys are very charitable with you
That's a big part of what I think that I've
learned from you, because you've done lots of stuff with
love up too, which we which we appreciate, and kids
of foster care. But what is how important is that
for you?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
It's it's a huge part of our company right now.
You know, we donate thousands and thousands of mattresses a
year and and that's it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah see, yeah, Well it's good to see you, I think, Uh,
it's a very inspiring story. For people to want to
learn more about three Z Brands, they can go to
three Z brands dot com right three Z brands dot
com and more about your story. I think you're very
You guys are very impressive, very impressive. And I couldn't
(29:43):
be happier to see a nicer family have nice things
happen to them. And I must thank you for my
wife and I and my children too. We all we
all sleep on the Brooklyn bedding bed so we thank
you for a great night sleep every night too. Yes,
that's kind of kind of a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
And and we're gonna, you know, next year, we're expanding
our Phoenix operation.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And how can you expand that anymore? You're the whole
city of Glendale.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah, there, we had a we had a we had
a little bit of room behind us. So we're we've
actually kicked off construction building another two hundred and fifty
thousand square feet and part of that facility will be
dedicated to pillow production.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So oh really, well you really are vertical. I'm like,
you don't want to you and everything in house.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, we'll be coming out with some some some new
pillows and and uh, we're we're really excited.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
How many people can get up to the rooftop deck
and hang out. Have you had any parties up there on.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Our on our deck we have, Yeah, we have. Every Christmas,
we have a Christmas party.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I would love to play that with my band at
some point. That'd be really fun. That would be cool,
So remind me we'll do that for you. Yes, let's
do that'd be a blast. Well, thank you very much, CEOs.
You should know a product of iHeartRadio and you know
checking all the podcasts. This is our first of many. Congratulations.
Thank you John for being with us, a real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Thank you, Thank you for having me
Welcome to CEOs. You should know this is my first
venture down this road of CEOs. You should know my
name is Rich Parry. You can hear me on the
John Gy and Rich show what our guests today I
have spent a lot of time with in the past.
It is John Merwin, the CEO of three Z Brands
and founder of Brooklyn Betting. I am a proud owner
(00:20):
and sleeper on a Brooklyn Betting bed. In fact, Lemmy,
I am on the Sedona yep, which is if I
know this right, because you and I talked about this
before I picked out my bed about what three years ago.
It is some memory foam and then really good springs
in there too, in.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
What couple lairs and micro coils in there.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And that's the one you don't turn over. You flip
it kind of like around the corner, and it makes
a huge difference. When you do, too, you realize that
your sleep gets a little bit better that night. And
I even bought I even bought the the bedframe that
goes up and down, which John, I never thought I
would use. I use it five times a night, use
(01:01):
it all the time. I use it all the time. Yeah,
it's great because you think like, well, I might want
to work on my laptop a little bit, so you
raise it up a little bit, or like well, I
want to watch TV show, but I don't want to
be totally elevated. Or sometimes it just feels good to
kind of half nap.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You get in that zero gravity position. Yeah, your head's up,
your feet are up a little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, tell me about that. Like it's great, that's the
whole thing. Yeah, But let's go back to the beginning,
because we're gonna we're gonna talk about Brooklyn Betting and
all the other brands like Helix that you were involved with.
But how does a guy like you graduate and decide
that mattresses or beds are where it's going to.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Be at Yep, yep, So I didn't graduate. We'll start there.
I was, uh, I was going to college trying to
figure out what I wanted to do. I thought I
wanted to be a teacher and a coach, and was
going down that path.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I was kind of coach.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I wrestled in college, okay, football in high school, just
you know, grew up in a real small town in
eastern Montana and and just thought that I wanted to
be a teacher and coach. I you know, idolized my coaches.
My high school coaches had a big influence on it.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I mean they teach how to be a man. Those
coacharis like you really a community, all that being responsible
for things other than yourself, right all that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Ye yep, very small town, eighteen hundred people in our town.
So you know, I looked up to to my teachers
and coaches that I had, so I thought I wanted
to go down that path, and you know, realized that
I wasn't very good in school. I think I was
on my fifth year and had just become a junior,
(02:44):
so impressive. Yeah, it was good, It was, It was
really good. I was in love with my high school sweetheart, Kristen,
who who I married and got engaged to her. And
that was when my brother called and said, hey, you know,
what do you what are you doing? And he was
down here in Arizona and had previously started selling mattresses
(03:06):
and he started selling them. We were liquidators, so he
would buy scratching, dent, overstock, discontinued, whatever he could get
his hands on.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Was that just kind of like a hustle like to
kind of it was?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
It was a side hustle for him. He was he
was selling insurance at the time, and to try to
supplement and make a little bit of extra money, he
would go to an auction auction house and it was
here in Phoenix, and he would buy furniture, scratching, dident.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Furniture, mattress so not just mattresses.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Just mattresses. He started with with furniture and mattresses, and
then he would place ads in the Penny Saver and
different things like that and and sell them out of
his garage. And the auctioneer took a liking to him
and said, you know, you should focus on mattresses. I
can get you truckloads of mattresses and I'm gonna date
myself here. People won't remember do you remember Montgomery Wards?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Of course yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
So turned out that's where all this product was coming from.
It was comfort exchanges, returns, different things from Montgomery Wards.
And and so he took the took the the auctioneer's
advice and just started to focus on mattresses. And and
he was selling them out of a wonderbread truck and
driving around and this is right.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, how do you do that? Is he selling them
to like swap meets. Is he selling them to people
on the streets?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Just selling them to selling them to people? He would
place ads. You know, there was no Internet back then,
so he would place ads in the Penny Saver, in
the in Arizona Republic and different spots.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
What's the catch on those ads? Like great new mattresses
for a fraction of the price. Like what was his move?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah, you know, why pay more?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
You know mattress price? Okay? And then what attracted you
to this? Like so like let's go yep.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So he he's he's selling these beds out of out
of a wonderbread truck. And and he would go through
all of his inventory. Then he'd go back to the
auctioneer and and the auctioneer's like, hey, how are you
selling these beds? And he told them, you know, I'm
driving around playing ads and the Penny Saver. I drive
over to someone's house. I start throwing out beds in
their driveway and they buy it, and then I take off.
(05:08):
And he said, you know you need to He's like,
you need customers coming to you. You know, how many
customers can you hit in a day. He's like, you
know you got to you need a retail store.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
That's smart.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
And so he took his advice opened up a retail store.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
And that's risky right there though, too, because now your
hustle has turned to now you can't you got to
sell him for a little bit more because you got
to pay rent, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
You got to pay rent. And so he opened up
a store here in Mace, Arizona, and and he was,
you know, six months to nine months into it. And
that's right when I got engaged. And and he called
me up and he's like, what's your plan. I told him,
you know, going to school, trying to trying to finish school.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
And within six years.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Yeah, and and so he just he just threw it
out there. He's like, hey, you know, I got this
mattress thing going on. After you get married, why don't
you and Kristin move down to Arizona and we'll open
up another store. And you know, you can run a store,
I'll run a story. He's like, you know, I think
we'll get really big. I think we could have four
stores in the Phoenix market.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
That's a pretty good vision for back in the day.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Is yeah, this is nineteen you know. We got married
in ninety nine and a week later, We were in
a U haul and I moved my wife. You know,
she grew up, you know, like I said, we grew
up in a small town in Montana. Moved her down
to Arizona in August. Not the best time to move there.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Oh my gosh, that's insane. If you can move to
Phoenix in August and stay here for that first month,
and I think you're foenician right away, Yeah, you can
pushed it.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
It was so, you know, we lived in Mesa. We
had a little, tiny, little place in Mesa. And you know,
I hate to tell this story, but you know, we're
five days into our stay in Arizona and she goes
and puts on a pair of workout shorts and there
was a scorpion in her short and she got stung,
and so, oh me, she's just freaking out, and so
(07:00):
we're we're you know, I'm lucky that she stuck it
out and we were able.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, it's a good woman right there.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
So that's what happened. We moved down, We opened up
store number two, and we lived in in the liquidation
world for for a long time. You know, we would
buy from Montgomery Wards. We would We also started reaching
out to the different manufacturers sort of Siley Simmons, and
we would start to buy their comfort exchanges, returns, different
different things.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
So you were still kind of trying to do the discount.
You weren't trying to be a high end retailer at
this point. And I wonder, just as uh, I know,
I'm going to jump forward, but we'll go right back
to this. I wonder how important to the success of
what you guys have been able to achieve is doing
it from the ground up like that, because you understand
(07:50):
every facet of how it gets made, how it gets distributed,
what the value of it is, even like how to
manage people because you've done the heavy lifting for real
a lot of the times.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, where we started and where we are today is
you know, such a huge evolution of you know, just everything.
I mean, we started started selling you know, one hundred
and fifty two hundred dollars mattresses and then you know,
as I said, we started buying from sort of Seley Simmons.
And when we were doing that, I got to go
(08:26):
into their factories and you know, the plant managers they
would show me around and just show me how to
you know, how do you build a mattress. Yeah, and
they would show me how to do that. And it
was in in one of their office, in one of
their factories one day that we were looking at finished
goods and they said, you know, over here in the
corner were some raw materials, some springs and some foam
(08:46):
and different things like that, and so what you know,
what are you doing with all that stuff? He's like, Oh,
it's obsolete material. You know, we're not using it anymore.
So well, you know, what are you going to do
with it? If we can't find anyone to buy it,
we're just going to scrap it. And then that that's
when the idea was was, Hey, you know, maybe if
we could figure out how to make a mattress, there
might be an opportunity to buy the same way we
(09:08):
were buying finished goods, there could be an opportunity to
buy raw materials, and if we could learn how to
build them, then we could sell them.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And so are you looking at how they're doing it
at that point and going this seems inefficient and therefore
makes it more expensive. We could maybe do it a
little better and a little cheaper. Yeah, I don't know
as ultimately that ended up happening but were you thinking.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
That, Yeah, for sure, that's what happened. That That isn't
you know in the beginning, that certainly wasn't how you
know we were looking at it. It was you know,
there was you know, there might have been enough fabric
to make you know, twenty five mattresses, and there might
have been twenty springs, and so we were able to
buy those components and those raw materials at a steep discount.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Have you yourself put together a mattress from scratch? Oh
for sure, like many times.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So why this is so crazy to me because the
first time I meet you is when you know, we
started talking about doing commercials for Brooklyn Betting. And that
first building I walked into is what like a couple
of acres big.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's huge, it was the first building was well this
that was our second factory. Yeah, one hundred and fifty
thousand square feet.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
But still that's massive.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, it was a big facility.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And like to go from that from nineteen ninety nine
in starting to see like the other thing too that
that I see is that I know I'm going to
jump around. I think that's okay. Though for this though,
is how much you care about the people that work
for you. In like that, there's a little combination I
see when I look at you as a CEO, I
look at somebody who knows all six hundred employees that
(10:46):
work at his place. You care about how they're doing,
what they're doing, how much they work, their job. Satisfaction
looks like you really you've got their attention. You somehow
make kind of fun for them because you know, take
yourself that seriously with it right yet and yet it
still keeps on growing. And I remember being in that
(11:06):
one hundred and twenty five thousand square foot thing and
you saying to John Jay and I, like, we need
more space in our next one is going to be
that much bigger.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yes, yeah, it was. You know, the minute we moved
into that, that our second facility, one hundred and fifty
thousand square feet, I think I was six months into
it and knew, you know, we just we didn't go
big enough. And so that was when I started, you know,
in my mind, you know, building the next facility. And
you know, fortunately enough, it's been four years now. Four
(11:39):
years ago we moved into a six hundred and fifty
thousand square foot facility. You can't see the end of
it in Glenville. It's it's a large facility.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
But tell me this on an emotional level, because I
know you're a family guy and I know you care
about that kind of stuff. How when you walk into
a place and you remember the wonderbread truck and now
you see a place that you and your brother came
up with, Yeah, that is six hundred thousand square feet,
How does that affect you when you walk into work? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
You know people have asked me that, and you know
that at times you sit and you look and you know, one,
I'm really really proud of the company that we've built,
and but you know, it's it's the people that we
employ that those are the guys that are that are
getting the work done and doing it. So we have
(12:26):
we have we have an amazing team. And you know,
this company wouldn't be anywhere without the people that we have.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
What kind of people do you look for? What kind
of people find you?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
So? I am not a big micromanager, So you know,
we have a we have a team full of just
really highly motivated. You know, I don't like to sit
over anyone's shoulder and give them direction. It's like, hey,
you know, let's get together. This is this is you know,
I feel like I've done a good job of laying
out the vision and where we want to go. And
(12:58):
then it's like, hey, how do we get there? And
I and I realized, you know, I think we were
I think we probably had, you know, seventy five employees.
You know, we were about you know, a quarter of
the size, not even that's still a lot of people,
you know, and not even you know, And that that's
(13:19):
when I kind of realized that, you know, I can't
you know, I need to hire. I need to just
continually up the game and hire people that can can
help drive the business. And certainly done that.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I've seen you kind of be impressed by your employees
where you would bring when you brought me over into
the factory, Like, see, these guys, these are master sewers
right here. These guys are the guys that are like
you seem like you're kind of in awe of the
things that they do well. Even though they got machines,
they're still the guys.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yeah, I mean, they're they're really really good at what
they do. You know, now we're pouring foam, so we
have you know, we have a couple of chemists and
and it's just amazing to see, you know, giving the
opportunity and the equipment that you put in place, and
you know what they're able to produce and do every day.
It's it's like I have I love going to work.
(14:10):
I have the best job in the world. I get
to go in.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
You get the best office too. It's cool.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Office is cool. We like that fun. You know, I
got the putting green.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, you got that. That's that putting thing. That's a
that's a whole show by itself.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, and you know, and then a little gym if
you want to get a little workout in. But yeah,
we just we you know, we try to not take
things serious even though you know what we're doing. You know,
we're we're building. You know, we're building twenty eight hundred
mattresses a day.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And is that right? Twenty one hundred days. And we
should mention too. It's not just Brooklyn Betting. I mean
even back in the day, I kind of think I
saw wayfair boxes and things like that. So tell me
this is it all a few of the same mattresses
or do you do many different builds now as well?
Speaker 2 (14:57):
We're you know, the the evolution of the company, we've
kind of become a house of brands, and so, you know,
obviously we have Brooklyn Betting Helix Sleep is one of
our largest brands. Lisa is a great brand, Bear Nola.
We just recently acquired another company called Sutherland Sleep.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And that amazing that you started out buying like used goods,
and now you've acquired entire companies. Yeah, yeah, and rolled
them underneath yours. It's been a ton of fun.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And you know, so, you know, with with the Sutherland acquisition,
we now have a three hundred thousand square foot manufacturing
facility in Nashville, Tennessee. Oh wow, we have one hundred
and fifty thousand square foot facility in Oklahoma. And so
it's just it's opened up a lot more opportunities to
get to get our house of brands out to more customers.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And I don't know if you remember this, but the
last time we spent any time together, it was probably
about three years ago, and that was the plan. Yeah,
that was your vision. You're like, I'd like to have
one hundred thousand square feet here, and you told me
around the country that that was kind of the plan.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
So have you have you thought of anything that hasn't
happened yet.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Or yeah, so you've been in the facility, you saw
the foam phone operation.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, just when it started actually when you were first
getting him. In fact, you might have been just starting
to do the foam thing, because I think there was
some some excess foam on the side, kind of like
maybe experimenting with the frosting a little bit. The consistency
of how it came up, and I think I crawled
up to the I climbed up the ladder to the
top of the machines even yep, yeah, a little walkway
(16:38):
over there.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah, so you know, pouring foam was kind of the
last vertical step that you know, through this whole process
and becoming a manufacturer and doing everything. You know, the
liquidation world allowed me to go into a lot of
different manufacturing facilities, and every time I would walk into
a facility, you know, whether it be one of our
(17:01):
competitors is trying to sell me goods or one of
my suppliers that that made the product for me, I
would always you know, just kind of take it in
and and look at the equipment, and then I would say,
you know, why can I do that and because I've
always wanted to be as vertical in the supply chain
as possible, and and that, in my opinion, would help
(17:23):
us build a very very strong foundational company that can survive,
you know, whatever economic times come our way. And so
we we in the industry.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
But when you say vertical, do you mean independent of
relying on other people to build what you're selling.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
So you know, when you've walked in the Phoenix facility,
we do all of our own cut and sew. You know,
we have sewing machines.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I've seen them, hundreds of sewing machines.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
We make our own coils, so you know, every you know,
not all mattress of coils, but a lot of mattress coils.
We make our own coils. And then the last step
was was pouring our own foam. So and you know,
domestically in the US we're the most vertically integrated mattress
company that there is. And so after, you know, after
(18:11):
we built Phoenix and had that done it, you know,
three years ago, I think I said to you, you know,
the next step will be to you know, build this
same facility on the East coast. And then the Sutherland
acquisition presented itself and fell in love with what that
company was about and was able to acquire.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
It's kind of amazing when you when you think about
the the lessons you learned from starting this thing that
you had no idea other than your brother having that
little light, Like I was told this could be big.
Let's do it, because it seems to be working a
little bit to now where you're actually changing the ingredients
of the soup altogether, right and making your own soup.
(18:53):
What do you sleep on? By the way, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
So I am sleeping on prototype. Okay, drives my wife nuts,
but uh, we're always.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
You know, you switch out your beds a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
To try to switch out my beds a lot, and
and she's always the barometer. So when when I bring
home a bed, you know, because well, we're pouring different foams,
we're pouring new foams, we're you know, we're making some
different coils, and so it's like, hey, let's let's you know,
put that in a bed and I'll put it together
and you know, lay on it and like, hey, this
feels good. And the only way you know is to
(19:25):
take it home and sleep on it for you know,
a couple of nights, and so Kristin has always been
you know, when I can impress her and she's like
this is really good, then that I know that we
kind of have something and and we'll we'll move that
along the.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Your pillows are amazing too.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Pillows are great.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Not that this is just a commercial for Brooklynthetic, it's more.
But I mean the pillows really, I mean they've they've
changed my life. Yeah, I don't. I think my neck
just stopped hurting.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Mattress purchasing is so you know, it's it's it happens
you know on a you know, you buy a new house,
you get married. It's it's kind of like a it's
not a purchase that most people think about.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah, and it's the.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
One thing that that someone can sleep on and use
that and it's completely wore out and shot and they
just don't change it.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Like shoes, shoes, but we changed shoes.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Yeah, shoes can rip and tear and and you know,
but I could take next time you come to the factory,
I'll I'll take you over to the to our pile
where we haul away old mattresses and and you'll see
some of those beds and it's like, oh, man, you
should have changed that bed out.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Ten years ago. But I don't understand like some of
the technology you have where like it's say you're trying
to recover, there's there's surfaces that you have that help
help your body recover. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, it's it's in the yarns, there's some cellulent material.
Like you know, I'm again I'm not a scientist, so
I don't but it works.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
But it does work.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Yes, there's FDA claims that that it certainly improved circulation.
And then the big thing, the big advances that we've
had in the last couple of years is around temperature.
So you know, when memory phone first came out, it
kind of trapped in heat and absorbed heat and it
made people sleep hot. It was a great pressure relieve
(21:21):
in material, but you slept hot. And so now there's
been advances where you know, now you get into bed
and you know, we have some phase change material that
that just creates a perfect temperature for you to sleep
at all.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
No, that's kind of amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
I I love going to bed.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Me too, So if I'm not, I don't get enough
of it.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, And so you know, and that's that's our mission statement.
You know, we're we're here to provide you know, our
customers with the best possible night sleep. We we don't
get to where we want to be without you.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean, I'll tell you this, it's one of the
few places that I've gone to and all of my
travels and what twenty five years of being on the
radio where I would tell people about those field trips
and just be kind of like almost couldn't wrap my
head around the massive production in how efficient it was.
(22:14):
And I think maybe even the first time I might
have been in there, it might have been during COVID,
but there was still you still found a way to
operate and kind of continue to do that we did.
And how did you do that with because you don't
you need a lot of people to make a lot
of mattresses.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Yeah, you need quite a few people, you know. During
COVID was a crazy time for everybody. We you know,
the state approached us and asked if we could make masks,
and so we had all the sewying equipment, We had
everything the materials that we needed, and so we we
started to produce to produce masks and then you know,
(22:50):
we sell a lot of our product on the internet,
and we're an e commerce you know, mattress company. So
what happened was when when everyone was at home and.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
More not traveling. Yeah, they're at home a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Uh, you know, people started to to put more money
into their home and and so our you know, we
were one of the businesses that that really took off
during COVID.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
You took off, so you were able to like pivot
a little bit and make it make it even more
makes sense, which is pretty rare. Yeah, So then that
means your your business is pandemic proof ish, but kind
of recession proof too. You feel like to or do
people not spend money on mattresses when the when the
market goes down, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
After COVID and and the last three to four years
are you know, our industry has been it's been tough.
So you know, we're you know, when when people aren't
buying houses or you know, moving, and you know that
that spurs a lot of a lot of mattress sales
and so industry wide, you know, from from a from
(23:58):
a economics persons of our industry has been been down
for the last three to four years, and you know,
I'm going to knock on wood here. Fortunately enough for
for three Z and our house of brands, we've we've
continued to grow, so we we feel like we're you know,
we definitely know that we're taking some market share and
and we're able to grow because of because of the
(24:19):
great product that we're able to provide and the value
that we provide to customers. So you know, feel very
very fortunate.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Do you see Freezy being around in thirty years?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
For sure?
Speaker 1 (24:33):
For sure?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
And and I hope that I'm still involved.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I mean, you're a young guy, you should be that
you need to sleep.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Though, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know, we feel like
we've built it, you know, built it, built a company
and a house of brands that that is going to
be around for a very very long time.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I almost don't know of another category. Maybe cars. I
guess if you drove a super per old car and
then you walked in and saw something new with screens
everywhere and like the mattress tech in the past twenty
years is mind blowing. So if you say, like, you know,
what I did for many years is when I moved
out of my house, I took my you know, my
(25:15):
twin bed with me, and really until I got married,
that was the bed that I slept on because I
never thought about switching it until I got married, and
then even from then to you know, twenty twenty five,
the mattress tech. You can get a real good night's
sleep in the mattress and the pillar have a lot
to do with it, right.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I mean, in my opinion, yes, it has everything to
do with it.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
That and then you know, also I'm a I'm a
bed snop, So one mattress, pillows and then sheets. Yeah,
so you know when you slide into bed, like you
should slide into bed and you should just.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Be like, can you even go to hotels anymore? I
don't like it because it's like, oh, come on, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Struggle. I never sleep good.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
When I'm on the road, I bet not.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah. Yeah, And now you know, obviously, you know, we
still travel back to Montana in laws and friends and stuff.
But you know, we put our mattresses in a box
and ship them all over. So if I'm staying anywhere
for a long time for more than five to seven days,
I've I've already shipped a mattress up to that.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh that is so such a perk. That might be
your greatest work perk. That might be the greatest work
perk I've ever heard. Actually, So that's better than like
if you work at Starbucks and get free coffee everywhere.
I would rather have the good mattress to sleep on. Yeah,
that's pretty awesome for more than five days. So you
would even do a hotel because you're not tipping. You're
not shipping a hotel a mattress, are you? I have
(26:41):
not done that. But if you're like in an airbnb
or something like that, or with a relative, it's like, Hey,
if I'm gonna be in the guest room, here's the mattress,
and you keep it when I'm gone, and I'll use
it when I get back, Yes, until I find something better. Correct,
And what's your what's your? Give me a couple of
hot tips if I'm gonna go, So you know what
mattress I have? What kind of sheets do you guys
have that I need to be on?
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So we uh, you know, we have we have ten
cell sheets that are phenomenal, okay, and then we have
some bamboo sheets that are oh yeah, really good.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
I love those.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
The ten cell sheets are my favorite.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Ten cell Okay, are they thick?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Uh yeah, I'm not sure what the thread count is,
but they're there. They just it. They just feel phenomenal.
And every time you wash them, they seem to get
a little bit softer. Okay, feel just a little bit
better now.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
When it comes to other entrepreneurs, I know, you know,
you get probably tapped a lot because people see what
you've accomplished in such a short amount of time and
they want to know what that secret sauce is. And uh,
I know that you talk to a lot of people.
I know you're a giving guy to very much. You know,
you're not a hold all the information secret. You're very
(27:50):
much like, hey, you can learn from this too. What
do you tell people that are trying to start their
own thing?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yeah, you know, early on and I would go to
a lot of seminars and and different things, and and
you know, it was always about, you know, find your passion,
find what you're passionate about. And and so you know,
I was building mattresses and doing this mattress thing, thinking
that you know, maybe, you know, maybe I need to
(28:19):
find my passion. And and it took me a while
to realize that one For whatever reason, I was good
at the manufacturing side and laying out a factory floor
and and just I fell in love with the mattress business.
And it took me a little bit to figure out that.
I mean that that is my passion. So you know,
(28:39):
for me, it would be, you know, find find what
you're really really good at.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And then become passionate about.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It, and then become passionate about it and and so yeah,
that that's that's worked for me. Do you.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Do you? Uh, also get a great sense of accomplishment
because I know you guys are very charitable with you
That's a big part of what I think that I've
learned from you, because you've done lots of stuff with
love up too, which we which we appreciate, and kids
of foster care. But what is how important is that
for you?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
It's it's a huge part of our company right now.
You know, we donate thousands and thousands of mattresses a
year and and that's it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Yeah see, yeah, Well it's good to see you, I think, Uh,
it's a very inspiring story. For people to want to
learn more about three Z Brands, they can go to
three Z brands dot com right three Z brands dot
com and more about your story. I think you're very
You guys are very impressive, very impressive. And I couldn't
(29:43):
be happier to see a nicer family have nice things
happen to them. And I must thank you for my
wife and I and my children too. We all we
all sleep on the Brooklyn bedding bed so we thank
you for a great night sleep every night too. Yes,
that's kind of kind of a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
And and we're gonna, you know, next year, we're expanding
our Phoenix operation.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And how can you expand that anymore? You're the whole
city of Glendale.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yeah, there, we had a we had a we had
a little bit of room behind us. So we're we've
actually kicked off construction building another two hundred and fifty
thousand square feet and part of that facility will be
dedicated to pillow production.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
So oh really, well you really are vertical. I'm like,
you don't want to you and everything in house.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Yeah, we'll be coming out with some some some new
pillows and and uh, we're we're really excited.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
How many people can get up to the rooftop deck
and hang out. Have you had any parties up there on.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Our on our deck we have, Yeah, we have. Every Christmas,
we have a Christmas party.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
I would love to play that with my band at
some point. That'd be really fun. That would be cool,
So remind me we'll do that for you. Yes, let's
do that'd be a blast. Well, thank you very much, CEOs.
You should know a product of iHeartRadio and you know
checking all the podcasts. This is our first of many. Congratulations.
Thank you John for being with us, a real pleasure.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Thank you, Thank you for having me
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.