Handcrafted Sleep: How John Grove Built on His Grandfather’s Mattress Legacy | Manufacturing Series

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is John Grove, co-owner and executive at Mattress Grove. Based in Greensboro, North Carolina, they are a vibrant third generation family owned company that has crafted top quality mattresses for over five decades. They partner with retail businesses to offer professional sales training, the highest quality mattresses and superior customer service, all while prioritizing premium locally sourced materials. Now under John’s guidance, Mattress Grove has earned praise for its handcrafted art support approach and its successful partnerships including annual contributions to the Bed for Kids initiative. John has been part of Mattress Grove for more than 32 years and during that time he pioneered business outreach and engaged in public discussions about the company’s mission and the broader mattress industry. He brings a wealth of experience in running a family owned business and his passion for quality and community shines through in every endeavor. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Mattress Grove, John Grove himself. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

John Grove, : Anthony, thank you so much. That was a more than gracious entry and I really appreciate you having me on the Inspired Stories podcast. Super excited to have a conversation.

Anthony Codispoti : So John, your family’s been in the mattress business for more than five decades and if I understand it correctly, like we said in the intro, you personally for over 30 years, I’m kind of curious, what was your earliest memory of mattress life?

John Grove, : Wow. I hadn’t really thought about that in a while, Anthony. You know, you say 50 years, my granddad actually started back in working for a mattress manufacturing company out of Atlanta, Georgia over 100 years ago. So we’ve actually been in the mattress business in some shape or form for over 100 years, but we’ve been manufacturing for over 50 years. So that’s kind of why we say that we’ve been actually manufacturing. But some of my first memories were of coming to the factory on a Saturday while my dad was working with his brothers, because you know how entrepreneurs are.

We always have to be working, right? And of course, I didn’t know anything better than to go back into the factory and back then we had like tall, tall stacks of really inexpensive mattresses, but in these plastic and we would get on those stacks of mattresses and kind of like, you know, ride them down to the bottom. So I can’t imagine how, you know, the poor people in the warehouse on Monday came in, you know, from a nice weekend and they had to clean up those mattresses. I didn’t realize that it even mattered until I came, you know, I grew up a little bit and I started being that person coming in on Monday, having to straighten up all the mattresses. But yeah, you know, that’s what I remember best. That would probably have been back in the 70s, but with my cousins and so forth. Just, you know, just having fun. Didn’t nothing about the business, just being around.

Anthony Codispoti : Just being around it and mattress surfing on the weekends. Huh?

John Grove, : Mattress surfing. Probably not a lot of people here that have done any mattress surfing, I guess.

Anthony Codispoti : I haven’t. No, I might have down and visit. Is that still an option? Is that part of the tour these days? Only for you. Only for you. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.

I appreciate that. So you said that your grandfather had been in the business for, you know, starting over a hundred years ago and started the first family operation 50 years ago. How did that come about?

John Grove, : Yeah. So he was selling mattresses for Southern Spring Bed Company, which became Southern Cross. And anyway, he started working his way up into the Carolinas and he was calling on these, you know, these independent retail furniture stores.

They didn’t have mattress stores back then, but furniture stores. And he noticed that, you know, they needed some other products that they weren’t getting them quick enough. And so he started opening warehouses all throughout the Carolinas in Virginia. So he was already selling mattresses and furniture at the time. And then in in the seventies, some of these manufacturers of the furniture started selling direct.

So more into the eighties, but in the seventies. And so he had heard that Spring Air, Spring Air Mattress Corporation, they were out of Chicago at the time, was looking for a licensee in North Carolina. So so make it a long story really short. He purchased into that that franchise. It was actually a license operation in 1971. And he brought along his two brothers, which was not my father.

We were living in Florida at the time, because my dad was actually a engineer working in for NASA, which is a whole another story. Family business is really in, but which is a good thing. I mean, you know, so but my granddad and his two brothers, my uncles, started manufacturing mattresses in 1971. So it was a spring air franchise is what we got into more of. It’s a licensee organization, not a franchise, which was a lot more flexible. But they actually bought into the brand.

Anthony Codispoti : OK. And for you, was it sort of predetermined, predestined that you were going to, you know, join the family business? Or did you go off and do your own thing for a while? And eventually you were kind of drawn into it as well?

John Grove, : Well, that’s a great question. Most people would say, yeah, you know, you probably were drawn into or you were predestined when I was brought up. I was I wasn’t going to have anything to do with a mattress business. I mean, you know, we’d seen dad long nights, long days, you know, mom, you know, talking about how it’s, you know, it’s just you don’t want to go on that business, it’s just it’s, you know, it’s tough and you just don’t want to do it. And so, yeah, I mean, we, my brother and I have one brother who I co-own the business with. We said we don’t want to do anything, have anything to do with the business, but let them do what they do. So we went, you know, got our degrees and went and did our own thing for a while. And then then, you know, as things changed and, you know, life changed and the family business needed some help. You know, we came back and we came back at different times, you know. And but yeah, so it was not predetermined. It was predetermined. We would not get into the family business.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, it’s like you’re back in. And so when you first started in the company, I’m going to guess you probably started like kind of a little bit more entry level to kind of learn your way through the business. Is that right?

John Grove, : Yes. I actually, you know, my brother and I and my cousins, we worked during the summers, you know, in high school and junior high even working in the factory, you know, sweeping the floors, mowing the grass, you know, outside doing doing things that we could do because we weren’t big enough to, you know, load mattresses and trucks. And we certainly weren’t big enough to, you know, run run machines.

They really didn’t want to teach us to run machines because they knew we were only going to be here for a month or two. And it’s a it’s an art to it. So we did all the odds and ends. So we kind of got got that part of the business. But once out of college and and I did my own thing, you know, with sales, I came back into the business as a sales rep. So that was really my first taste into the real business world, if you will.

Anthony Codispoti : And had you done sales before in previous jobs that you had? OK, so were you comfortable in this role?

John Grove, : Loved it. Loved it. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, again, I think selling and sales is a bad word, but I think, you know, helping people is the best thing in the world that anybody can do. If you can, if you have that passion inside yourself to want to help people, that’s all selling this. Asking questions, helping people find, you know, what they need. I mean, I don’t care what you’re selling. You could sell anything and be in any kind of sales role as long as you have that passion in that heart to want to, you know, really help people find out. Ask the question, what do they actually need? And, you know, to me, so that’s my favorite role. My favorite role I’ve ever had is being a sales.

Anthony Codispoti : And so is this like front line sales, like direct to the end consumer, or is this selling wholesale to retail accounts that you were doing?

John Grove, : It’s a unique position. It’s selling wholesale. So we would be selling to, you know, a business owner or a potential manager if the company is big enough and they have a buying, buying office.

But, but our job is sales reps in the mattress business. How we’re set up as a manufacturer is you really have to make, you got to make two, two sales and then there has to be a third sale made before it gets to the consumer. So first you got to sell either the business owner, the entrepreneur of the furniture store, you know, Andy’s fine furniture. I got to sell Andy first. And then you put the mattresses on the floor.

Say we get, you know, six models on the floor, great lineup. We talked to you about the story. And then now I need to come in as a sales rep and now I need to sell your sales people. So now, and, you know, all along, I’m hoping Andy’s also, you know, and, and you, I mean, anything is doing that too, which you are because you want to sell those mattresses too. So we have a big meeting and we, and we have to convince the salespeople and tell them the story.

And then when they get it, guess what? They have to go pair it, the story and tell the story why their consumer, the end user wants to buy a mattress growth product. Or back then it could have been a spring air product and we still make spring air as well. But yeah, so it’s actually a very unique story. So it’s a, or it’s a unique sales position because you have to make multiple sales before it even gets to the consumer.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s interesting. Got to sell the owner. If you don’t do that, like doors closed, there’s no other conversations to have. Okay, great. The door is opened on the account, but now we need sell through, right? And to get sell through, you need buy in from the people who are, you know, working frontline with the customers there in the furniture store. And so how is it that, let’s go to the first step. How, how is it that you get the owner excited? Like, why do they want to bring you in at all?

John Grove, : Yeah, sure. Great. And a great question. You know, first off, obviously, before you can talk to anybody, you got to build some rapport. So, you know, you build a rapport with owner.

And so you may, you may make two or three or four calls, just, you know, finding out more about the business, right? You know, we, again, I, there’s no way I can help you and Anthony’s find furniture until I find out, you know, what your needs are. And you’re not going to tell me most likely, most owners aren’t just going to say, well, this is what I need. And to be known, most owners don’t even know, you know, really what they need. Until you help ask the questions and expose them. Say, well, what about this? So, you know, So what are some questions that you might ask?

Anthony Codispoti : Sure.

John Grove, : You know, you might, you might ask, you know, hey, what’s, what’s working well for you on your floor? You know, oh, well, this one’s selling, you know, I noticed you have 30 models on your floor. You know, what’s working well for you?

What’s not working so well for you? You know, and this would probably be a second or third call. It would not be the initial call unless you just felt the report was there. Because again, most owners aren’t going to just, you know, just tell you not knowing who you are on a first call.

Anthony Codispoti : OK. And so what are some, give me an example of some answers that you might get from an owner that can then sort of guide how you might approach the conversation going forward. Yeah.

John Grove, : Exactly. Sure. And another question you might ask is, you know, you know, what’s your percentage of mattress sales to your, your furniture store sales or, or whatever. Just try again, trying to figure out if they’re following in the normal range or they’re following, you know, or they’re doing a great job in their mattress category or they’re doing a poor job.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s a typical ratio there? That’s a good percentage.

John Grove, : A good percentage is 15 to 20 percent. OK. A poor ratio obviously would be less than 10 and less than five. And there’s surprisingly enough, there’s some large furniture stores out there that do a great job with furniture. They’re usually more of a designer type store that they don’t, they may sell millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in furniture and just sell, you know, five percent mattresses.

It’s very interesting. And that’s mainly because design consultants, the sales people on the board, they call them design consultants. They’re, they’re more into designing the furniture and getting that part of the home. And then by the time they get the mattresses, it’s just kind of an afterthought. Just get that at home.

Anthony Codispoti : No, bundle it in.

John Grove, : Absolutely. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : So you find out what’s working well, what’s not working well. And, and then how do you guide the conversation from there? Right.

John Grove, : Sure. So, you know, what we, what we do is we bring, you know, new ideas and new the best values at the price point where, where we see that they may be weak at. And so like, for example, maybe there’s a price points in the, you know, 1500 dollars up to $2,000 in a queen size set or whatever. And then so we will tailor our, our story around those particular price points. One thing that, that I think is really key and our sales team does as well is that we always, we talk about our product and our value.

We have a lot of people that try to copy us and, and, and, um, uh, I guess more or less copy and lower the value. So for example, like a mattress that you see behind me, maybe that’s a 1999 queen size set of, you know, mattress in the back, in the background. Um, and then somebody else, another manufacturer would come in and say, well, I can get that similar mattress for you. It can’t stay artisan on it.

Can’t say mattress grow, but I can get you, you know, John’s, you know, find, find mattress or whatever and sell it to you for 14. I, that’s one thing we don’t do. You know, we don’t take other brands and say, Hey, these are, these are knockoffs. Um, I think it’s really important to do that, you know, anything, you know, let, you know, be authentic, do what you do best. And, um, so for example, the, the, the, uh, owner may say, you know, um, that they may talk about those price points being key price points that he’s not real strong at. And so we, we would take our line and figure out, you know, our story that works within his and compliments and supplements his, his other products on the floor. For example, if he has another big brand, you know, like a CLE or one of the, something like that, you know, we would compliment and supplement that.

We don’t want, if he’s selling good with CLE, we don’t want to steal that business. We want to get him additional business for a brand that maybe, you know, like our brand is not as well known, but our, our, um, our manufacturing and our, our, our products, you can just tell a difference because they’re all handmade. They’re handcrafted. So they’re made better.

The components inside are better. We don’t have the national advertising that stealing other brands put into the mattress. It has to be put into mattress. You can’t just advertise it and just say, well, it’s just came out of the sky. Nobody’s given. Steely.

Anthony Codispoti : When you say put into the mattress, you mean put into the price of the

John Grove, : mattress, the price of the mattress, right?

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. You’re paying for a lot of their expensive marketing.

John Grove, : Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, and again, it’s just part of our story and what we do. And that, that enables us to put a nicer, higher quality product into consumers hands.

Anthony Codispoti : So, so tell us, I want to hear more about how you guys, uh, train the, the sales staff because it sounds like this is probably a big point of differentiation.

But, you know, as I’m looking at the product and we’re talking about it, help me understand what it is that separates you guys from a Sealy or, you know, another brand out there.

John Grove, : Uh, it is definitely the people, um, you know, and when I say people all the way through our family, um, you know, we, we call the mattress growth family, um, from the artisans in our factory all the way through to our sales team. And then of course, you know, as our people in our office, um, everybody here has a, a sense of caring. Um, and a lot of that has to do with my brother and I, but a lot of it also has to do with, and basically each area of our company, there is someone that was hired by Jen one from, you know, my granddad back in my granddad’s day.

Um, you know, we have people in the factory been there 40 years. Um, and, and what that means is it’s just the consistency of our brand. You know, we keep that consistency. We also have people that are just, just hired, but they learn our culture in our, in our, in the consistency and the attention to detail and the caring. You know, um, I can, uh, yeah, we could talk later about it, but you know, just, I would do anything for anybody in our company and they would too. And we have some, you know, I have some, some, uh, some backup to prove that, but, um, that’s number one.

I mean, cause you have to start with that. And so when people care about what they do, they’re going to make better products. And what’s interesting in the mattress business is if you come into our mattress factory, which you’re welcome anytime, anything, you can come to Greensboro and we’d love to take you on a tour. Um, and we’ll even let you do some mattress surfing. Maybe we’ll just put you on a conveyor on the mattress. You won’t have to ride it down. I want to make too big of a mess. No, yeah.

No HR would get mad. So, uh, but, um, but what, what I was going to say is, you know, each in, uh, mattresses are not made one at a time. You know, we run, you know, a lot of different, uh, the, the borders of the mattress or the top panels of the mattress or the foam encasement of the mattress, opening the coils of the mattress. It’s, there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s all hand done here at mattress growth.

And so. There, a person that just makes the borders, which is the piece that goes around the mattress, which you see, uh, behind me that has artisan on that’s the border. Well, a person makes that. They never see the end in part of the mattress until they come into our showroom here, which we’re all under one roof here. Our factory is right back that way, but, um, right back there. So everybody’s back there making, making mattresses. This is our showroom for retailers.

Only we don’t, we don’t sell directly to the public per se, um, in a showroom setting. Um, but, uh, the, the P is, it’s just interesting because, you know, they know what they have to do and they have to make that border perfect. Same thing on, you know, all parts of the mattress.

And so that, that’s where it starts because then your mattresses, when they go to the consumer or to the retail floor, they look different on the floor because they’re straight. Everything’s perfect. You know, everything is, is, um, made correctly. You would be amazed that it just having the top of the mattress, the quilted top panel on the mattress, if it was just off a half an inch, if it’s off a half an inch or not cut correctly, it makes that mattress look bad because you’ve got the welting or the tape as it goes down the side and it matters. All of that matters. You know, we, again, if you’re going to spend 2000, 3000 or what a heck not a thousand dollars on a set of bedding, it needs to be made right. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : And, and so as a customer, somebody who’s going to lay down on your mattress and you know, sleep there for eight hours every night, what am I going to notice that’s different?

John Grove, : You’re going to notice the back support. Number one, the support that you get from, you know, making the mattress correct. Again, everything is pulled really tight. Instead of having it kind of loosey, goosey.

Now we have all different fields. We have, you know, super plus all the way up to extra firm, but we pull it down tight, make all the, all the components, um, you know, work how they’re supposed to. You’re going to, it’s going to feel like a really deep feeling supportive mattress. You, you could, you could still get a top, the top of it. If you want it really conforming, because that’s what I like. I like it to have really conforming on top, but you’ve got to have the good back support to keep your spout on, you know, at night. So you don’t wake up with a tired back. That’s why you wake up with a tired back because you’re not getting the right, right proper support.

Anthony Codispoti : So what am I looking at, right behind your shoulder here? Is that some kind of a pillow top on a, is it foam or is it spring or what, what’s the technology? Yeah.

John Grove, : So that’s our artisan collection and it is a spring unit. It’s a pocketed coil spring unit. It’s actually, um, the heaviest duty, heaviest gauge coil system, uh, the legged and platin makes, and they make all of our springs. Um, matter of fact, all of our components are made right here in the USA. Most of them are made right here in North Carolina. Um, we’re really proud of that because. Prepare free Anthony. We don’t have to worry about price increases. So we don’t really care about watching.

Anthony Codispoti : What raw materials do you guys have coming? Or is it, or all your sourcing is done there locally?

John Grove, : Yeah, everything local. And, and we, we, you know, you pay a little bit more money for that, but it is so worth it. You know, we, during 2020, when the pandemic was rampant and all the factories were having problems getting raw materials, you know, all the ships coming in costs, instead of costing $3,000, now they cost $20,000, you know, it was, it was unbelievable and you couldn’t, they couldn’t get raw materials.

You know, guess what? We operated every day. Matter of fact, we operated till 12 o’clock, you know, often nights and that’s, that’s a whole another story, but, you know, we take care of our customers and our customers take care of their customers. And then that way, you know, our customers don’t care that we had to work till 12 o’clock at midnight. You know, what they care is that we didn’t work till 12 o’clock midnight and they didn’t get their mattress.

So now their customers yelling at them, you know, Hey Anthony, you told me that my mattress, mattress is going to be here on Tuesday. Oh, well, you know, the pandemic. We didn’t have, we didn’t, we didn’t have any of that problem.

Anthony Codispoti : We, we, we, you didn’t pull that excuse out of your pocket ever.

John Grove, : We didn’t pull it out of our pocket. But yeah, so, so that is the pillow top behind us. That actually, that mattress is the most manufactured mattress out of our factory, the single most manufactured mattress out of our factory that we make. We make more of those than anything else is a better way to put it.

And we may, we manufacture 57 different, different products. Mattresses, not caught. And then then you got to multiply that times, you know, twin, full queen, king, California king. So we met, but that’s how many different feels and collections we make. Isn’t that crazy?

Anthony Codispoti : All the, what did you call it? The spring coil tech?

John Grove, : Well, yeah, no, we make some phone mattresses too. Okay. We currently do not. One thing we don’t do because we just don’t believe that it’s the best quality mattress we, we only flat ship. So we don’t put mattresses in a box. Our mattresses, you can’t put in a box.

If you took that mattress behind me and roll it up and put in a box, if you could do it, if you had a machine to do it, which there are no machines that would do it, it would blow the box up. It’s definitely, yeah. And that’s, that’s because it’s made so well, you know, I’m not trying to say, well, yeah, I don’t believe that a bed in a box, I believe a bed in a box should be used for camping. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : All right. You don’t think that somebody can get the necessary back support from a bed in a box. They need either a higher density foam like you guys are using in your phone mattresses or they need the spring coil tech. Is that what I’m hearing?

John Grove, : You need, you need really both. And, and again, it’s a different manufacturing technique. If you’re going to, you know, you bolt it over and then roll it up into a box and put in a UPSable box. You know, there’s no way that that mattress can be, you know, that supportive and for a long time. Well, a lot of people find is that, you know, they get the mattress delivered to their front door, they take it in, they open it up.

Oh, it’s cool, you know, and it hopefully it opens up. If it doesn’t, then they call and they send them another one. But, but what happens is they find that their, the longevity of the mattress just doesn’t last. So what I like to tell people is you can buy a bed in a box and go do it. If that’s what you want to do, but just know that’s probably going to be the most expensive mattress you ever buy. Yeah. Cause you’re going to buy another one.

Anthony Codispoti : Cause you’re going to have to keep replacing it. Yeah. And so that artisan one that I see behind your shoulder, how long would I expect that to last, assuming I’m sleeping on it every night with my wife?

John Grove, : That’s probably the most one of the most often questions asked. That mattress will be around for way too long, longer than we want it to be. And be very comfortable.

What, what, so the mattress is going to give you good support for probably, it’s got, it’s got a 20 year warranty, but it’s going to give you good support, at least that long and probably longer. You pass it down to your kids and whatever. But what happens, what changes more than anything is our body, you know, think about how our bodies change, our bodies change every, I mean, some people, depending on how you eat and you exercise and changes every couple of years, but we’d like to say like about every eight to 10 years, we need to really look at the mattress we’re sleeping on because we’ve changed, you know, we, you know, whatever we could have lost weight. It’s just the age changes our, our body, how we, how we sleep. And, you know, we may even change how we sleep. So we recommend everybody start to look at their mattress at eight years and 10 years. That the mattress is going to last.

It’s just the, the, the change in your body, your back changes, everything changes. It’s a good idea to, to start to look. I mean, what else do you buy that, that you keep, you know, any longer than eight years and expected to laugh? People do.

I mean, you know, there’s a few people that buy cars and they drive them for over eight years, but if you go, I could promise you, if you go, go drive a new car after eight years, you’re going to go, mm, it’s, it’s pretty nice.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. Yeah. And it’s the same thing with the mattress, but people just neglect it because it’s back in the bedroom. It’s covered up, you know, it’s, it’s, Do we need to flip our mattresses?

John Grove, : The one behind us, you cannot flip it.

Anthony Codispoti : So it’s got that mattress. Mattress. Yeah. Yep. Now we recommend rotating that one, just because again, if, you know, my wife or, you know, it’s a different, a different body type. And so it’ll, it’ll, it’ll change how the mattress breaks in. The one behind us actually is pretty unique also because it’s hand tufted, which means that it has tufts from the top all the way to the bottom of the mattress, pulling everything down.

So it pulls it down across the whole surface. So that mattress, it’s still a good idea to rotate it, but you’re not going to get like any of the impressions on that type of mattress. Then you will want this not tufted.

So anyway, that’s a, that’s just a, and there’s, there’s some information on our website about tufting and hand tufting. It’s an expensive piece of manufacturing, but I think it’s one of the most, most important things that you should look for in a mattress. The problem is it’s very expensive. It’s hard to find, you know, under $3,000 in a queen

John Grove, : size, but that mattress actually has, has, has a minute for less than that.

Anthony Codispoti : How far do you guys ship there from Greensboro, North Carolina?

John Grove, : Yeah, we ship currently we ship kind of southeast right now so but we’re working on some other you know other options and we’re happy to talk to anybody if you go to mattressgrove.com and you’re on our site for more than about 15 or 20 seconds there a pop up will come up and it’ll say call John and David which is my brother me and my brother and it has a phone number on there and that phone number actually rings right to our personal cell phone so one of us so I answer and we’re happy to have that conversation you know you if somebody’s in California I’m happy to try to help them find the mattress if I if it can’t be ours that’s fine but a lot of times we can also help maybe get them one of our mattresses we have some retailers that’ll ship to two other areas as well so we’re we do business in in Korea I mean but you know that’s a part of our international program mattress grove is pretty well known in South Korea because it’s a brand they just as there’s a retailers there that have you know just really kind of built that brand over the last five years or so so we just we partnered with them quite a time back quite I guess yes probably been five or six years now it was before before 2020 so they do a great job with the mattress go that’s kind of wild right

Anthony Codispoti : it is kind of wild yeah you guys are exporting there to Asia so I’m curious to get back to the training that you guys provide to the frontline sales people design consultants you know whatever their titles are you know because in a in a wholesale business like you guys have like it’s one thing to sort of win the account but then you want that you know that turnover and to get that turnover you’ve really got to educate and get the frontline people excited about the product so what does that process look like from your side

John Grove, : yeah absolutely all of our sales team are Dale Carnegie educated so they have that that the relationship building um uh piece of that we’ve all been through the classes and and so forth and um so that that that helps get the relationship piece but um then then we get into in different different sales people are different in how they they get into this but we get into the mindset you know I mean you know Anthony I believe in and our sales team believes this that you know we’re we’re we’re so grateful that we get today and so we want to we want to let the sales people know the same thing and I know this is going a little bit off topic but it’s important because you know we’re not guaranteed another day I mean you know um every day I wake up you know I’m like I just I can still excite them like you know I want to convince myself make sure that I’m actually here because we’re not guaranteed you know there’s as you get older you know get over like me you start seeing some friends past and I’m along the way and of whatever and you start really being grateful to to be able to be here to talk to you and and share you share your ideas and and hopefully talk to other people but um so so you know that’s number one is trying to try to get people to realize you know they’re in a they’re in a furniture store they might not be they they look at outside sales reps oh you’re so lucky you got this great job um you know I’ve got to sit in the store well you get this in the store you don’t have to you get to it what a great opportunity you get to you know you get a captive audience they’re coming into your store they have a need you know they have a need and and and so that’s kind of number one to get get them you know get them understanding where we’re coming from so then they then then we then we’re able to you know get into the more we don’t really try to stay away from the spec the specs are all on the uh beds at the end of it in the mattress you can flip up a card in a beautiful spec and shows you know the different layers of the mattress but that is not what’s going to get you a good night’s sleep it doesn’t matter if it has two inches of memory foam or has four inches of tally latex or has this or that if you don’t like the way the mattress feels so you know so what what we train is let’s let’s take them take the the consumer to three mattresses that we know exactly how they feel and we lay them on these mattresses now look do you like this one or do you like that one okay well boom i like this one okay well that one’s a little bit more plush did you still think that okay perfect it’s more so so we’re going to kind of eliminate 50% of the mattress is on a board because you don’t really like that real firm feel okay perfect so then we lay them on this this plus and maybe another plus maybe it’s a little higher price so we we teach them to to to go down you know to do that and then when the consumer says why is this mattress the last mattress i bought was 15 years ago and i paid $500 for it why is this mattress you know the $2,000 i’m not spending $2,000 and then that’s when we teach them to talk about you know the quality of the components and go into that and then maybe at that point they’re you’re like you explain you know now what you’re feeling in this mattress it’s created on your body and you you can feel it cradling you said you could feel it cradling under you know your hips and and and smaller your back well that’s there’s some there’s some uh you know now some memory foam in there and that’s that’s that’s what you’re feeling there and so we we teach them the sales process teach them kind of mindset first you know hey you know be be grateful and and you know i’ll go back a little bit because we teach them to ask questions right number one we ask the questions you know what sometimes i i leave that out but number one thing i’m gonna ask if i’m on the retail sales board we’re gonna ask you know um what is wrong with your current mattress you know if they come in on a mattress everybody should be talked to about a mattress because most people don’t even know how bad their mattress is it kind of goes back to a car if if you come pick me up in your new your new expedition or whatever you have Anthony and you say hey john i want you to drive it and i’ve got an old uh ford explorer or an old expedition or whatever i i’m gonna go wow i you know this is really cool i didn’t know i didn’t have no idea how this was how how different it is so a lot of people that come into the stores don’t even know that how bad their mattress is until you get them laying on it but so you ask them what’s wrong your current mattress oh it’s sagging bad you know um so we teach the the uh the sales person to take that and say okay perfect we’re we’re gonna we’re gonna ask them a couple other questions you know do you like a farmer or plus so you know it’s just a process that we teach them to do so that they get the information and we teach them not to jump on a june bug don’t answer that question so i got the mattress it’s perfect for you right here it doesn’t sag use that in your presentation when you when you start it when it’s time to present when you find out the information and you start to get to a product that they say they like well by the way by the way um Anthony this mattress is not going to sag because it has extra coils in the center it’s got extra support in the center so you’re gonna it’s going to hold your body weight up forever it’s not going to sag you know so those are just things like that we and it takes lots of those sales meetings Anthony you can’t you you know you you can’t go in and do one sales meeting and go oh i got it i’ll never see these people again you got to go and do another one you know and and there’s a reason why i mean if mattresses are 15 percent of their overall sales that’s what they got 85 percent over here they’re just paying their bills right so there’s a lot of things that go on in there that’s why our team goes into most all their stores and their prospects you know it leaves every three weeks if not every two weeks which is unheard of unheard

Anthony Codispoti : of i’m gonna ask is anybody else doing this

John Grove, : not like we do not like we do most most people may go in every two months the bigger brands may go in once a quarter or maybe once every you know maybe twice a year they expect that their marketing and their their their marketing dollars is going to get enough of their sales they don’t have to go in and train and what happens is this the the sales people don’t feel comfortable showing the product because somebody comes in looks at the product and they go well tell me a little bit about it and they’re like well hold on let me look under here since it’s got this much boom two inches this two inches that two inches that i mean

Anthony Codispoti : so so john are most of the mattresses that you’re making do they have the mattress grove name on them are you doing like other brands or private labels

John Grove, : uh we do we make spring air which also uh we we do make private labels we make um you know private label for different retailers we also make chattanooga wells but spring air is what what uh we when we came in in 1971 was our brand i mean we were we bought into the brand and then um in the late 2000 2008 that 2007 there was a roll up and um private equity came in killed the brand killed everything we didn’t we didn’t sell our our business because we had our you know we we love the business i mean we love helping people we love helping people with their health and wellness you know which is what a mattress is a good mattress and so uh you know we we really you know focused on on the spring air but as during that roll up we were forced to sell our our share in spring air so now a different entity owns it so we it’s just different now spring air is a great brand i mean it’s a fantastic brand and we’re the oldest licensee in the world we’ve been making spring air longer than anybody else in the world spring air back supporter is is is what that is and but the chattanooga wells is a is the ultra luxury brand goes up to about ten thousand dollars in a queen’s eye

Anthony Codispoti : what goes into a ten thousand dollar mattress

John Grove, : that’s different than so i got two or three thousand dollar mattress don’t you know it’s got yeah

Anthony Codispoti : no there’s there’s a toilet like on the side of it and like a maid service as well

John Grove, : that’s built there yeah it makes itself it makes it’s it makes it so no uh it’s a lot of things i get it’s got natural um but like horsetail hair is a insulator pad which is you know just lasts forever it’s it’s just the top of the line it’s got three it’s got three different coil systems in it you know of course it’s super thick um you know things like that just it’s like buying a Gucci hand bag or something you know it’s just the the attention to detail it’s got a solid nickel plated emblem on the end you know the handles on the side for for moving the mattress around or all um embroidered and um and they’re they’re made with you know uh upholstery grade materials they’re just just really high and you know and and if you go look at it i mean and lay on it it feels great uh but not everybody wants to spend ten thousand dollars on a mattress and that’s actually cheap compared to a lot of you know people are spending $50,000 or more for mattresses these days is crazy yeah

Anthony Codispoti : okay uh talk to me about what the art of support means i see the tagline there over your shoulder

John Grove, : yeah we um you know it’s kind of a play i guess not words i mean you know back supporter is spring air that’s a spring air thing but what you know we believe you know our mattresses are supportive i mean that’s that’s the art of support what most people say well yeah you know the mattress business is support but it’s it’s actually a lot more deeper than that you know uh everybody here at mattress growth we support each other and i’ll go back to um just to tell the story i’ll go back to um back in 2020 when we had all this crazy business because a lot of the people other manufacturers couldn’t ship plus we lost people we lost some people in the factory they didn’t want to come to work um because of covid and all this this um other stuff so um we would you know we we we just all chammed in i mean my brother and i you know we used to load trucks and uh back you know in high school and we still load trucks you know we we still go out there for a workout but we loaded a lot of trucks with our people you know um during uh during those those months and and you know us as leaders we had to sit in front of our people and you know may and june and go look guys i know we’re all working over time now but you know this is gonna this is gonna be short we’re gonna be fine give us our 30 days and we did the same eating in august the same in september but everybody you know our core group and everybody they they just always supported us and we supported them you know like so we we during during the hottest months of the year we’d take off our our uh button down shirts and we put on our our t-shirt and our shorts and we’d be out there just you know sweating the death which is great it was it was fantastic um you know we’re we’re servant leaders that’s how that’s what we do but um we all support i mean you know if if something happens and we lose a key person you know david or i or somebody else in the factory will will jump in and and take care of that position until we can get somebody to fill it um everybody in the factory is cross trained and and again they want to be because they want to be able to to help help the call so um that’s that’s that’s really the you know the mattress grow piece and then the other pieces our service to our customers there’s no buy it service our customers like we do if you call our our our number or not not not me and david you called me or david david and i are going to answer but if you call our office line there’s not an answer service we have somebody here angela wand uh you know it could be maritth um if it rings long enough it’ll come to my office but we don’t want to answer service we don’t want to answer service that they press one for english two for spanish three for korean or any of that we want to answer it you know if it’s a call that we don’t want to talk to them you know i i can get you off the phone i am not interested whatever so we don’t care about that i want to talk to customers i want to talk to you know people so um that’s our support going back to angela she’s she handles all of our incoming um orders and then she also schedules it to the factory and then she handles the trucks going out so she has a lot of conversations with our customers we ship faster than anybody else you know we ship on on 53 foot trailers to our customers but um uh you know which are the retailers but our support goes it goes all the way through and then i talked about our sales team you know they’re they’re always there we answer to call it you know we’re if we’re awake we’re you know what we say is if you’re working we’re working so call us

Anthony Codispoti : i like that uh talk to me about beds for kids what is this why isn’t important to you guys

John Grove, : that that’ll make me and cry at the same time um yeah beds for kids is a fantastic organization based out of charlotte north carolina um they’ve been around a long time we partnered with them about six or seven years ago maybe yeah heck time flies when you get a little bit older but uh you know we we heard about them and and they’ve invited us down to their facility their old facility which was a lot smaller um was smaller than than it is now but they um they’re just an amazing organization that helps get kids off the floor or or less now um they’ve grown now to where they not only just supply mattresses but they also supply furniture so they have um you know a lot of donors down in charlotte did not only give money and if you buy wants to give money go their website and and and give to a great calls but they also have furniture companies that you know either have closeouts or something that they donate but anyway we went down there my brother and i and and we actually went on a as a volunteer went because they a lot of people go volunteer to help um you know unload mattresses and furniture into these these people’s homes but um they do a great job of that team people that sign up uh you know to make sure that the mom and the dad or whatever are actually trying to work or they’re working they’re not just you know um addicts or whatever um so but we went down there and we were we got to serve a family and it was really really amazing um it’s it’s amazing when you go into somebody’s home and they really don’t have anything but like maybe one lamp and doesn’t have it just has a light bulb and doesn’t have a light shade and the poor you know the kids are going to school but they don’t have any they don’t have a desk to um you know um study by they’re by by that one light on the floor so um it’s a really really great calls and you know we we’ve shipped we’ve partnered with them probably shipped over over 10 000 mattresses now um just really yeah helping a lot of people just i mean just so far gosh this year we’ve shipped them over 300 already um so we’re and we uh yeah it’s just a great it’s a great cause and then um at the end after we um you know after they set up the furniture and everything we all got together and prayed for you know prayed for the family and prayed that you know that we’re grateful enough that god gave us this opportunity so it was really it’s really a great cause um and we will we want to continue to uh support them um they you know they’re just really it’s a great it’s a great organization

Anthony Codispoti : and they’re serving families mostly in the charlotte area then

John Grove, : pretty much yeah the charlotte back and we’re i believe it’s 11 counties around the area and um and it’s just it can they just continue to grow it continues to grow and you know their their leadership team is is just amazing they’re just really amazing

Anthony Codispoti : we’ll see we can find uh link to their website included in the show notes for folks if they’re interested in checking that out becoming involved making donations it sounds like a tremendous cause um john that’s a serious challenge that you’ve gone through in your life whether it’s something personal or professional how’d you get through it what did you learn oh gosh um

John Grove, : which one do i want to talk about yeah um you know uh i went through a pretty tough divorce uh you know about 15 years ago whatever and you know that that was uh tough yeah i have two two beautiful kids and uh now i have three kids but two kids at the time and um you know it was a tough situation but um and i don’t have the same mindset i didn’t have the same mindset then that i do now i wish i did but it can’t change the past so i don’t worry about that but that being said um you know our business you know our our family business was a was just a great place for me to focus and i was the sales manager at the time so um we we opened some pretty serious accounts during that time some good really good business um accounts and um you know a lot of just had to do uh you know with with my focus you know i was able to really focus on uh to keep my mind on keep my mind straight um focus on um you know the business part of my life uh because the other part was kind of you know was was was shady um but uh but i always i did keep a positive mindset you know but yeah you know things like that you know they kind of shape you um you know and you we get to decide whether we want to be woe is me or we want to be you know a victim and thank goodness i didn’t um because i could have i could have been like you know and i’m just you know this is a bad situation um but i think a lot of people can relate to going through that um and you know it’s never easy and it’s never easy and i don’t recommend it by any means but you know sometimes it’s just happened

Anthony Codispoti : you mentioned that your mindset is different now than it was at that time how so and what sort of triggered that change

John Grove, : yeah uh you know like i said um earlier you know i am so grateful for each day you know almost every minute i’d say it it seems crazy but you personally i i know how valuable life is and i know how valuable you know um people are and my goal every day is just to see people smile i mean really is you know if i you know and we all should be that way i don’t know you know i don’t understand why we wouldn’t be that way but i wasn’t always that way you know i always i was maybe a little bit more judgmental you know and and so forth you know and it’s natural to be that way and i i still find myself doing that but i have to the sooner i realize that this happened into me and my mind is going there i stop it as soon as i stop it it helps me get a better way a better wave of positivity and so forth so um i like you said i always had the can do at it not always but in that time i had the can do attitude but it was you know it wasn’t like it is the day to where i just want to help people i just really want to you know be able to um you know make somebody’s day better it doesn’t matter whether i’m at wendy’s which i don’t get a win this much but uh wherever i am i checking out at air theater food line or wherever i am i’m i want to make that person you know i want to well i want to attempt to i’m gonna be nice and i’m gonna ask about the day you know and if they want to talk longer then we’ll talk about other things but you know i want to see a smile and there’s a very few people that actually won’t give you that smile because that smile is coming back to me as a smile i mean that makes me smile so you know whatever you give out the energy you give out and i believe i believe wholeheartedly in energy and i think that’s how anything he reached out to me was because of its energy um because energy is here always and energy is not like uh it’s not something that is only between me and my brother over here down the hall energy it goes to korea and energy goes everywhere and whatever energy you’re giving off and you’re thinking about it it goes to other people i promise you and we all have had those those situations where we’re thinking about somebody and they call us and we go oh that was just coincidental i don’t believe that because it happens too much to me and and you know every almost every day something like that happens to me and maybe i’m just special i’m not everybody has this energy and so you know the energy that we give off is is it can be positive or negative and you know so we we we actually get to make that decision you know every day we wake up and um you know i tell the story it’s not my story but the way i wake up every day is the same as if i would have won you know uh somebody would have given me 10 million dollars because if if i ask you anthony what how you would feel if i said anything you know what i appreciate you interviewing me on this podcast you know what i’ve got an extra 10 million dollars i’m gonna give to you i’m gonna give you 10 million dollars just just because you just because i like how does that make you feel

Anthony Codispoti : a combination of amazing and confused and also wondering if this is verbally binding like is it

John Grove, : recorded right oh no so okay and so if i said okay great well i can only give that 10 million dollars to you if you agree that you don’t wake up tomorrow you don’t get another day

Anthony Codispoti : i’m gonna say no no thank you i’m gonna say no

John Grove, : so every day we get another day it’s worth more than 10 million dollars to us because that’s how you know and so that’s the that’s the mindset that i look at and it you know is that that’s that’s why every day is so important whether i make 10 million dollars which i’ve never made 10 million dollars but if i make you know a dollar or make somebody smile that’s that’s that’s that’s how i look every day and i think you know everybody can look at that it just takes some practice it doesn’t doesn’t happen

Anthony Codispoti : over i was gonna ask how do you teach someone else or train yourself in this kind of mindset it’s just repetitions every day maybe that mental exercise of would i take 10 million dollars today if it means you know not waking up tomorrow like it like is that sort of like a helpful exercise to go through you think

John Grove, : it is i think it is um you know i think the first thing that everybody should do when they get up in the morning is smile put your feet on the floor and just smile i you know if you want to go look in the mirror that’s even better but get up smile and be grateful for one thing whatever you know it could be for today it could be for you know that you you know the whatever it could be that you you get the breakfast today or you’re gonna drink coffee today or whatever but be grateful and be mindful of it you know and then you can then you can go into more deeper uh you know um thoughts but the interesting thing about sleep just really quick is that and i’m just learning some of these things but um r.a .m. sleep is so so important and we know we heard that and you know and i’m not going to get into all the details of it of how the chemistry of the brain works but i will tell you this that what we think about today and what we focus on today will be replayed in our brain in a hallucinogenic state because r.a .m. sleep is when you get in r.a .m.

sleep that’s what that’s where dreams are and if you think about your dreams there’s usually some type of a hallucinogenic situation because you’re either falling off of buildings or you’re seeing something crazy something that can’t really happen usually right you’re running from the launcher and you know it thank goodness it doesn’t catch you but the heart when you’re in that r.a .m. sleep you your brain is recounting and re and remembering really really fast because you only get a little bit of r.a .m. sleep the day that you had so when you think about really positive things guess what happens it goes into your r.a .m. sleep your r.a .m. sleep and it re and it and it and it goes in fast so that’s what your subconscious is and so when you wake up the next day you’re going to get more of that so if you’re living into a very negative situation and you’re living that negative situation and guess what it goes the same way it’s in your r.a .m. sleep that’s why dreams are kind of weird they don’t they don’t make sense I think one day it may not be in our our lifetime but one day they’re going to be able to figure out why dreams are what they are and dreams are intentionally by our brain by God however you want to think about it they’re intentionally forgotten because of how our brain recycles that that it’s still in there it just it goes through the it goes through a cleansing so that you don’t remember it so you can move forward and kind of have a new a new day but it’s really interesting how how that that works do research on if you want to it’s crazy

Anthony Codispoti : lots of fascinating learnings to be had around the understandings of sleep and the benefits that it has on the brain for sure john i’ve just got one more question for you but before i ask it i want to do two things first of all i’m going to invite all of our listeners here to hit the follow button on their favorite podcast app so you can continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with john grove the ceo of mattress grove john i also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you obviously there’s your website mattress grove.com on the other ways that you recommend folks to connect with you

John Grove, : yeah sure and and that that’s that’s that’s a great way we’re on we’re on tiktok we’re on instagram we’re really really active on instagram and facebook uh under mattress grove um you know we we’ve really uh done a lot with that but yeah um mattress grove um on any of the social medias we’re always putting out content we’re and again we’re in the mattress business but we’re really in the health and wellness business i

Anthony Codispoti : don’t like that so last question for you john as you look to the future call it the next two to three years what are the changes that are coming to your business in your industry that you’re most excited about?

John Grove, : probably the technology to to learn more about you know our sleep and and how you know what we can do to better sleep i mean we all know that we need to you know be off of our devices not not drink alcohol not smoke marijuana not you know uh you know drink caffeine during certain you know after two or three o’clock but we can dig deeper into that and um i think the technology is going to keep getting better you know there’s no question that there’s a ton of research and a ton of conversation and you know if you go on tiktok and uh hashtag sleep maxing i mean that’s that’s that’s a big trending topic right now you know and it’s about how to get a better night’s sleep the mattress is a very important part but there are a lot of other things that go together with it you know if you if somebody calls me and says hey john i need a magic mattress that’s going to make me sleep better you know i’m going to have to ask the question you know of uh you know i’m going to say i can give you a great mattress going to give you great support and and it’s going to last you a long time but let’s talk about some other things as well so i think in the next few years um being able to uh bring some of those things to consumers through mattress grove even um is very exciting to me um because i i believe that that that people need to know you know we we need to over told and we know but how much you know the more we know there could be an apps that remind us um you know i i wear a uh a fitness ring or whatever or it’s a sleep ring whatever and it and it reminds me of certain things that that i need to be doing and so i think that’s important because there’s there’s nothing more important anthony than sleep you know there’s three there’s the three-legged stool you you have uh exercise you have food intake and you have sleep and out of all of them just leave sleep out for a few days and see what happens

Anthony Codispoti : things unravel pretty quickly i can speak to that from personal experiences i’m sure most of our listeners can well john i want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today i really appreciate it

John Grove, : thank you anthony it’s been great it’s been awesome thank you so much for having me on

Anthony Codispoti : folks that’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast thanks for learning with us today