Family-Owned in Southwest Michigan Since 1992
Mattress Mart began in 1992 with Tony and Virginia Scheuer and a fairly simple idea: a mattress store didn’t have to feel like a mattress store. After years in the restaurant, bar and liquor-store businesses, they saw an opportunity for something they felt was missing in the mattress business—a no-frills store with good products, straightforward advice and, above all, honest selling and advertising.
The first Mattress Mart opened on Beckley Road in Battle Creek with just Tony and Virginia, who made the drive from Stevensville every day to run it. The little store didn’t stay little for long. Within two years they had outgrown the original location and moved to the larger Beckley Road store we still occupy today. Their sons, Jeff and Trent, eventually joined the business, making it possible to expand into Kalamazoo in 1997 and Portage in 1999.
The brands on our floors have changed considerably since those early years. We started with Therapedic, Sealy and Spring Air, later expanding Therapedic and Sealy and adding Stearns & Foster. Since then, we’ve carried—and stopped carrying—plenty of manufacturers as products, companies and the mattress industry itself have changed. About a decade ago, we finally had the opportunity to bring in Michigan-made Capitol Bedding, whose mattresses have since grown into a major part of what we carry. The names on the building haven’t dictated what goes on our floors. We’ve always tried to choose the products we think offer the best combination of construction, comfort and value, from manufacturers as close to home as practical.
The retail landscape around us has changed even more. We’ve watched large chains, furniture stores and mattress specialists come into Southwest Michigan, expand, consolidate and disappear. Art Van, Sears, Value City, American Freight, Pure Sleep, Sleep Doctor and plenty of others have come and gone while Mattress Mart has kept doing business from the same three stores. Tony and Virginia eventually retired and sold the company to their sons. Jeff later left to establish Matt-to-Go in Shelby Township, and today Mattress Mart’s three Southwest Michigan locations continue under Trent’s ownership.
A surprising amount has changed since 1992. How people shop has changed. Mattresses have changed. Manufacturers have changed. Advertising has certainly changed. But the basic idea Tony and Virginia started with hasn’t needed much improvement: be honest about what you’re selling, choose products because you believe they’re worth carrying, give people good information without the sales games, and take care of them after the sale. We even still write our sales on old-fashioned triplicate invoices. Some things, apparently, don’t need updating.
WHAT HOLDS UP
Selling a mattress is only the beginning of the story. Over the years, we’ve seen which mattresses come back with problems—and which customers come back ten or fifteen years later looking for another one just like it. That experience has taught us a lot about the materials, construction and manufacturers that hold up over time.
WHAT WE’VE LEARNED
We’ve also seen mattresses that looked great on paper or felt great when they were new, but didn’t perform nearly as well over time. We’ve watched manufacturers change materials, specifications and construction—sometimes for the better and sometimes not. A familiar name on the label isn’t enough by itself to earn our confidence.
WHAT EARNS FLOOR SPACE
That experience affects what you’ll find in our stores today. We look at how a mattress is built, what’s inside it, how the manufacturer stands behind it and whether it represents good value for the money. We don’t carry a mattress simply because a manufacturer wants us to. We carry it because we’ve found a reason to.
We Choose What We Sell
We don’t need to carry every mattress. We need a good reason to carry the mattresses we do.
Showroom space is limited, and we think every mattress on it should earn its place. We look beyond the name on the label and consider how a mattress is built, the quality of the materials inside it, how those materials have performed over time, the manufacturer behind it and whether the finished product represents a good value.
That’s why our floors can look a little different from those of a national chain. We carry Michigan-made mattresses from Capitol Bedding, genuinely heavy-duty construction from Therapedic’s TheraLuxe HD collection, latex foam mattresses, carefully selected Sealy hybrids, Stearns & Foster luxury models, and more traditional mattresses at sensible price points. They aren’t here because a manufacturer told us what our floor should look like. They’re here because we found a reason to put them there.
Our selection changes when the products change. If something better comes along, we’re willing to make room for it. If something no longer gives us a good reason to carry it, we’re willing to let it go.
The Right Mattress Has to Fit Three Things
Features
The construction and materials that matter to you—whether that’s better foam durability, a more supportive spring system, cooling materials, natural materials, motion isolation or simply a well-built mattress without features you don’t want.
Feel
Specifications can tell us a lot about how a mattress is built. They can’t tell you how it feels and whether it feels right to you. Firm, plush or somewhere in between, comfort is personal and not something you should trust to online reviews.
Price
And of course, a mattress also has to make sense for your budget. Spending more can buy different materials and construction, but the most expensive mattress isn’t automatically the best mattress for you.
The goal isn’t to spend more. It’s to find the right balance of all three.
Straightforward Pricing. No Games.
A mattress doesn’t become a better value because someone invented a higher price to cross out.
Mattress advertising has a long history of enormous discounts, perpetual sales and “regular” prices that seem to exist mostly so they can be marked down. We’ve never thought that made buying a mattress any easier—or more honest.
We’d rather show you what a mattress actually costs. When a manufacturer offers a legitimate promotion, we’ll tell you about it. When we have a real closeout or special purchase, we’ll tell you that too. And, we put our prices online so you can see them before you ever walk through the door.
The important number isn’t how much someone says you’re saving. It’s what you’re getting for what you’re spending.
How We Sell
Advice Without the Sales Pitch
Buying a mattress doesn’t need to start with a sales pitch. It should start with a few questions.
We want to know what you’re sleeping on now, what you like or don’t like about it, the feel you prefer, what features matter to you and what you’re comfortable spending. From there, we can help narrow a showroom full of mattresses down to the ones that actually make sense for you.
We’ll explain the differences, tell you what we know about how they’re built, and give you the chance to try them for yourself. Then we’ll give you room to decide.
Our job is to help you make a better choice, not make the choice for you.
We’re Still Here After the Sale
Our responsibility doesn’t end when the mattress leaves the showroom. Our own experienced delivery team can deliver and set up your new mattress, remove your old one when requested, and make sure everything is where it belongs before they leave.
If something comes up afterward, we’re still here. We help our customers with comfort exchanges, manufacturer warranties and the questions that sometimes don’t show up until you’ve actually slept on a mattress.
You bought it from Mattress Mart. You shouldn’t have to figure out what happens next on your own.
Still Local. Still Family-Owned.
“My father opened Mattress Mart in 1992 with a simple idea: sell good mattresses honestly, give people straightforward advice and take care of them after the sale. The mattress business has changed enormously since then. That part hasn’t.”
More than three decades later, we’re still here, still family-owned, and still serving Southwest Michigan from the same three stores we’ve called home for decades.
— Trent, Owner of Mattress Mart
Mattresses to help you sleep well and live better.