Ed Lilly, who built Serta into a bedding powerhouse, was a passionate leader who aimed to elevate sales and profitability with strategic growth plans. I remember him as a bedding giant, a brilliant leader who invested in brand building and helped build two of the industry’s great brands: Sealy and Serta.
Lilly, 81, died last week in St. Charles, Illinois, where he had lived for years.
His former colleagues described him as a smart, driven leader who always pushed for excellence, building strong sales and marketing teams and empowering them to accomplish their goals.
In his half century in the home furnishings industry, he played major roles at three bedding companies: Sealy Inc., Serta Inc., and Lilly Management Group.
He was best known for his 14-year run at Serta Inc. from 1990 to 2004, where he presided over Serta’s steady growth. The brand tripled its domestic sales volume during his tenure, becoming the industry’s second-largest bedding producer. The iconic Serta Counting Sheep campaign and the “We Make the World’s Best Mattress” campaign were launched during his Serta years.
After he left Serta Inc. in 2004, he and former Serta Inc. executive Susan Ebaugh formed Lilly Management Group, which specialized in providing mattress flammability expertise and other business consulting services to bedding manufacturers. LMG remains active today.
Lilly retired from full-time mattress work several years ago.
“Ed was both a remarkable leader and a powerful presence in the mattress industry,” said Ebaugh, who was chief brand officer at Serta Inc. when she left the company in 2004. “I worked both for and with him in a number of posts for more than 30 years, at Serta Inc. and later as a business partner at Lilly Management Group. Ed was highly intelligent, perceptive and competitive, yet open to new ideas and new ways of thinking.
“He was equally committed to the achievement and success of both Serta’s licenseesand the corporate entity,” she continued. “For example, brand building was aggressively employed to create awareness and preference among consumers, while helping generate retail business and sales in the field. Market research showed that, in its time, the Counting Sheep multi-media ad campaign contributed significantly to Serta becoming the No. 1 mattress brand to buy.”
She said Lilly applied his business and interpersonal skills to all facets of the business and was a “congenial and fair-minded CEO” who built personal connections with all members of his staff.
Added Jeff Van Tuyle, who was senior vice president of sales at Serta Inc. and worked closely with Lilly for a decade: “Ed was a highly successful and unique leader of a privately held Fortune 500 mattress company. He grew Serta to prominence by bringing our individual owners together in support of important and ongoing initiatives.
These key initiatives of Ed’s were garnering major investment dollars for brand building (Counting Sheep), capturing a very large share of national and regional account business (an area where we had not previously been very proactive), and developing superior quality products that felt great when purchased and just as good 10 years later.”
Bob Sabalaskey, who was vice president of manufacturing at Serta Inc. from 1995 to 2005, described Lilly as “a great leader, boss and friend. Ed took a chance and hired me at Serta in 1995 when my only experience was in the upholstered furniture industry. He was a tremendous motivator who always asked us to ‘think outside the box’ and don’t just go with the status quo.”
Lilly challenged his team at Serta to develop fire-resistant bedding systems that were cost effective and minimized disruptions to the production process, Sabalaskey said. That pioneering FR work made Serta a leader in the mattress flammability arena.
Lilly was honored by Furniture Today in 2017 with a Lifetime Bedding Achievement Award. His friends and colleagues gave him a standing ovation at the Furniture Today Bedding Conference, where I presented the award to him. It was an honor for me to lead the recognition for a bedding leader who won my respect and admiration for his savvy leadership skills and his many bedding accomplishments. That would be the last time I saw him.
Karl Glassman, CEO of Leggett & Platt, was among the bedding executives who attended the Bedding Conference and saluted Lilly’s achievements.
“When I think of Ed Lilly, three words come quickly to mind: tenacity, passion and loyalty,” Glassman said in his tribute to Lilly. “Ed was always tenacious in fighting for what he believed in. Funding for brand investment in Serta was a tough fight. Many of the licensees did not share Ed’s long-term investment vision. He believed so strongly that brand investment was a necessity that he never gave up. Thus, ‘Counting Sheep’ and ‘We Make the World’s Best Mattress’ were born.”
Lilly, a graduate of St. John’s University, spent more than half a century in the home furnishings industry, starting as a buyer for Philadelphia-based department store Strawbridge & Clothier. There he worked in the furniture department as a bedding buyer, later becoming a store manager.
He spent 11 years at Sealy Inc., where he held a number of senior corporate and executive sales posts. His final position there was senior vice president of national account sales and marketing, which represented more than one-third of Sealy’s total sales.
He joined Serta Inc. in 1990 when that brand was “a third-world brand,” as one of the members of the Serta team said later.
Lilly assembled a strong team of industry veterans to put Serta on a growth track. Other key team members, in addition to Ebaugh and Van Tuyle, included Mark Quinn, John Rachid, Bill West, Alan Eisenberg, Scott Tinsley, Roxanne Franklin, and Bob Sabalaskey, who joined Lilly Management Group in 2005 and continues to work there as vice president of manufacturing and product development.
Sabalaskey said the FR expertise he gained at Serta “carried over to Lilly Management Group, where, through Ed’s leadership, we introduced (and still maintain today) the most successful prototyping program in the bedding industry that meets the federal mattress flammability standard.”
He added that it is his “honor and privilege to continue what Ed has built at Lilly Management Group and to challenge myself to continue Ed’s legacy.”
When Lilly and Ebaugh left Serta Inc. in 2004, Serta was a leading U.S. bedding brand in buyer awareness and preference, Ebaugh said. In Lilly’s 14 years there, Serta had moved from “a tertiary brand” to a position “in striking distance of the leader (Sealy),” she recalled.
Lilly served on the Executive Committee of the International Sleep Products Association, where he was a strong supporter of the Better Sleep Council and the Sleep Products Safety Council.
Survivors include his wife, Nancy, sons Michael and Kevin, daughter Denise, a brother, Paul, a sister, Ellen, and five grandchildren.
The family will announce funeral and celebration of life plans at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Lilly’s name to the Disabled American Veterans, 2122 W. Taylor St., Chicago, Ill., 60612; to Lighthouse Hospice, 2807 Centre Circle, Downers Grove, Ill., 60515; or to a charity of your choice.
Susan Ebaugh and Jeff Van Tuyle kept up with Ed Lilly over the years and visited him just two days before his death. At that last visit, they thanked Lilly for the thoughtful, strategic leadership he displayed throughout his mattress career.
