Armed with five new lines, headlined by a Panama Jack-licensed collection, and three of them aimed at the higher end, Heritage Sleep is gunning for more market share, new accounts and a larger national footprint. Rather than incur the costs of showing at High Point or Vegas this year, Heritage brought between 40 and 50 dealers to its factory in Rome in the foothills of Northwest Georgia earlier this month to see the new product.
“There has been a lot of consolidation such that we see a great opportunity to be that top-to-bottom alternative that gives stores more value and great service, all from a fifth-generation family business,” said Jordan Beck, chief operating officer and a member of that fifth generation. “We know there are declining door swings, which means stores need to maximize each sale. We want to help our customers do this by moving the value proposition up the ladder.”
The five lines – Panama Jack, Sanford & Spears, Pura Vida, Celsius and Better Rest – will hit showroom floors in January covering a combined retail waterfront of price points for Queens of $499 to $4,999. But, most of the new product reaches into the upper end.
The new ultra premium line is Sanford & Spears, which covers price points of $2,999 to $4,999. Hand-tufted, the Sanford & Spears bedding combines a knit Tencel fabric, cashmere, alpaca and eight pounds of horse hair, one of the strongest fibers in existence and a material that doesn’t register body impressions, Beck said.
The line is so named in tribute of Beck’s grandfather, Claude Sanford, and the Spears family with whom the Beck family ran the business for so long.
The new premium line also relies on nano (micro) coils and an organic latex. End consumers will be offered a 107-night trial of bedding from the Sanford & Spears line, or one night for each of the 107 years the company, in its various iterations, has been in existence.
Sleeping cool
Just below Sanford & Spears is Pura Vida, which aims at retail price points of $2,199 to $3,499. Sleeping cool with a “spa-like” mattress that features organic latex, wool and aerated, quilted memory foam are some of this new line’s features. Options include one to four inches of latex that meets the Global Organic Latex Standard (GOLS). The top-of-the-line mattress features eight pounds of memory foam.
“Pura Vida has been getting a lot of attention here in the early going,” Beck said of the open house event. “It seems like everyone is talking these days about sleeping cool.”
The new Celsius lineup hits retail price points of $1,999 to 3,999 and features all-foam technology also to promote “cool” sleeping. Three inches of high density, aerated memory foam is covered in a cooling fabric that resembles Spandex, Beck said.
Better Rest is Heritage’s “meat and potatoes” starting lineup, but new for 2027 are better covers, better coils and aggressive pricing, Beck said.
“We’re going back to black, and we’re reminding people how quick we can ship,” he said. “This is where we’ve always done well.”
Finally, new in January will be Heritage’s first licensed lifestyle collection, a middle-priced lineup of Panama Jack-licensed mattresses made for sleeping on after a day at the beach, Beck said.
“I knew I wanted a license, a brand with built-in awareness,” Beck said. “So far, it has been a great fit, and (Panama Jack CEO) Paul Robb has been fantastic to work with.”
Covering retail price points of $1,499 to $2,499, the line features copper-, graphite-, silver- and gel-infused memory foam, or a “quad tech” approach to bedding, as Beck described it. Underneath this foam is an aerated foam on top of nano (micro) coils. The Panama Jack mattress units have profiles that range from 14 to 17 inches.
Hit the road, Jack
Heritage and Panama Jack are also partnering for a launch of the line at Panama Jack headquarters in Orlando, Fla., early next year. Heritage is the lifestyle brand’s first partner in bedding.
A significant player in the mid-tier casual lifestyle category, according to License Global, Panama Jack has also licensed Palmetto Home in bedroom furniture and Bed, Bath & Beyond for linens and pillows. The lifestyle brand benefits from strong nostalgic recognition in coastal and resort markets, and it licenses products from lip balm to its well-known line of woven hats.
If the new lineups are successful, Becks says they will help Heritage expand distribution beyond its concentration in the Southeast, including in the Midwest and West. Between 75% and 80% of the company’s 600 store fronts now are in the Southeast.
“We track with gas and groceries, so it’s been tough,” Beck said. “Part of our answer as a tenured family business in the industry is selling better goods.”
All of the new lines will be offered to retailers with a full library of digital assets, including exploded view photography, video, lifestyle images and a full range of point-of-purchase material.
Bedding producer with a heritage
Founded in 1919 as Sanford Mattress Co., and variously named over the years, Heritage Sleep opened its current 150,000-square-foot factory in North Rome in 2019. A Nashville, Tenn. company, Southerland Mattress, acquired a previous iteration of Heritage Sleep, Spears Mattress Co., in 2014, according to the Rome News-Tribune.
The Spears family became involved in the business in 1973, building it up to become a major player in bedding and selling throughout the Southeast and making as many as 1,700 mattresses per day. Spears Mattress became the original licensee of Englander in 1985, and in 1995, the corporate name changed to Advanced Sleep Concepts.
Frankie Beck, Jordan Beck’s father and CEO of Heritage Sleep, married the daughter of Terry Spears, who was the last Spears family member with the company when he (and Beck) left it in 2011. When Frankie Beck’s non-compete agreement expired in 2014, Heritage Sleep Concepts was born, reuniting him with Terry Spears.
Spears died of cancer in 2021.
