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Updated August 4th, 2011

Custom Comfort Mattress
Relies on Quality

By CHRISTINA HAMLETT
The Outlook

Mel Trudell is the president and CEO of Custom Comfort Mattress, which produces 10,000 mattresses each year.

Where do you spend approximately one-third of your life?

For Southern California residents, the first answer that probably springs to mind is “on the freeway.”

If you go for the more traditional reply — “sleeping” — there’s a quirky correlation between cars and beds that Mel Trudell, President, CEO and founder of Custom Comfort Mattress thinks you should know. “Not only do most people spend more time choosing a vehicle that they’ll likely hold onto for fewer years than a bed, but car-buying is also the easier task because they understand exactly what they’re getting,” Trudell said.

Kicking tires, looking under the hood, taking a test drive and even listening for funny noises is usually enough to convince consumers they’re getting a good deal. How many mattress showrooms, though, will give you an insider’s peek at the real infrastructure that is going to be supporting you every time you grab some shuteye?

Says Trudell, “Who wouldn’t be attracted to the thickness of a mattress and all of the beautiful fabric that covers it? What buyers don’t realize is that a lot of manufacturers save money by having a thick layer of foam between the metal coils and the top covering. Over a short period of time, these materials start to disintegrate and crumble and get pushed down into the springs. You often hear people say that they need to get a new bed because the coils have worn out and made it hard for them to sleep. It’s not the coils that are the problem, however. It’s the foam that has broken down and is pushed between the coils, causing a dipping where people are heavier, in the center third of the mattress. Using 100% cotton, like Custom Comfort does, will help prevent this problem.”

Another contributing factor to poor quality mattresses is what Trudell describes as the dying art of stitching “buttons” into mattresses, a process that more tightly compresses the fill material in order to make it last longer. “No one wants to do it anymore because it’s time-consuming. They also no longer make the button tufter machinery. These are massive pieces of equipment that take up a huge amount of room and allow each mattress to be incrementally moved along the top surface so a long metal needle can go straight through to the other side.”

Ever since Custom Comfort Mattress first opened for business a quarter of a century ago, Trudell has staked its reputation on both a strong work ethic and adherence to delivering old-fashioned quality and value in every bed produced. He points out that the button tufter pictured in some of the company’s advertising images is 80 years old and still in full operation at the 30,000-square-foot central factory in Orange. “I actually go around the country whenever I hear someone has a button tufter they want to sell. I own a couple of them now and use them mainly for spare parts.”

Compromise is clearly not a word in Trudell’s vocabulary when it comes to mattress materials. “All of the beds we sell are two-sided, which means that you’ll have the same depth of padding on one side as you do when you flip it over,” he said. “There’s lots of hype lately from some manufacturers about ‘no flip’ beds. Maybe they’re appealing to consumer laziness and the effort it takes to turn a mattress over, but the reality is that they’re cheaper to produce if you don’t have to match the fabric or a comparable amount of support on the opposing side.”

He divulges that another popular sales tactic in the mattress business is when customers are told that if they can find a cheaper price somewhere else on a specific style, they can come back and be given that same mattress for free. “Hey, who wouldn’t want a free bed? The customers then go racing around town trying to find it, unaware that the mattress style they’re seeking is unique to that particular company and doesn’t exist anywhere else. That’s why I say it’s much easier to buy a car. Because there are lots of different dealerships selling the same makes and models, they’re all competing to give you the best price on exactly what you want.”

So how did Trudell become so savvy about sumptuous slumbers? “It goes back to when I was a teenager and my older brother, Marty, got me a job in the mattress factory where he worked,” he said. “As a bit of background, I was born and raised in Fullerton in a family of 10 kids. Money was always really tight for us and so if we ever wanted anything like a new pair of jeans, we had to go out and earn the money to pay for them. From the time I was 15, I was out doing deliveries. By the time I turned 20, I was offered the job of plant manager when the manager they had got fired.”

The siblings had been steadily soaking up enough knowledge about the mattress industry by then that they knew they wanted to have their own company someday. “There was an older gentleman named George Peck who became somewhat of a mentor to me back then and encouraged me to save up my money to make that dream happen,” Trudell said. “He even offered to help us get started when the time was right and always encouraged the idea that the only way we could truly control the quality of a product was if we were in business for ourselves and not working for someone else.”

Having passion for what you want to do with your life is critical, he reflects. “Along with that passion, though, you have to also be committed to becoming an expert — not only on every aspect of your craft but also on everything associated with turning it into a profitable business. Accounting, marketing, managing, HR — these are things that I actually had to learn on the job. My advice, then, to aspiring entrepreneurs is that you have to educate yourself before you go jumping in since these are all things that will impact your ability to be successful and to make a difference.”

Twenty-five years ago, the brothers pooled their resources and opened the first Custom Comfort Mattress factory in Santa Ana. The fledgling enterprise quickly won a following of satisfied — and well rested — customers and has grown to seven locations, including the Pasadena showroom on Lake Avenue which opened last September. “My younger brother, Gary, and I eventually bought out Marty, who wanted to relocate to another state and raise his family.” The company now produces approximately 10,000 mattresses each year, including custom orders for athletes, yachts and antique beds. The latter, he says, requires cutting out the corners to accommodate fourposter bed frames.

When you’re as discerning about the quality of your own product as Trudell is, there’s a natural tendency to give in to curiosity and make comparisons. “It used to drive my wife crazy that whenever we checked into a hotel, the first thing I did was pull off all the bedding to check out the mattress.” He admits that he has now changed this habit and waits until the day they’re leaving to see what’s under the covers.

He also points out that being accustomed to the best appears to be a hereditary trait. “We were recently on a road trip with my 6- year-old grandson when our car broke down in Barstow. As soon as we checked into our accommodations, he ran to the bed, checked it out and announced, ‘This bed is horrible!’” Given that the child’s first introduction to Custom Comfort was a custom-made mattress for his crib, Trudell explains that the unabashed reaction shouldn’t have come as much surprise.

Giving back to the community, of course, is something that comes easily to Trudell because of the financial hardships his own family endured while he was growing up. “We passionately support such organizations as Operation Homefront, The Sheepfold and Olive Crest because of the selfless work they do to make life a little easier for American military personnel as well as abused women and homeless families. Our motto has always been that ‘We do what we say and we say what we do.’ It may sound like a cliché, but it’s a business model that we’re proud of and one that will never be subject to compromise.”