This past week I took the train out to Newark to visit the Shifman Mattress Company and had a remarkable deep dive into not only how Shifman makes their mattresses (the old fashioned way - they were founded in 1893), but also how the mattress business works and has evolved over the past hundred years. Come along for a tour, courtesy of the Hammer family, who have run Shifman since 1985.
Everything starts here as raw cotton from bales is chopped up and fed into this huge machine. The machine makes fine, clean layers of cotton bedding that, although very fragile when they come out, are layered and bound so that they remain intact and loft, supplying the foundation of the mattress.
The Quick History:
"Shifman & Bro. Mattress Company was founded in 1893 when brothers, Abraham and Samuel Shifman established a manufacturing company dedicated to superior quality bedding... Throughout the 20th century, the Shifman family was slow to adjust to changes in the industry. Consumers wanted firmer bedding, more fashionable covers and brand name recognition.
In 1985, when Mike Hammer purchased the company from Robert and Burton Shifman, grandsons of Samuel, the company had deteriorated badly. Over the next several years, Mike Hammer changed the name to Shifman Mattress Company and instituted several improvements to its manufacturing procedure. The design changes had a positive effect on consumers.
In 1994, Mike's youngest son, Bill, joined the team and is currently the company's president. In 2008, the company expanded its facility by 40 percent in order to enhance its manufacturing capabilities and meet the growing demand for its mattresses."
Next all the side panels are made on the top floor. In this very manual, retro, human process, this woman is sewing panels for all the of Shifman signature models. She takes damask and sews it over a naturally fire proof rayon batting. All the sides then get handles sewn on, paired with tops and bottoms and stacked for the "stuffing" moment.
Next the spring center is pulled from the rack and paired with the cotton, Talalay latex or foam combo that makes the mattress.
Below is the "stuffing" room, where the "pregnant" mattresses are built around a core and then hand sewn to lock all the materials together. The needle is extremely long. It takes about two hours to assemble and sew each mattress at this station.
All Shifman Mattresses are handmade, made with as many natural ingredients as possible and are two sided - which means they'll live twice as long. Two sided mattresses used to be the standard, but increasingly companies sell "one-sided" mattresses along with the promise that you don't need to flip them. This is true, but flipping is actually a benefit!
Next we go downstairs to the boxspring room, where we can see a hand-tied boxspring being wrapped up. Boxsprings are SUPER IMPORTANT for more comfort and a better night's sleep and used to be standard in the industry as well. They double the cushion zone that your body takes advantage and the the life of your mattress. A mattress without a boxspring is like driving a car without shock-absorbers. Many beds are now sold without them or with "foundations" that are simply light solid spacers and do nothing for comfort.
Finally, the mattresses are wrapped up and moved into inventory with boxsprings. After completing our workshop tour, we went up to the showroom. Shifman's showroom is small, moves around a lot and is not the main place trade customers see their wares. Below is their main showroom in Highpoint, NC where the finished products are properly shown off. Big clients? Bloomingdales and Stickley, Audi & Co. for whom they make exclusive mattresses.
Shifman has adapted to the fast changing world of the mattress business by staying relatively up-market as opposed to trying to compete for lower prices. They start at around $3,000 and go up to as high as $30,000. This allows them to keep their bespoke, hand-made process alive and work closely with their major retailers to give them exactly what they want.
What should you want? Bill Hammer said, when asked, that you should lie on any bed you consider until it feels right to you. Money and brand aside, he was a firm believer in first hand experience. Does he like his beds better? He likes handmade beds with real hand-tied boxsprings, because he thinks they provide a truly superior comfort level, but the rest is up to you.
There are not many companies that do this anymore. The ones that do are European companies, like Hastens and Savoir, and these can run double the price of a Shifman. There is also a company like Charles Beckley in Queens, that does the same thing, but they only build custom beds for decorators these days.
As mattress companies have become less regional and more national over the past 35 years, companies like Shifman have had to compete with more affordable, lower quality mattresses with MUCH bigger marketing budgets and an American public that has been trained not to know exactly what's underneath them at night.
With the recession and the green movement, this is changing, making it simultaneously harder to find the money to spend, but making people smarter shoppers who care more about what they spend every night lying on. We've been trying to do our part by learning as much as we can, and this trip to an actual factory was a total eye-opener.
I want to thank Mike and Bill Hammer for letting us in on their world last week and sharing with us the rich history of the Shifman company. You can see my ongoing experiment of sleeping on many different mattresses and passing on what I learn, and I can't wait to get into some more factories and see how the rest of the world builds theirs.
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Thanks for this, as we are entering the no-man's-world of mattress research/buying. We did follow the year of mattress tests/reviews, but not sure our criteria are the same. Would love it if readers would share their own reviews of Shifman mattresses, if they have them.
Thanks for the tour, it was fun and I liked the first picture of the woman SMILING, she must love her work!
Thank you for this wonderful article. Natural filling, hooray! The "conforming foam" mattresses are terrible for me. I know several people who, lured by the ads, regretted their purchase and have them sitting in the basement for grandkids to watch TV on, or else just trashed them. I am sleeping on a very old mattress now because I can't find one that isn't a foot thick and full of synthetics. The few nights I have spent on foam have made me feel my back is on fire. I travel with a wool pad to act as a barrier between me and all that plastic. I'm shopping for Shifmans, and just hope they haven't succumbed to the "thicker is better" and pillow-top fashion. It looks in the picture as if they may have. DUX is my other option.
When I moved to New York City in 1976, at the age of 23, I had no furniture, so my first few days in the city were devoted to mattress shopping. I made a pittance of a salary, but I had grown up in a family that highly prized excellent mattresses and springs. My first and--for many, many months--only household purchase was a Schifman mattress and spring, which I chose after much comparison lying down on beds, starting with mattress shops. Then, as now, Shifman was sold at Bloomingdale's, and that's where my hunt came to an end. The mattress and spring were delivered only as far as the entrance to my apartment, and in the course of hauling them into my bedroom by myself, I injured my lower back. The pain got worse over the course of a year until I was driven to see an orthopedist. He prescribed as a first step a solid three days of bed rest, in the very instrument of my injury. Voila--sleeping, reading, resting atop my Shifman restored me! Although I had to give away my mattress and spring when I moved in with my husband seven years later (turns out, we should've given his bed away), I've always had the fondest feelings for the company. So I'm delighted to read about their renaissance.
We had almost purchased a mattress from a big brand company and then heard about a local family owned company like this one called The Norwalk Mattress Company. They're a small mom and pop who have been around since 1918! We went home and looked at the reviews for the huge coorperate owned company and the reviews were terrible. If you had a problem with your mattress, you would have to wait on the phone for hours and even then you would not get a response. So we went with the mattress company in Norwalk and we have been extremely happy. The kids enjoyed seeing the factory (much like the one pictured here) and skilled craftsmen and women made our bed...and we got to sleep in it. ;)
Great post!
You should Tweet this Newark Mayor @CoryBooker, a card-carrying member of the Twitterati, for a likley RT to 1.3 million-plus followers.
looking to get new mattress in the spring, and debating how expensive i should go. my old one only paid 200 dollars for it, but i also weighed a lot less 15 years ago and didn't have a sit-all-day computer job. and finding a mattress you can flip, most places look at you like you're crazy, like flipping a mattress is soooo difficult. So i think i'll wander over to my local Bloomingdales and check this brand out.
I appreciate their efforts to convince me of the merits of having a box spring, but I have a platform bed with just a mattress and have never slept bettere. The key is to have a good quality mattress and box spring. If your box spring is crappy, like mine was, you will never be comfortable.
this is super cool, I love seing how things get made.
I'm hugely impressed but too far away. Please write about a similar company in Denver, if there is one.
You hit the nail on the head with your statement that although it's "simultaneously harder to find the money to spend", consumers are "smarter" and want to know the provenance of what they buy. Why we need box springs and mattress flipping are great additions to the family business story. For anyone in the UK looking for a similar company, I can recommend Norris Bedding in London. Five years ago I bought a 19th c French faux bamboo bed frame. No slats or support. An odd size (I've since learned it's a "small double" or 4 ft bed). No conventional mattress would fit, nor could I find anyone who could put it together and create a new base for slats . Last September at Decorex I met the folk at Norris Bedding. They are a small family company and make mattresses and box springs by hand. Their business includes re-assembling antique beds and making bespoke mattresses. They collected my bed frame and redelivered it six weeks later expertly reassembled with a bespoke mattress and box springs. They even made four "extra" feet to give added support. You can't see them unless you get flat on the floor, but they give added peace of mind the bed is sturdy. I highly recommend Norris, and while they are the luxury end price-wise, I'm with ARzondzinska - it's a false economy to skimp on your mattress.
You're not too far away! Shifman has dealers right near Denver. Stickley, Audi & Company in Broomfield, CO and Englewood, CO.
Have you reviewed the McRoskey Mattress Company(San Francisco)?
If you have, I'd love a link.
We have a company outside of Boston - Gardner Mattress - that also makes old school mattresses and box springs and their products are excellent.
I love my Shifman pillow-top mattress and box spring. The firmness of the mattress combined with the pillow top make a super comfy mattress.
Cool post!
We bought a Shifman mattress a few years ago when we bought a bed at Stickley. It is the arguably the best piece of furniture in the house! Stickley often offers specials, they also sell floor models. Very much worth the price!
I have had my McRoskey for about 10 years now and it's still great. I do flip the mattress about twice a year and I feel like it was well worth the money.
Is there a Fl company like this one?
Pretty timely post for me. I'm planning to move very shortly and will be buying new mattresses. I've had my present queen set forever and I'm starting to feel it. Schifman looks like a possible. And it's "local" for me.
It's nice to know that there are still companies like Shifman who produces quality mattresses in the old fashioned traditional way in the midst of the ever evolving technology in the industry. I tried to see if Amazon is selling the product but couldn't find it.
Great story! Thanks for sharing!
Wow, luxury mattresses made in my homestate, who knew? (Not me, obviously.)
I really enjoyed the Year in Bed series and learning about mattresses, even though I haven't been in the market for one myself for... ever, actually. I snagged the mattress that was in my mother's guestroom for myself, basically. It's a foam mattress, on a platform bed, so we'll see how long it holds up under real use, and how long it will be before I need to actually consider any of the things I've learned... I do like foam mattresses for how light they are, though (easy to handle). I'll probably stick with them until my back demands something else, but no signs of that. Too bad Shifman seems to only make innerspring mattresses... or is the pure comfort collection not an innerspring?
Great post!!