Greenville’s Engineered Sleep layers history into each mattress

Whenever the world economy has fallen apart, the Orders family has responded by selling mattresses.

It started in the 1930s, when James Orders Sr. founded Orders Mattress Co. in Greenville.

“It was the Great Depression, and his thought was, ‘What can I sell that everyone still needs?’ And since everyone still needs to sleep, he started making mattresses and selling them one at a time,” said James Orders IV, his great grandson.

These mattresses were simple — essentially covers stuffed with cotton. But over time the business and the mattresses it sold evolved. It became a major supplier for big brands sold across the country. If you’ve tried out a mattress on display at a furniture or department store over the last half century, there’s a good chance the Orders family was behind it.

The business also stayed in the family.

James Orders Jr. joined the company in the 1940s. James Orders III joined in the 1970s, and James Orders IV joined in the mid-2000s. At its peak, the company was pulling in more than $40 million in annual revenue.

Then came the Great Recession of 2008.

This time it was James Orders IV who found himself forced to adapt to the times.

“We went through a real rough patch,” Orders said. “We realized we needed to branch out from what we were doing and had to cater to the e-commerce side of the business. So we pretty much started from scratch all over again.”

The offshoot of the company, Engineered Sleep, started by supplying mattresses for recreational vehicles. It was a deliberately niche product, an attempt to find a footing with a new business model for a smaller cohort of buyers. They were among the first to ship mattresses rolled up in an easy-to-unpack box. The online-only business expanded into a 1,200-square-foot building a few years later. Now Orders, along with partner Carter Mahaffee, have leveraged that growth by opening a 95,000-square-foot facility on North Pleasantburg Drive, where a team of 40 employees turns out 300 mattresses a day.

Despite the pivot toward e-commerce, the company has kept firmly rooted in some of the business practices that made the original Orders Mattress Co. a success, Orders said. It still supplies mattresses to brand-name retailers, although those retailers today are more likely to sell online as opposed to opening showrooms. The company has also expanded its own line of direct-to-consumer mattresses. Its signature mattress is the ES Duo, the first mattress on the market that comes in two pieces: one a permanent base, the other a removable top that can be replaced every few years, giving consumers the ability to get the feeling and support of a new mattress without paying the cost of a full mattress.

They have also found a niche selling mattresses designed for space shuttles and giant mattresses geared toward professional basketball players — the giant mattresses in particular have become strangely viral sensations, with clips of the mattresses wracking up tens of millions of views on TikTok.

“It’s all about adapting, about continued innovation, that I would say is the reason we’re able to keep this going the way we have,” Orders said. “There’ve always been good times and bad times, but we’re on a growth trajectory that we’re proud of.”

Mattress-buying tips

Soft or firm?

“You can always make a mattress softer,” Orders said, “but you can never really make it firmer.” His advice? Buy a firmer mattress. Most mattresses will soften somewhat after they’re broken in, and you can use padding to soften later if need be, he said.

Hot sleeper?

Avoid memory foam. “Memory foam is the hottest material you can get.” Orders said. “Anything other than memory foam is going to sleep a lot cooler. And avoid gel-infused memory foam that claims to be cooler. It’s not true and it’s disappointing that it’s marketed that way.”

Best mattress material?