Hickory Springs eyes more growth
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, March 21, 2004
HICKORY, N.C. — HICKORY, N.C.— Hickory Springs, a broad-based supplier of components to the home furnishings industry, is riding a strong growth wave in the bedding arena.
"Without question, the fastest-growing area of our business is in bedding," said J. Donald Coleman, president and CEO.
A privately held company with revenues in excess of $500 million, Hickory Springs supplies a wide assortment of products to the bedding industry, from visco-elastic foam to innerspring units that remain a staple in bedding factories around the country.
The Hickory Springs empire stretches across 18 states and includes more than 60 plants. The Hickory area is host to the largest concentration of plants: 16. Its corporate headquarters in downtown Hickory is in a former Sears store where some employees once shopped.
Coleman sees solid growth ahead in the bedding category, which now accounts for about 25% of company revenues.
"I think that market will continue to expand," he said. "The bedding industry is doing an excellent job of marketing its products. From a dollar standpoint, we will continue to see growth. We are seeing companies really reach out on marketing."
He singles out Kingsdown, which is "selling at very nice price points," Park Place and some of the big-name bedding producers for driving business with powerful marketing efforts.
Hickory Springs will continue to concentrate on the heart of the market for bedding components, Coleman said.
A few years ago the company considered a relationship with a European producer to serve the latex bedding market, but "we thought that was (too much of) a long-term payback," he said.
Hickory Springs has been in foam since 1959, and is a significant player in the bedding foam marketplace. The company makes a variety of foams, and is doing especially well with the visco-elastic variety.
Coleman said visco has "such a tangible feel. It is different than anything else out there." But he noted there is "a tremendous learning curve on visco. I'm not sure the chemists have yet developed the best products."
Bobby Bush, vice president of Hickory's Foam Products Division, said, "We have done a lot of developmental work in visco. We have the best visco on the market with some remarkable characteristics."
Hickory Springs has six foam-pouring facilities in the United States, in North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oregon and California. The largest is in Conover, N.C., just outside Hickory, where more than a mile of foam is poured each day.
The company's foam line, backed by an extensive quality-control program, includes everything from HR foams to super-soft foams. An active research and development program is working on the foams of tomorrow.
Bush and Hickory Springs have won praise for the company's commitment to find a substitute for Penta, a controversial chemical used in the production of flame-retardant polyurethane foam. Bush wasn't satisfied with the answers he got from his suppliers when he looked into the Penta issue in 2001.
Hickory Springs' Conover plant currently is Penta-free. "Our research (on Penta alternatives) is continuing," he said. "We haven't found the optimal solution."
Bush and his brother, Jimmy, are sons of long-time Hickory Springs leader Bob Bush Sr., who joined the company in 1953 and retired last year. While Bobby heads the foam business, Jimmy heads the innerspring side of the company.
Coleman believes innerspring products will continue to be the bedding construction of choice in this country. "I still see opportunities for innerspring products," he said.
He noted that Hickory Springs has developed proprietary innerspring products that give the company a leadership position in the category. The company aims to increase its sales of innersprings in the commodity market, as well as in higher-priced lines "that give bedding producers an edge," Coleman said.
He noted the number of suppliers serving the U.S. commodity market is growing rapidly, and includes springs coming from China. "To be profitable," he said, "we need that commodity base to support our research and development efforts for higher-priced products."
Hickory Springs and Leggett & Platt, the two largest domestic innerspring producers, are supporting a drive to impose 40% tariffs on innersprings coming into this country from China. A petition seeking those tariffs has been filed by American Innerspring Manufacturers, a trade group of which Hickory Springs and L&P are members.
If the Chinese importers, who are "growing by leaps and bounds," continue to expand their presence in the United States, "we will find ourselves with equipment sitting idle," Coleman said. "There is already enough equipment in this country to produce all the bedding parts our industry needs."
Hickory Springs has expanded all three of its innerspring operations.
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