Hickory Springs: 50 years in foam and still innovating
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, March 1, 2010
HICKORY, N.C. —
Maybe if the company's name were Hickory Foam this major bedding supplier would get more credit for its foam offerings.
But its name has been Hickory Springs since the company's founding here 66 years ago. And its extensive innerspring offerings have sometimes overshadowed the fact that Hickory Springs is a major player in the polyurethane arena, operating seven foam-pouring factories spread across the country, part of the expansive Hickory Springs empire.
The company this year celebrates a big anniversary in its foam business: It has been manufacturing flexible polyurethane foam for 50 years. That historic milestone will be celebrated at the International Sleep Products Assn. Expo in Charlotte, N.C., and at a number of special events throughout the year. Half a century of foam work deserves recognition, company officials say.
The story of how Hickory Springs got into the foam business is a fascinating one, filled with colorful stories from the past, and capably told by one of the colorful figures who looms large in many of those stories. That would be Bob Bush Sr., who favored bright sports coats, and who recalled the company's early days in the foam business in an oral history he provided six years ago on the company's 60th anniversary. Bush, who retired as vice president of sales in 2002, died earlier this year at the age of 78.
Back in the early 1950s, latex foam was the featured cushioning material in the bedding industry. Hickory Springs got into that business by bringing in molded slabs of latex. But young Bob Bush Sr. had other ideas. He began looking for “a plastic foam that would compete with latex foam,” he recalled.
His first stop was Tennessee Eastman in Kingsport, Tenn., which agreed to help Hickory Springs with its foam experiments. Then Bush got Hickory Springs founder Parks Underdown to agree to fund the foam work to the tune of $1,000, a considerable sum of money in those days, but still a shoestring budget for such an ambitious project.
Bush went to Duke University, where he had graduated, and looked up his old chemistry professor, Dr. Brown. “I told her what I wanted to do and I said I would buy whatever chemicals she needed,” Bush said. “And she said, 'Oh, we have all those.' She had to bring it before the department board. Well, she got approval in about 20 minutes. So they worked on it and worked on it and it didn't work. But that was where it started.”
Then urethane foam was introduced in the market, offered by companies like General Tire and Rubber and Sheller Globe. “We started buying it, probably around 1957 or 1958,” Bush said.
But Bush's dream of producing polyurethane foam was still unrealized. And things didn't look promising when a chemical salesman visited Hickory Springs and threw cold water on the company's dreams. “Well,” the salesman said, “'y'all aren't big enough to be in the business.”
That spurred Hickory Springs' execs to redouble their efforts. Another chemical salesman recommended that Hickory Springs hire Ken Fontaine, a chemist from Miami who had worked with Hudson Cushion Foam. Hickory Springs hired him, with the provision that he had to make the foam in less than 90 days and stick to a budget. Fontaine pulled that rabbit out of his hat, using 87 of the 90 days he was allotted, and coming in under budget. “And that put us in the urethane foam business, around May of 1960,” Bush said.
He said that early foam was “pretty good foam. We were able to sell it, but we were selling it at a loss. We lost our rear. It took us several years to figure out exactly which way to go to keep from losing money.”
Bush shared a funny story about those early efforts: “The first month we were in the business we sold $80,000 worth and lost $80,000. Second month, we sold $100,000 and lost $100,000. Third month, sold $150,000, lost $150,000. Fourth month, I said, 'Well hell, we're selling too much. We'll cut it back. We cut it back and we lost dollar per dollar, every month.”
The problem was finally solved when the company fully understood the business. “It was how to keep score as much as anything else,” Bush said. “And once we solved it, we had the contacts. Parks and the sales force had the contacts and we could move the merchandise. If we could get it made, get it fabricated properly, we could do well. And we did.”
From that humble beginning, Hickory Springs has steadily grown its polyurethane foam business, which now has a national footprint.
Hickory Springs pours foam at two plants in North Carolina: In Conover next to the company's headquarters in Hickory, and in Greensboro. Other foam plants are located in Verona, Miss.; Americus, Ga.; Fort Smith, Ark.; Commerce, Calif.; and Portland, Ore. And the company also has more than two dozen foam fabrication facilities around the country, where foam is cut into a variety of shapes for use in the furniture and bedding industries.
Hickory Springs currently ranks as the largest furniture foam producer in the country, and is now applying that technology to expand its offerings in the mattress industry. The company produces polyurethane foam, high-resilience foam and memory foam, and follows an eco-friendly business model, officials say. It's a success story that was 50 years in the making.
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