Wickline bankruptcy serves double dose of sadness

It’s never fun to write a story about a retailer or manufacturer filing for bankruptcy, but I was particularly saddened to write about Wickline Bedding, a family-owned independent mattress producer near San Diego that recently filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

When I was Furniture/Today’s bedding editor from 1990 to 2001, I always looked forward to chatting with principal owner Ray Malkiewicz at the now-defunct San Francisco market.

Malkiewicz, a longtime Simmons executive who bought Wickline in 1979, was always willing to share the wisdom gained by his decades of bedding industry experience. His insights were invaluable, which enabled me to better understand the nuances of the mattress business.

His sons, Mike, Jim and Mark, and son-in-law Tony Colantono have been running the company in recent years, but Ray, as the saying goes, was never more than a phone call away.

In gathering information for the bankruptcy story, I was also saddened to learn that Ray suffered a stroke on June 13. The good news, Jim Malkiewicz told me in an e-mail, is that his dad’s rehabilitation “is proceeding well.”

I hope you’ll join me in wishing Ray a speedy, full recovery.