By Danielle Esposito
“We’re a custom mattress house,” says Mike Campbell, pointing to nearly 100 employees working an 80,000-square-foot factory floor in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Some meticulously snip threads while others swivel giant sewing machines with large spools to stitch together seams of multi-layered bedding. Still more pull quilted covers tightly across the tops of foam sheets while others oversee mechanical rollers flattening and wrapping the finished product for shipping—several of more than a dozen stops along an assembly line that produces between 800 and 900 handcrafted mattresses each day and prides itself on quality control.
“He’s going to send that one back now,” Campbell, vice president of systems and operations, whispers, as a nearby floor manager inspects a mattress, and dissatisfied with the fit of its cover, promptly sends it back up the line to be fixed. “Nothing slips by them.”
Mattresses and sleep products for dozens of companies are produced here, the newest being Long Island-based bed-in-a-box specialists PangeaBed.
It’s a tradition in pursuit of providing the best night’s sleep that dates back to the 1800s with the Simmons Bedding Company in Kenosha, Wis., through the 1930s with Bedding Discount Centers in Brooklyn—renamed Sleepy’s and relocated to Long Island in the ’70s—and up through today.
Yet what bedding giants like Sleepy’s did for the in-store mattress shopping experience then, PangeaBed strives to do for the bed-in-a-box mattress experience now—delivering high-quality mattresses directly to customers’ homes.
Where customers used to visit brick-and-mortar stores to feel the mattresses prior to purchase, modern-day, technology-savvy shoppers prefer the convenience of the online experience, reading reviews and conducting their own research prior to making their selection.
The dramatic rise of bed-in-a-box companies such as Casper, Leesa and YogaBed made longtime furniture retailers and manufacturers Joe Chadi and Martin Regueiro do a double-take.
“Joe saw what Casper was doing and was like, ‘You can do better than this, right?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely,’” recalls Regueiro, who cofounded PangeaBed with Chadi.
Growing up in the furniture business, Regueiro has harbored a passion for design and merchandising since his days helping his father run their family owned shops, which included locations in the Bronx, Astoria and Farmingdale.
“I’ve dealt with some of the best manufacturers in the world and designed products from scratch in our brick-and-mortar locations,” Regueiro says, with a smile. “I’ve built out 40-plus SKU mattress galleries for the stores that my family had, so—it’s in my blood. I feel comfortable.”
“Pangea is the supercontinent from eons past. It represents unity. It represents oneness. It represents togetherness, and the idea is that this is the one mattress company to be the answer to any sleeper type, and that’s how I’m developing the line.”
“Pangea is the supercontinent from eons past. It represents unity. It represents oneness. It represents togetherness, and the idea is that this is the one mattress company to be the answer to any sleeper type, and that’s how I’m developing the line.”
Since losing his father in 2012, Regueiro has longed to partner with someone who shares a similar Old World-style work ethic and devotion to his craft—qualities, Regueiro says, which bring out the best in him.
“It’s a different kind of man when you deal with somebody in a little bit of an older generation,” he explains. “They’re more handshake-oriented, they’re men of their word, they’re men of integrity, they’re tougher. They’re harder-edged. You have to work harder to please them. They’re not going to pat you on the back for every little thing, and I like that.”
Enter Chadi.
“I feel like Joe elevates my game,” he says. “[My father’s passing] was extremely difficult for me to deal with, and I’ve always been used to working with my father. So in a way, I look at Joe, and, I know he’s not my father, of course, but I look at him, the same generation, the same type of businessman, and I feel—at home.”
Regueiro’s excitement and genuine passion for crafting quality products is contagious.
“It’s incredibly fun designing and developing mattresses, because you deal with the fabrics and the materials and a proprietary mix for feel, and I love doing that,” he says.
Citing a commitment to create the highest-quality mattress on the market, Regueiro mixed and matched every aspect of the mattress-making process until he achieved perfection.
“From the type of glue that’s used, to the type of foam, to the type of tailoring, to the materials, to the design,” he explains. “I mean, everything from that particular welt edge to—well, you can even go back to the color—sourcing that particular pantone color for the lavender and the copper, that took time. And to manufacture the materials around that pantone color, coming up with the right pattern on the cover and the side panel, getting the right quilting on the top, figuring out the right foam to be quilted within the top.”
Regueiro spent six months testing materials and manufacturers before he felt his mattress was ready, and it wasn’t until he discovered an extra-special component that he truly believed his bed could compete against the mega bed-in-a-box retailers.
That component? Talalay latex: a clean, natural latex foam rubber that undergoes a rigorous, multi-stage freshwater washing and testing process to ensure consistency.
“There’s all different kinds of foams that you can source,” says Regueiro. “There’s all different kinds of synthetic and hybrid foams. But at the end of the day, the best material was Talalay. It’s the cleanest process, it’s the best process. It’s natural.”
“It’s a natural material that you can tap right out of a tree,” he continues. “You pretty much whip it up and you can create beautiful, durable [latex]. It’s something that nature created and we are then adapting into a mattress. And that, I think, is the best way to go.”
Yet that wasn’t enough for Regueiro and Chadi. The PangeaBed duo wanted to raise the sleep-quality bar even higher, and so decided to create a second mattress line with another starring element: copper.
In the quest to help their customers sleep cooler, PangeaBed infuses real copper into their Talalay latex, which creates bedding that is hypoallergenic, antibacterial, and possesses amazing cooling properties.
“I wanted to have something to offer somebody who wanted something a little bit better, a little bit more,” Regueiro recalls. “And copper, when you add it in there, it actually makes [the mattress] that much cooler, it actually makes it that much cleaner, and the hypoallergenic story was something that was very important to me.”
With all of these high-quality materials, the obvious million-dollar question becomes: How do you get such a luxurious mattress into a box?
The answer resides back at the warehouse in Jersey.
Once the PangeaBed mattress goes through its multi-step construction process, a conveyor belt transports it to a special machine that compresses it into a giant pancake. The machine then rolls up the mattress like a burrito, and seals it in airtight plastic. It’s then boxed and shipped right to customers’ doors.
Opening the new mattress is always fun. A special PangeaBed safety opener enables customers to slice through its outer plastic wrapping without damaging the bed. The mattress then literally grows right before their eyes, sucking up air and fully expanding into its perfectly full plush size within half an hour.
Ensuring he could deliver such a high-quality mattress via a box was extremely important to Regueiro, who prides himself on “giving that bed-in-a-box customer a traditional mattress experience that they’re not getting [from the other guys].”
“I’m looking at a traditional mattress that they’re used to getting, that quality, and then figuring out how to get it into a box,” he explains. “It’s different. It’s quality first, box second. Not the box first, and what can come out of it. It’s important to me—the durability and duration of the product, and just, the beauty of it.”
Regueiro spent a lot of time examining his competitors in order to devise a superior model.
“When you look at the cover and the materials of the other guys, it was just a solution to go into a box, this was the best [they] could do to put [it] in a box,” he explains, “and I said ‘I want to make the best and see how we can get that into a box.’
“And we did,” he adds.
Like their well-rested customers, PangeaBed’s cofounders have big dreams. Regueiro hopes to build a brand that his customers can truly appreciate, one synonymous with quality, comfort, and an unparalleled night’s sleep.
He knows he has to work for it.
“I’m not going to get their trust and loyalty unless I give them something that’s truly better, so I’ve put everything I have into something better, and my ultimate expectation, I hope,” Regueiro explains, “is that they really experience better sleep and they recognize that this is a company in it for the long term.”
Regueiro hopes to expand PangeaBed’s copper line, eventually creating dog beds, foundations, encasements, sheets, and “really create a sanitary, hypoallergenic, cooling story around the element of copper.”
PangeaBed also offers pillows.
At the end of the day, Regueiro really just wants to bring people together, and deliver truly comfortable, supportive sleep. After all, that’s why he named the company PangeaBed.
“Pangea is the supercontinent from eons past,” he says. “It represents unity. It represents oneness. It represents togetherness, and the idea is that this is the one mattress company to be the answer to any sleeper type, and that’s how I’m developing the line.”
Featured Photo: PangeaBed cofounder Martin Regueiro proudly stands beside a PangeaBed Talalay latex copper-infused mattress in a box ready to be shipped out to a customer. (Danielle Esposito / Long Island Press)
[Disclaimer: PangeaBed is a client of Long Island Press’ parent company, Morey Publishing.]
