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Factor: Capital
In 1990 Bobby Trussell started as a horse breeder and he wanted to provide a product for people to clean their horse stalls easily. He bought it from overseas and it worked twice as fast as it did in the U.S so he was not successful and went into 1 million dollars in debt. Him buying this product to help clean stalls is an example of capital because it is a product that you can use.

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image url="http://cdn.bloodhorse.com/images/content/btrussel_large.jpg"]Bobby Trussell[/image] This week's guest on a special Friday edition of Talkin' Horses is Bobby Trussell, the co-owner of Walmac Farm who recently weighed in on the current state of Thoroughbred racing as a contributor to Final Turn.

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Factor: Entreprenuership
In the fall of 1991 Bobby met magnusson and that is when he first slept on the mattress and he sensed something special. He was given distribution rights of the product in the U.S if he could sell 10,000 in on year. He used these rights to put all the factors together to sell the mattress.

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Factor: Capital
In 1991 He first tried pushing out these pillows to chiropracters because they would rather have pillows than matresses. The way he got them to buy some was he sent 200 different chiropracters a pillow and said that they could get that one for free if they bought four of them and this worked because a lot of the chiropracters bought it. He used capital by using these chiropracters to help get the product out to others and using delivery as a capital.

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Factor: Labor
In 1992 Bobby went to a store in the mall and asked if they wanted to buy his product and they led him to the headquarters and he called them every day and they never picked up. He sent them a pillow and once they tried the pillow they decided to put in an order for 500 pillows even though they had 7 other pillows they were selling because they thought this one was special. Brookstone used their employees to help sell the product faster which is using labor.

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Address:

Website: www.tempurpedic.com

Company Perspectives:

Finally, the technology revolution that changed how we work, travel and communicate is beginning to change how we sleep, relax, travel and live.

Key Dates:

1991:

The Tempur-Pedic mattress is introduced in Sweden by Fagerdala World Foams.

1992:

Tempur-Pedic Inc. is formed in Lexington, Kentucky, to distribute Fagerdala product lines in North America.

1996:

Tempur-Medical Inc. subsidiary is formed.

1999:

Tempur-Pedic becomes part of a new holding company, Tempur World Inc.

2002:

Tempur World is acquired by two equity firms.

Company History:

Tempur-Pedic Inc. is the Lexington, Kentucky-based subsidiary of Tempur World, makers of products using a viscoelastic foam material (the original named Temper Foam) developed in the 1960s by NASA's Ames Research Center and refined by Swedish researchers. TEMPUR is Tempur-Pedic's version of Temper Foam, a breathable material that is able to distribute pressure or body weight over an entire surface, making it ideal for use in mattresses. The Tempur-Pedic Swedish Mattress is considered the first breakthrough in mattress design since the introduction of the innerspring mattress in 1925. Unlike its innerspring cousins, however, a TEMPUR mattress never has to be flipped or rotated. Because the material conforms to the body the mattresses have proven to be useful in preventing bed sores on bed-bound individuals. A subsidiary, Tempur-Medical, exploits this market, offering a complete program to prevent bed sores. In addition to mattresses, Tempur-Pedic also sells bed pillows, back support pillows, office chairs, recliners, and even bicycle seat covers, padded shoulder straps, and pet beds.

Founding the Research Center That Developed Temper Foam in 1939

Temper Foam was developed in The Ames Research Center, which was established in 1939 at Moffett Field, California, as an aircraft research laboratory by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA). Named after former NACA Chairperson Dr. Joseph S. Ames, it was NACA's second research laboratory, the first being the well-known facility in Langley, Virginia. With the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, NACA facilities such as Ames, as well as other government operations, were transferred to the new organization to begin work on human space flight.

The development of Temper Foam dates back to 1966 when Ames contracted Stencel Aero Engineering Corporation to help develop a safer seating system for commercial aircraft. Out of this effort a viscoelastic foam material was developed. One of the men regarded as a cofounder of the material was Ames scientist Chiharu Kubokawa, who conducted early experiments with it. "I was trying to develop seating for aerospace vehicles so people could better survive any crashes or impacts," he recalled years later. "We crash-tested several seats at the Civil Aeromedical Institute in Oklahoma City to validate them for impact survival, and we found the foam was good for 36 g's. The seat can out-survive the aircraft in a crash."

Another cofounder was Charles A. Yost, a contract employee who in 1969 started a company in North Carolina, Dynamic Systems Inc., to perfect the foam and exploit its commercial potential in conjunction with NASA. He was the one who named the material Temper Foam, an allusion to its temperature-sensitive nature. The foam consists of billions of high-density viscoelastic cells ("visco" meaning resistant to change of shape and "elastic" meaning the ability to return to its original shape after force has been applied). These "memory" cells become soft and pliable when warm and stay firm when cool. As a result, Temper Foam proved to be a perfect cushioning material because it could conform to the contours of a body while also providing high energy absorption. The material could absorb sudden impacts without shock or bounce, and return to its original shape even after 90 percent compression. Dynamic Systems applied Temper Foam to ejection seats and crash safety seats in aircraft, then developed other applications including wheelchair cushions, X-ray table pads, off-road vehicle seats, ski boots, and even sports equipment such as football helmet liners and body padding, and baseball chest protectors and shin guards.

In 1974 the product line was sold to the Edmont-Wilson division of Becton, Dickinson & Co., which greatly expanded production of Temper Foam products. Despite its potential, however, Temper Foam was difficult to manufacture, very much dependent on maintaining proper humidity levels.

NASA's Release of the Temper Foam Formula in the Early 1980s

In the early 1980s NASA put the formulation for the viscoelastic material in the public domain, and a number of companies began working with it to find further commercial uses, but most gave up when Temper Foam proved more temperamental than temperature-sensitive. One not so easily dissuaded was a Swedish firm, Fagerdala World Foams. Through a subsidiary, Don Foam A/S, it devoted a decade to perfecting the material for consumer use, in particular mattresses. Fagerdala branded their own version of Temper Foam in the early 1990s, naming it TEMPUR, which the company was able to produce in a number of different shapes and sizes, as well as densities. Fagerdala introduced the Tempur-Pedic Swedish Mattress in 1991 and enjoyed immediate success in its home market. Within three years of the product's launch, the company sold 50,000 mattresses in Sweden, a country with a population of just eight million. Also in the early 1990s Fagerdala awarded the North American distribution rights to a man from Lexington, Kentucky, Robert Trussell, who along with a partner created Tempur-Pedic, Inc.

Trussell had no background in foams or mattresses when he founded Tempur-Pedic. Hailing from a part of the country renowned for horse racing, he was originally involved in the breeding of thoroughbred stallions and the business of packaging partnerships to race the horses in England and France. It was through his racing connections that he became aware of TEMPUR, at a time when his partnerships were failing and he was looking for new endeavors. One of his good friends was a French horse trainer who knew a Swedish horse chiropractor, who in turn knew a fellow Swede who was involved in both horse racing and the mattress business. In this way Trussell learned about the Tempur-Pedic Swedish Mattress and in 1991 met with a Fagerdala executive. He was given a chance to sleep overnight on one of the new mattresses and was immediately convinced of the product's great potential. Afforded a chance to obtain the distribution rights to the foam mattresses as well as bed pillows and wheelchair cushions, Trussell returned home to Kentucky and teamed up with a grade-school friend named Bob Hoeller to write a marketing plan, which they then sent to Stockholm for approval.

In January 1992 a Fagerdala vice-president, Mikael Magnusson, flew to the United States to meet with the partners and they were subsequently granted the North American distribution rights to the Tempur-Pedic product line. They then had to find the necessary funds to launch the business. Trussell raised about $500,000, turning to family and friends, in many cases people who had previously invested with him in his racing ventures. In a 1994 profile of the business in the Lane Report, Trussell recalled the difficulty in approaching some of those earlier investors: "I had to convince them that although we lost money on something I know a lot about, which is horses, we were going to make money on something I know nothing about, which is mattresses."

The money Trussell and Hoeller raised allowed them to start the business, which they incorporated as Tempur-Pedic Inc. in 1992, but in less than a year they exhausted these funds and had to turn to Fagerdala for help. The Swedes purchased a stake in the company, using cash as well as stock, and Tempur-Pedic soon began to exhibit strong growth, most of which was the result of sales through chiropractors and physical therapists. These channels were augmented by the opening of a retail outlet at a Lexington Mall, the Tempur-Pedic Swedish Mattress Centre, the first of a number of stores the company hoped to open, a plan that never came to fruition.

By 1995 the company was generating $6.5 million in annual sales. Trussell wanted to introduce Tempur-Pedic into ten regional medical markets in a matter of six months, but all he had at his disposal was a single sales manager in charge of a small number of independent sales representatives. Rather than incur the expense of hiring a staff to line up new reps, he turned to Sales Staffers International, a Danvers, Massachusetts company, to create a transitional outsourced national sales force. Sales Staffers then set up video-teleconferencing interviews with some 75 candidates, of which 25 were hired. Although they were paid by Sales Staffers, Tempur-Pedic set the pay rate and goals, which included visiting five nursing homes and two hospitals each week. After a 60-day trial period the reps were either replaced or continued on; after 90 days Tempur-Pedic paid a $2,000 release fee to Sales Staffers in order to retain the most productive reps. With an expanded sales force, by the end of 1995 Tempur-Pedic was a $14 million company.

Forming Tempur-Medical in 1996

In 1996 Tempur-Pedic organized its medical business into a separate subsidiary, Tempur-Medical Inc. Attempting to sell to nursing homes and hospitals one at a time, however, Tempur-Medical faced stiff competition from companies that sold cheap replacement mattresses in bulk. The unit fine-tuned its approach, focusing on the problem of bed sores, an increasing subject of litigation, and over the next few years developed the Tempur-Medical Ultimate Skin Management Program. Rather than simply selling mattresses to a nursing home, the company offered a comprehensive program, charging on a per-year resident basis. In addition to supplies, including a Tempur-Pedic mattress, the program provided insurance, covering the first $250,000 of a judgment or settlement over bedsore litigation. Tempur-Medical pitched the Ultimate Skin Management Program to the large nursing home chains, and also targeted Florida and other states that were seeing a high level of bedsore suits. In fact, it was estimated that in 2002 approximately 60 percent of lawsuits filed against Florida nursing homes involved bedsores. As Tempur-Medical was able to demonstrate that it could lower the incidence of bedsores to 1 percent or less, its mattresses and prevention program became very attractive to institutional cus- tomers. To help it sell its system, Tempur-Medical turned to advocacy groups such as AARP for help, and also made efforts to convince insurers to offer discounts to nursing homes that adopted the program. Moreover, it lobbied Washington to provide bonuses to nursing homes that were able to achieve an incidence rate of bedsores less than 2 percent. Tempur-Pedic controlled just 3 percent of the national market for hospital and nursing home mattresses in 2002, but management projected that within three years it would command a 25 percent share.

In 1999 Tempur-Pedic, Fagerdala's Dan Foam subsidiary, and eight other distributors around the world were merged under a holding company called Tempur World, majority owned by Fagerdala. Trussell controlled a minority stake and was named CEO of Tempur World, essentially run out of the Kentucky offices of Tempur-Pedic, which he continued to head. No matter how the business was organized, Tempur-Pedic continued to grow revenues at a steady clip. The company also added a number of new products, including the use of the foam in office chairs and recliners. To aid in marketing Tempur-Pedic created a "Space Cabin" for consumers to experience at furniture shows. They lay on a Tempur-Pedic mattress in a dark room and then took a ten-minute simulated space flight. In effect, the potential customer was induced to lie on the mattress for ten minutes, far longer than they were likely to do in a showroom. When the space cabin was then used by retailers, they experienced a sharp spike in mattress sales. Tempur-Pedic also was proving quite adept at generating publicity. Aside from its successful television direct sales efforts, the company received a great deal of free publicity. It was especially successful in 2002 when it was able to include a gift certificate for a free mattress in the goodie basket given to the presenters at the Academy Awards.

After ten years Tempur-Pedic posted average yearly sales increases of 49 percent, with sales reaching the $150 million range in 2002. Also in that year the parent company was sold to two private equity firms after Fagerdala decided it needed to divest the business and gain liquidity. A limited auction was conducted and the two bidders, TA Associates and Friedman Fleischer & Lowe, ultimately decided to combine their efforts, resulting in a $350 million leveraged buyout. TA Associates, a growth capital firm founded in 1968, had become aware of Tempur-Pedic a year earlier when an associate saw one of the company's mattresses at a friend's house. He contacted Trussell about TA Associates' interest in investing in the business, but nothing came of that initial contact. Trussell was retained as CEO of Tempur World and no major changes in the business were anticipated, although TA Associates hoped to bring some of its experience to bear in taking Tempur-Pedic and Tempur World to the next level. The equity firm was also well versed in the ways of taking companies public, a possibility that the new owners would not rule out for Tempur World in the future.

Principal Subsidiaries: Temper Medical Inc.

Principal Competitors: Advanced Comfort; Contour-Pedic Sleep Inc.

Further Reading:

Cullen, Laura, "Shaping Your Spine Helps Shape His Success," Lane Report, October 1994, p. 20.

Dooley, Karla, "Lexington, Ky., Company Looks to Boost Hospital-Mattress Market Share," Lexington Herald-Leader, June 17, 2002.

------, "Private Equity Firms to Buy Lexington, Ky.-Based High-Tech Mattress Maker," Lexington Herald-Leader, October 12, 2002, p. 1.

Gruner, Stephanie, "Outsourcing Your Sales Force," Inc., May 1996, p. 107.

Source: International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 54. St. James Press, 2003.

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Address: Website: www.tempurpedic.com Company Perspectives: Finally, the technology revolution that changed how we work, travel and communicate is beginning to change how we sleep, relax, travel and live. Key Dates: 1991: The Tempur-Pedic mattress is introduced in Sweden by Fagerdala World Foams. 1992: Tempur-Pedic Inc.

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Factor: entreprenuership
In the late 1990s Brookstone decided not to discount the pillows because they have something that no one else does. Him deciding not to discount the pillow is an example of entreprenuership because he knows the value of it. They income year to year is $300,000, $2.6 million, $6.5 million, $13 million, $28 million, $45 million.

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Tempur Sealy annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2021. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses are subtracted to arrive at net income.

Tempur Sealy revenue for the quarter ending September 30, 2021 was $1.358B, a 19.96% increase year-over-year.

Tempur Sealy revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2021 was $4.628B, a 32.57% increase year-over-year.

Tempur Sealy annual revenue for 2020 was $3.677B, a 18.38% increase from 2019.

Tempur Sealy annual revenue for 2019 was $3.106B, a 14.91% increase from 2018.

Tempur Sealy annual revenue for 2018 was $2.703B, a 0.09% increase from 2017.

Compare TPX With Other Stocks

Tempur Sealy International, Inc. is involved in the development, manufacturing and marketing of bedding products primarily in North America and internationally. It provides mattresses, adjustable bases, pillows and other sleep and relaxation products. The company's brand portfolio includes Tempur(R), Tempur-Pedic(R), Sealy(R), Sealy Posturepedic(R), Optimum(TM) and Stearns & Foster(R). Tempur Sealy International, Inc., formerly known as Tempur-Pedic International Inc., is headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky.

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Tempur Sealy annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2021. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses are subtracted to arrive at net income.

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The main marketing message for his mattresses

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The main marketing message for his mattresses

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There marketing strategy was if you have back pain you need this mattress. It is like the marketing strategy of if you care about safety buy this car.

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Factor: Land
In 1996 The New Yorker gave discounts to direct response advertisers. The price went from 25k per ad down to 6k per ad. This advertising also increased mattress sales in-store. It increased the profits by a huge amount. He used the land in New York to market his product to direct consumers.

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LEXINGTON, Ky. - Tempur Sealy International announced Monday it expects to open its first Tempur-Pedic retail location in Manhattan, N.Y. in June.

This one-of-a-kind store in the Bloomberg building will provide customers with a luxury retail experience, and ensure customers have an opportunity to try out and select the right sleep solution for their personalized needs. The company also announced that on Friday it expects to officially open its 56th store at the Walt Whitman Mall on Long Island, N.Y. The company expects to operate 75 to 80 Tempur-Pedic retail locations by the end of 2020.

Tempur Sealy also noted that it is test marketing its latest compressed mattress offering, the TEMPUR-Cloud, online only in select high-density population markets, including Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle. The TEMPUR-Cloud mattress is the company's premium "bed-in-a-box" offering, providing the high quality and premium feel of Tempur-Pedic, at an entry level price point and in a convenient shipped-to-your-door format. Tempur Sealy also offers compressed mattresses for consumers at all price points, including its Sealy and Cocoon by Sealy mattresses available at Sealy.com and CocoonbySealy.com and retailers across the U.S.

Scott Thompson, Tempur Sealy president and CEO commented, "Our direct to consumer business is growing rapidly and is a significant contributor to the company's profits. This business has been very profitable from its inception and has allowed us to diversify our business while getting closer to our customer. This is consistent with our approach of being wherever customers want to shop and it certainly strengthens our powerful omni-channel distribution model.

"With thousands of retail partners across the world, third party retail distribution has been, and is expected to continue to be, the backbone of our business. Our broad base omni-channel distribution helps us to deliver on our mission to improve the sleep of more people, every night, all around the world."

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First Tempur-Pedic retail to open in Manhattan in June

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LEXINGTON, Ky. - Tempur Sealy International announced Monday it expects to open its first Tempur-Pedic retail location in Manhattan, N.Y. in June. This one-of-a-kind store in the Bloomberg building will provide customers with a luxury retail experience, and ensure customers have an opportunity to try out and select the right sleep solution for their personalized needs.

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Factor: Capital
In 2012 "The other companies kept looking at us like that until it got to the point where we were growing so fast that we could have bought any one of the major mattress companies easily.” (Tempur, of course, did end up purchasing Sealy in 2012 for $228.6 million.) He used their company for their buildings to produce more products.

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Lexington-based Tempur Sealy International, Inc., netted $2.75 billion in sales in 2017, employs some 7,000 workers at its 58 manufacturing facilities-35 of them international-and is credited with forever revolutionizing the mattress industry, thanks to its innovative TEMPUR® memory foam material, a true novelty when it was first marketed in the early 1990s.

But the story of how Tempur got its start is decidedly less grandiose-full of dogged marketing calls to retailers, free pillow samples to chiropractors and an initial marketing plan that targeted truck drivers as a key market audience. (In its earliest days, the TEMPUR material was marketed as a mattress topper, rather than a full mattress.)

Robert "Bobby" Trussell-Tempur's founder and former president and CEO who, despite retiring in 2006, continues to serve as the company's board vice chairman-shared the success of his epic and unexpected pivot from a background in horse racing to becoming CEO of a publicly traded mattress company in a recent podcast of NPR's "How I Built This" with Guy Raz. "I'm just a little horse guy. So, the mattress thing, we learned it as we went," said Trussell, a native of Milwaukee, who fell in love with horse racing as a teen and moved to Lexington to work in the industry. "I could hardly spell 'mattress' when we started. But I swerved into this extremely exciting product, and the next thing I know, 10 years later, I'm ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange."

In both a recent interview with Business Lexington and in the NPR podcast, Trussell emphasized that luck and persistence were key factors in Tempur's success. He sees his unexpected business turn as testament to the power of being in the right place at the right time, or perhaps even an answer to a prayer.
A soft market
In the early 1990s, after the failure of a series of Thoroughbred investing and advising businesses during an industry downturn, Trussell found himself nearly a million dollars in debt, with two mortgages and a wife and young children to support. He turned to his faith, started attending Mass daily, prayed for help and vowed to put himself in a headspace where he would say "yes" to any viable business opportunity that came along.

After a few failed ventures-including an ill-fated company that marketed a negative ion air purifier, as well as a 900-number to offer daily horse picks for tracks around the country-Trussell didn't know which way to turn next, he said. Then, a call came from a Swedish horse chiropractor friend Trussell had met through his various European equine dealings. He wanted Trussell to meet Mikael Magnusson, a Swedish businessman who, with his partner Dag Landvik, had adapted a material initially developed by NASA to absorb G-forces during flight into their own, proprietary memory-foam prototype. Trussell met Magnusson in fall 1991, slept on the product, and immediately sensed he had something special. At a time when spring mattresses were the only thing on the market, Trussell knew the foam had the potential to disrupt the industry.

After bonding over a shared love of horses, Magnusson agreed to give Trussell exclusive North American distribution rights for his product, providing he could sell at least 10,000 mattress toppers in the first year. He sold 70. And yet despite the sluggish early start, Magnusson stuck with Trussell, who had founded Tempur-Pedic to market the product in 1992. "He was like my Swedish alter-ego. We talked every day for 12 years," Trussell said.

Trussell secured initial funding for his venture mainly through family and friends and former horse industry investors who, he had to assure would make money on this newfangled mattress concept, despite it being outside any of their areas of expertise.

During the early days, Trussell sold equity in the firm to keep things going, even though entrepreneurs are often advised against that approach. "I'd rather have 5 percent of something really big than 51 percent of something small," he said in the podcast.

Meanwhile, he was relentless with his marketing, focusing at first on getting Tempur pillows into chiropractors' offices and catalogs for direct sales and then into retail stores. He called the purchaser for Brookstone daily, until after a few months, the guy returned his messages simply to ask Trussell to stop calling. But that was the foothold Trussell needed.

While on the phone, he asked the buyer to be sure to at least take the sample pillow out of its box and try it before he said no. A few minutes later, the rep called back and placed an order for 500 pillows. "That was a huge moment" for the company, Trussell said in the podcast. "Within two weeks we were the hottest-selling new product at Brookstone."

"Others in the industry looked at us like we were going to be another flash in the pan, like waterbeds. They kept looking at us like that until it got to the point where we were growing so fast that we could have bought any one of the major mattress companies easily." - David Fogg

That success started the company's upward trajectory and eventually allowed Tempur to begin aggressively marketing its now full-sized mattresses in the United States and expanding its production facilities, which until that time had still been solely Swedish-based.

"We had a functionally superior product, which really changed the mattress industry," said David Fogg, one of Trussell's first investors, who went on to serve as Tempur's president of sales for 12 years. As Tempur started to grow, "others in the industry looked at us like we were going to be another flash in the pan, like waterbeds," Fogg said. "They kept looking at us like that until it got to the point where we were growing so fast that we could have bought any one of the major mattress companies easily." (Tempur, of course, did end up purchasing Sealy in 2012 for $228.6 million.)
Well-supported positioning
Not only did the material itself upend the mattress industry, but Tempur's marketing and pricing approach did as well. While spring-based mattress companies had traditionally worked with retailers to encourage seasonal sales and discounts, as well as shared, locally driven marketing, Tempur did none of that. Its mattresses retailed for a single set price, hundreds of dollars more than the previous market average. And instead of ads in local daily newspaper, it designed its own national ad campaigns in top-flight publications such as USA Today and the Wall Street Journal-to the tune of some $60 million to $70 million a year.

"I give credit for that approach to my previous partner Mikael Magnusson," Trussell said. (Magnusson and Landvik sold their shares in the company in 2002, when Tempur was purchased by two private equity companies, before it went public in 2003.) "His view was, when you have something that no one else has, you don't discount the technology." Turns out, the higher pricepoint and added cachet that came with it helped fuel the company's success. "Discounting would have compressed our margins, making it more difficult for us to grow at the rate that we did," Trussell said.

Trussell's marketing savvy-and willingness to take risks, a skill honed from his years in the horse-racing industry-helped launch Tempur Sealy into the multi-billion-dollar international company it is today. Trussell was inducted into the Kentucky Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2016. "Bobby just has a great feel for business, and his 'superpower' is understanding product positioning and the customer's need," said current Tempur Sealy International CEO and chairman Scott Thompson, who took the helm in 2015.

These days, Trussell, 67, is enjoying semi-retirement with his wife of 32 years, Martha, and his three grown children, son Robbie and daughters Anne and Emmy, both of whom work with him in his new business endeavor, Clean Media. Launched in 2016, the venture matches "family friendly" ads with Christian and other family-focused websites. Trussell is also an active advocate and financial supporter of a national Catholics Come Home outreach campaign-work he sees as a way of paying back that long-ago answered prayer.

In his work with Tempur, something always resonated with Trussell, as much or more than the bottom line: the product's ability to make a difference in people's lives. On the podcast, he talked about receiving heartfelt personal notes from customers who credited their Tempur-Pedic mattresses with ending excruciating back and neck pain.

"When I was in the horse business with my live-foal company [before the bust], we were making money. We were arbitraging stallion season and doing really well. But I felt like I wasn't really helping anyone. I was just helping one rich guy sell something to another rich guy," Trussell said. "And when I got into the mattress business, I saw that we were really helping people, and it felt amazing."

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Mattress entrepreneur Bobby Trussell Recounts Challenging Road to Reshaping an Industry

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Lexington-based Tempur Sealy International, Inc., netted $2.75 billion in sales in 2017, employs some 7,000 workers at its 58 manufacturing facilities-35 of them international-and is credited with forever revolutionizing the mattress industry, thanks to its innovative TEMPUR® memory foam material, a true novelty when it was first marketed in the early 1990s.