»memos

Serta Restokraft celebrates three generations of mattress making.

Allan Nahajewski

Contributing Writer

M attresses have come a long way
in 100 years.
Larry Kraft, 64, third-gener-
ation president and CEO of the Romulus-
based Serta Restokraft Mattress Company,
tells how his grandfather Harry made them
a century ago.
"The original mattresses were burlap sacks
stuffed with corn husks:' he says. "They
would put something over the surface of the
corn husks so you wouldn't have lumps. My
grandfather would crawl inside, smooth it
out and crawl out. Then they would sew it
across:'
Many of today's mattresses use gel-infused
memory foam — quite a difference from the
$1.90 mattresses of yesteryear.
This is the centennial for the family busi-
ness that Harry Kraft began in Detroit at
age 17. He came to America alone from
Lithuania through Ellis Island. He worked
briefly for Henry Ford but could not slow
his working pace down to assembly line
speed, so he was fired. He then bought a
used industrial sewing machine and, with
two partners, started making mattresses in
a woodshed. Fifteen million mattresses later,
the company is still going strong.
Fifty years ago, Harry presented then-
Michigan Gov. George Romney a mattress
to commemorate the company's 50th year.
Plans for the company's centennial celebra-
tion are still in the works.
The company has a lot to celebrate. Larry
says a few smart business moves kept the
company successful even during the recent
rough years in the state's economy — the
launch of a private-label mattress, the cre-
ation of the iComfort line of gel-infused
mattresses and a commitment to investing in
national advertising.
Serta Restokraft is a licensee of Serta,
which became the nation's leading mattress
maker in 2011. Larry Kraft is on Serta's
board of directors. If you're buying a Serta
mattress in Michigan, there's a 98 percent

26

February 14 • 2013

chance it was made in the Serta Restokraft
factory in Romulus.
The Kraft family has been active in the
Jewish community. Larry is on the board of
directors of the Holocaust Memorial Center
in Farmington Hills. A lobby in the build-
ing is named after his parents, who pro-
vided seed money for the center. The Krafts
worship at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield
Township and Temple Shir Shalom in West
Bloomfield.
Worker loyalty is a key part of the 100-
year Serta Restrokraft story.
Larry was just 18 during the 1967 riots,
but he has a strong, lasting memory of a
drive with his father down to the mattress
factory in Detroit.
"It was in the Warren-Grand River area,
across the street from a fire training station,
which was a depot for the National Guard.
As we were getting out of the car, I could see
that the employees had already driven down
and had stationed themselves on top of the
building with guns. They weren't going to let
anyone torch the factory. I know there were
several people killed just outside our building,
and I was quite astonished by the affection
and love for my grandfather and my father
and our business that they would jeopardize
their lives just to protect the building:'
Larry says his grandfather set the tone for
the company's relationship with the workers.
"He was a very strong man," Larry recalls.
"He would make a point of going down
into the factory when the rail car came and
would help unload it. He would take these
big hooks and grab the cotton bales, some
of them close to 600 pounds. The employees
developed a tremendous amount of respect
for him. There wasn't this distant feeling
between employer and employee. And that's
how I've tried to run my business:'
Larry's introduction to the family business
came early.
"When I was very young, my father would
take me down to the factory on a Saturday
and let me run loose. That's how the employ-
ees really got to know me. As I got older,
during the summers, I worked in the factory

at various positions, making mattresses,
packing mattresses. I didn't know it at the
time, but it was the way for my grandfather
and father to see what it was like for the
employees to work with me, so I wouldn't be
seen as the guy with the silver spoon."
Larry graduated from Dondero High
School in Royal Oak, then the Ohio State
University.
"After I graduated, my father wanted me
to work elsewhere first:' says Larry. He went
to work six months at the Serta operation in
Landover, Md. He came back to Detroit in
1972 and began working in the company's
sofa division, which has since been dis-
continued. He later served as the mattress
plant manager, a sales representative and
did almost every job in the company before
being named president and CEO in 2002.
The company outgrew its Detroit location
and moved to Romulus in 2000. "We tried
to stay in Detroit, but there really wasn't any
interest at the time in keeping us:' he recalls.
Describing the move, he calls it beshert —
or "meant to be:'
He began a search for a location that
would be convenient for employees. The
search took him to Romulus, where the
street names caught his eye. He checked
out a site on Kraft Boulevard and noticed a
nearby street named Hannan, the name of
his father's brother who had helped develop
the business.
"When I drove around with the mayor
of Romulus, we came across this parcel of
land:' he recalls. "The street name is Jay
Kay Drive. My wife's first name is Jackie. I
thought this must be the right place:'
After the move, all but one employee
stayed on. Today, the 120 employees at the
148,000-square-foot facility produce about
230,000 mattresses a year.
Larry and his wife, Jackie, have two grown
daughters, a son-in-law, a grandson and
another on the way. Will the business stay in
the family? "We're working on that:' he says.
"I happen to absolutely love coming into
work:' he says. "I've got the greatest bunch
of friends here. It's a real pleasure:'

❑

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Wright PLLC is
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