A Letter From the Co-Founder, Alison
90+ Years ago, my great great grandfather started a mattress manufacturing business. For 5 generations, my family has proudly made mattresses in the USA and created thousands of jobs at our factory. In the last few years, we’ve observed the many new mattresses being sold on the internet, along with an increasing number of mattress retail stores. However, I began to notice a gap in the industry. There were many new mattresses and brands, but none were being designed for people with a bigger figure.
Much to my surprise, the trend in quality to support larger weight limits actually began to decline. “All-foam” mattresses and “slabs of foam in a box” began to populate the online mattress industry. The quality of national brand mattresses in stores continued to decline as the brands chased higher profit margins by using cheaper materials. I read hundreds of online reviews from plus size sleepers who publicly denounced these all-foam and cheaper quality mattresses as bad for their body type.
By this point in my career, I knew that our factory possessed the unique knowledge, experience and ability to create a better product. I knew it would be more difficult and take more time to produce such a high caliber of mattress, and require more costly materials, but the right design would yield an unparalleled mattress option for the plus size consumer.
I decided to partner with my father (co-founder), put our heads together, combine our knowledge, experience and unique perspectives, and create a new mattress brand! We assembled a team to design and build a mattress from the ground up, specifically for the underserved community of plus size and big & tall sleepers. We decided to sell the mattress online-only and to pair it with a wealth of information about the specifics of our mattress construction materials. With more education and transparent information, less consumers might be lured by the “all-foam” slabs and cheaper construction from the other mattress brands. Additionally, we wanted to make sure we could build a mattress that outperforms all mattress types, including other innerspring mattresses.
The Big Fig Mattress was designed, built and tested in 2016, and we’re excited to be able to share our hard work with you. Source: Big Figs Website