It all started in 1999, when our founder, Shane Coker, at 28 years old, opened an unassuming little mattress store in Austin Texas.
He had sort of grew up in the industry, and after carrying all the big “S” brands (Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Spring Air) & new fad memory foam brands (Temperpedic,etc), and after experiencing all the different technologies & core components that were on the market, he came to realize firsthand what worked & what didn’t, what was real and what was fad, in sleep.
It didn’t take long to come to the realization that the normal, non-natural mattresses that were offered to the public were pretty toxically laden with chemicals, so he started carrying the big organic & natural brands that were available at the time.
Then, in 2007-2008, the fire-retardant standards in the US became even more draconic, and the normal, non-natural mattress brands across the country became even heavier laden with chemical fire retardants; full of volatile organic compounds, many that were known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, developmental neurotoxins, hormonal disruptors & obesogenics.
Zoom to a few years later, and everything that was offered in the little mattress store was either a natural or organic product, completely free of harmful chemical fire retardants.
So he changed the name of the little store to “Austin Natural Mattress”, which took off in a huge way. Local Austinites really took to the idea of a chemical free sleeping environment, and soon, he had opened stores across Texas, with the additions of the Dallas Natural Mattress & Houston Natural Mattress Stores.