Fire destroyed the building but not the mission of Hopewell mattress manufacturer

HOPEWELL – If Justin Faison learned anything from a March 2023 fire that destroyed his family’s company headquarters and warehouse, it was this: Don’t sleep on a business whose business is how people sleep.

“We were basically out of business for six weeks,” Faison, the owner and CEO of Winndom Mattress, recalled. “The fire was on March 19, and we were back in business on May 1.”

In this instance, the grieving process and the process of handmade mattress manufacturing ran parallel. Faison, son-in-law of the late founder of the business, understood the catastrophic consequences of the fire, but he also understood that even though the building had gone up in smoke, the mission could not.

“We had a lot of back orders the time we were out,” Faison said. “We told them to just keep taking orders, and by the first of May, we’d have it to them. It ended up working out.”

Nine months after the fire wiped out its main facility on Rev. CW Harris Street, Winndom Mattress has set up shop in a building on Randolph Road just across the railroad tracks from downtown Hopewell. Like the products it makes, the new facility is a work in progress – beams show where the office ceilings will soon be, and some areas are in need of a paint job – but in the area where the mattresses are made, workers move briskly among the various stations.

Wood sits on the floor waiting to be framed into bed bases. Several dozen coil-spring mattress skeletons rest against the wall waiting for their turn to be covered. Finished products are wrapped in plastic and moved to the loading dock ready to be put into delivery trucks.

The only reminders of the March 19 fire are photographs of the scene ... and of course the memories of Faison and the workers as they watched the late-night blaze.

“It was a Sunday, and I got the call Sunday night around 10:30 that there was a commercial building fire on our street,” Faison said. “I didn’t know at the time it was our building. I got to the scene around 11:15 or something like that, and it already was a total-loss collapse. There were two ladder trucks on it shooting water, and then it was over with.”

Since most of Winndom’s mattresses are made to order, Faison said there was not much finished stock in the warehouse. However, they lost a lot of materials.

“We lost everything,” he said.

To this day, Faison said, he does not really know what caused the fire. His assumption is that it was electrical.

Of seeing the building burn, Faison said, “It was probably one of the most helpless feelings of my life.”

Winn Butterworth, the company founder, sold mattresses for a living until, according to his online obituary from 2013, he “quickly learned he could produce a better product himself.” With the help of his partners and close friends, he founded “Custom Comfort by Winn,” a company priding itself on handcrafting each mattress individually, in 1989.

Operating out of the location on Rev. CW Harris Street – it was known as Terminal Street then – Butterworth’s company churned out mattresses that were sold by various furniture stores around the area. One of those stores bears the family name of Butterworth, who Faison said are Winn’s cousins.

When Winn Butterworth died at age 60 in 2013, his daughter and son-in-law, Carman and Justin Faison, took over management of the company. One of Winn’s original partners, Chuck Lynch, still works for the family.

“I thought it was all over,” Lynch said about his recollections of the fire. Asked how he thought his friend Winn would have reacted to the catastrophe, Lynch said softly, “Lord, it probably would have killed him. He would have had a heart attack.”

Not allowing themselves much time to grieve, Faison said he got on the phone the very next morning and began calling his vendors. Some of them already had heard, but others he said were just in shock. Instead of giving up on them, Faison said his customers were completely sympathetic to the plight and told him they would be ready to take his products when they were ready to ship them.

Faison also said Hopewell city government was beside them right from the start.

“I talked to Charles Bennett the next day,” Faison said, referring to the city’s economic development director. From that day forward, he said, Bennett helped him secure temporary locations to continue making the mattresses and assisted in finding the space where Winndom eventually decided to set up shop.

“I can’t say enough about what they did,” Faison said.

In addition to the handmade mattresses, Winndom also makes the so-called “bed-in-a-box” which is a mattress decompressed and rolled into a narrow box that is easier for buyers to transport than the standard mattress. Once the mattress is filled and sized, it is put into a roller that removes all the air from it and gets it ready to be boxed.

The first bed-in-a-box was manufactured in 2004.

Faison said he thinks his late father-in-law would be pleased with how the company bounced back from disaster to rebuild and even flourish. He also said Winn Butterworth would be pleased with the new Randolph Road location.

Lynch, Winn’s partner and old friend, agreed. The only thing Winn might have fussed about was the cost, he thought.

“He would have thought the technology was too expensive,” Lynch said. “He could pinch a penny so hard, he’d make Lincoln scream.”

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: After devastating fire, Hopewell mattress maker is almost all the way back