New technologies, company expansions and acquisitions are bolstering innovations in foam.
Foam pouring looks a bit like magic. Producers combine a proprietary mixture of chemicals, that, after a short spell, cures into a solid slab ready for cutting and then use in mattress construction. As spellbinding as the process appears, it’s all science, nothing supernatural.
Behind every bedding foam product is chemistry, countless hours of research and hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in development. To stand out from the competition, producers offer additives like copper and graphene and properties like cooling, temperature regulation and antimicrobial protection, all in a variety of densities. Below, we dive into the latest developments and recent product launches in the world of foam.
Driving Revenue Growth Through Foam Innovation
It’s no secret that the sleep products industry is experiencing a bit of turbulence. No matter what type of foam bedding manufacturers seek right now, there is one predominant trend — value, says Mike Urquhart, national accounts manager for Council Bluffs, Iowa-based Future Foam.
Sustain and Allay lines of foam.
the same show, features eye-catching purple swirls.
In the May/June issue of BedTimes’ sister publication Sleep Savvy, contributing writer Julie A. Palm reported that consumers are spending more than ever on experiences, such as vacations and concerts. Right now, important purchases like mattresses are competing against — and often losing to — travel, entertainment and leisure. Michael Faus, senior vice president for Richmond, Virginia-based Carpenter Co., echoes Urquhart’s sentiment.
“The industry is in a tough situation,” Faus says. “With inflation and us competing against hospitality, i.e., people going out and traveling, what our customers are really looking for is that value proposition. They’re looking for quality product differentiation that brings great value at a very competitive price.”
To help capture customers in these market conditions, Faus says everyone in the bedding industry is looking for a competitive edge — and new products intended to do just that.
Beyond Traditional Memory Foam: The Latest Advancements
Traditional memory foam enjoyed being “foam of the moment” for a couple of decades, resonating with customers who responded to the feeling of sinking into or being cradled by the slow-response viscoelastic material.
Comfort through pressure relief, support and thermal management remains at the top of consumer expectations.”
However, the product’s tendency to trap heat led to a decline in traditional formulations — and a steady stream of new generations of memory foam with better airflow and other cooling features that maintain the feel consumers like.
In 2019, Carthage, Missouri-based Leggett & Platt Inc. acquired Elite Comfort Solutions and its subsidiaries Pacific Urethanes, Elite Foam and Peterson Chemical Technology. Over the past several years, that has proven to be a fruitful move, yielding new foams focused on thermal management.
“Comfort through pressure relief, support, and thermal management remains at the top of consumer expectations,” says Jason Jewett, vice president of product development for L&P. “As a result, our self-proclaimed ‘foam nerds’ at Peterson Chemical Technology continue their mission of formulating products that keep consumers comfortable throughout the night and not just upon initial contact.”
At ISPA EXPO 2024, Leggett & Platt introduced a family of thermal management hyper-conductive nano materials for foam infusion and coatings, and these new additives have “turbo-charged” cooling capacity in specialty foam layers. Another offering from L&P is its newly released, slow response Monet foam, named after the Impressionist painter.
Although it is a slow-recovery foam, it differs from a traditional viscoelastic foam due to its open cell design for breathability. The recovery rates of other slow-recovery foams can change over the product’s life cycle or, in a worst-case scenario, with just a short amount of use, but not Monet. “It is formulated in a way that the response time stays very consistent across the life of the product for consistent pressure relief,” Jewett says. “It’s critical to not just focus on a singular component of the mattress but also heed attention to how those layers interact with each other to deliver the best experience for the consumer.”
Providing breathable, comfortable support is also a focus of Future Foam. At this spring’s ISPA EXPO in Columbus, Ohio, Future Foam showcased its Allay memory foam, which debuted in February. Urquhart describes it as a “really slow, pneumatic memory foam.” At the trade show, Future Foam also highlighted its Allay Next foam with a phase-change material gel coating that makes it cool to the touch. It has “as high an airflow as you can have in any foam,” Urquhart says, thanks to technology that Future Foam licenses from Ostuni, Italy-based manufacturer New Wind. Future Foam states that it is the only company in the United States capable of making the product.
When BedTimes last reported on major foam industry trends in the summer of 2022, Mike McQuiston, Carpenter’s senior vice president of consumer products, said the company was set to release a new hybrid foam technology that fall. That product was Hybrid TheraGel. Like Carpenter’s Serene foam (launched in 2015 and among the company’s most popular foams), Hybrid TheraGel is less temperature sensitive than traditional memory foam and offers better temperature regulation thanks to its proprietary formulation. Hybrid TheraGel’s formulations include beads containing copper, silver and graphite additives.
Last year, Carpenter expanded its longstanding line of Isotonic memory foam grades with Isotonic+, one of its latest memory foam advancements. Isotonic+ and Hybrid TheraGel offer reduced motion transfer and are CertiPUR-US-certified.
Gaining a Competitive Edge Through Vertical Integration
Like L&P, Carpenter has made a series of strategic acquisitions during the past couple of years. In 2023, it acquired the engineered foams division of Brussels-based Recticel NV. Upon its completion, the acquisition “created the world’s largest vertically integrated manufacturer of polyurethane foams and specialty polymer products,” according to a news release. “(That acquisition) gives us a strong footprint in Europe and a little bit in the Middle East and Asia,” Faus says. “Recticel gives us more scale, more size, better logistics, all of those great things, but it gives us a lot of new technologies, which we could leverage and use in the United States and the bedding market.”
A few months later, in November 2023, Carpenter expanded again, acquiring the flexible foam assets of NCFI’s consumer products division, based in Mount Airy, North Carolina. The strategic acquisition bolstered Carpenter’s product offerings, along with its existing operations in nearby Conover, North Carolina.
While some executives are strengthening their companies’ foam businesses through acquisitions, others, like Phoenix-based bedding producer 3Z Brands, started from scratch. John Merwin, founder and CEO of 3Z Brands, has had a passion for foam since the early 2000s, when he first saw a demonstration of foam pouring. Merwin, who has been in the sleep products industry since 1999, acknowledges that the industry has changed significantly over the past few decades.
“The lines kind of started getting blurred on who was my supplier and who was my competitor,” Merwin says. His company’s mattress brands include Bear, Birch, Brooklyn Bedding, Helix, Leesa and Nolah.
“The foam manufacturers started making mattresses, and we were competing for the same customers,” Merwin says. “So, that’s really when we made the decision that we need to get as vertical as possible.” In early 2020, Merwin secured some land, and later that year, construction started on a new facility in Glendale, Arizona. 3Z Brands celebrated its first foam pour in June 2023.
“Today, we’re almost 100% self-sufficient on pouring all of our own grades of foam,” Merwin says. That includes the company’s conventional support memory foams, quilting foams and 10 specialty foams, such as Energex, in different densities. As a mattress maker that targets consumers, Merwin says one of the main things 3Z Brands strives to provide them with is durability. “We want to make sure that the foam we’re pouring and putting into the beds is going to withstand 10-plus years of use,” he says.
Now, Merwin says, 3Z Brands is starting to “play around with” additives, including copper, titanium and graphite, that have proven popular in the industry. As Merwin leads 3Z Brands’ foray into foam, he is tight-lipped about specifics but promises that there is “some pretty cool stuff” to come in the next few months. Whether that pun is intended or not, the industry will have to wait and see.
Closing the Loop: Foam Recycling and Circular Economy
Repurposing foam into other products at the end of its useful life isn’t a new concept, with some companies long transforming leftovers into carpet pads, pillows, stuffing for bus seats or even components for the automotive industry.
line of Isotonic memory foam grades.
since launching in 2015.
While those efforts are important and ongoing, some companies are also taking more expansive approaches to sustainability that go beyond recycling.
Circularity has become a bigger area of focus in the past few years. Bilbao, Spain-based renewable energy company Iberdrola defines the term as a form of design that advocates rethinking the process of creating a product from the beginning.
This year, L&P introduced its Rest in Pieces concept that rethinks how hybrid mattresses containing foams and pocketed spring units are constructed — and later dismantled. “We’ve taken a more holistic approach,” Jewett says. “We’ve carefully analyzed the entire mattress from a sustainability standpoint and considered how all those components work together. From a mattress standpoint, let’s consider everything together and how easily it can be deconstructed at the end of life in order to facilitate the recycling process.”
Rest in Pieces started with an L&P team reimagining a hybrid mattress construction. Affixing a thin polypropylene layer between the foams and spring unit creates easier separation, something that is particularly helpful if the various foam layers include mixes of latex and other foams that require different recycling streams. “From a sustainability aspect it’s hard to talk about either springs or foams individually without talking about the two of them and how they work together,” Jewett says. Jewett also highlights L&P’s EcoFlow family of products that exceed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s requirements for sustainable, bio-based content. EcoFlow foams use a castor-based polyol, resulting in a variety of foams with different performance technologies and densities.
Over at Carpenter, the company is investing capital in long-term circularity, namely converting foam back into a liquified form and then a chemical compound. “That’s one of the big investments that we’re making,” Faus says.
In addition to that, Carpenter has also created lower density foams that are performing better than their previous counterparts, which has a ripple effect on sustainability from creation to delivery. Using fewer materials to make the product reduces transportation costs due to the lighter weight, according to the company.
Future Foam continues to expand its Sustain line of products and add more biobased polyols to its lineup of offerings. And although it’s mostly under wraps, Future Foam reveals it is investing in an innovation center in Michigan. Spearheading that will be new hire Ted Smiecinksi. He joined the company with 30 years of experience in the chemical industry and will create new products.
Even though the bedding industry maybe be experiencing a bit of a downturn, it seems that innovation across the sector shows no signs of slowing down.
