Bedding producers and a range of healthcare and hospitality brands have long been key targets for Vara Home, a contract manufacturer of mattress fabrics and covers, fire-retardant solutions, mattress pads and protectors, comforters and duvets, sheets, and pillow shells and covers.
Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Shanghai, Vara Home develops, produces, and supplies a variety of textile and nontextile goods, with capabilities that span style and design, specialty yarns, weaving, knitting, finishing, and cut and sew. The company has factories in seven Asian countries and in Colombia in South America, and it has a global sales team based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Vara Home couldn’t expand its horizons much farther in terms of its customer base, says President Bruce Wolno. “We’re dealing with pretty much every major player you can think of, and most major brands, either directly or through their licensees,” he says. “Our name doesn’t show up on their branded goods. … But you can imagine that pretty much every major foamer and fabricator, we’re working with closely.”
Indeed, the list includes a veritable who’s who of the industry, according to the company’s website: Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Stearns & Foster, Serta, Beautyrest, Mattress Firm, Awara, Dreamcloud, Nectar, Puffy, Casper, AllerEase, and Even Temp.
Building a business
Wolno knew Vara Home owner Eddie Xu from their time together working at textile manufacturer Springs Industries (now Springs Global and based in Brazil). Springs had purchased an earlier business of Xu’s in China, and after their noncompete agreement ended, Xu started Vara Home Fashions (Shanghai) Company Ltd.
“So, he bought a large printing and dyeing facility, and we started up Vara very much in the consumer retail bedding side of the business for the first five, six, seven years,” Wolno says. “Then we started to build up more of a hospitality/institutional side of our business as well. And that led into some healthcare products.”
Pictured above: Bruce Wolno, president of Vara Home, says the company provides mattress fabrics and covers for most major industry players.
Those became the three main business units for Vara Home, and the product line expanded as requests came in and opportunities arose for various ancillary offerings. “As we started doing more white goods, I just happened to know a lot of people in the pillow industry, so I said, ‘I’m making pillowcases; I can make your pillow shell,’ ” Wolno says. “From there, we had someone in the bedding industry reach out and say, ‘Are you guys doing knits for the foam industry? Could you help us out?’ [And I said,] ‘We’re making knit-fitted sheets for healthcare. Give us a sample; let’s see what we can do.’ ”
Expanding its range of offerings also expanded the business. “When I joined Vara, it was mostly pillow shells,” says Vice President Mike Mucciarone. “We’ve since expanded to many other things … whether it’s sheets, pillowcases, mattress toppers, zippered covers, FR solutions. That’s how we’ve evolved over time and been able to not just capture market share from what’s out there, but also expand within our own horizons and be more valuable to our customers.”
Mucciarone joined Vara Home from Springs about 10 years ago, Wolno recalls. “And I said, ‘You’re not going to sell to retail anymore. But you’re going to go sell to all the people that you were selling against.’ Having that retail knowledge and experience obviously helped, and he’s been leading that group,” Wolno says.
Another member of the leadership team, Andy Strickland, has been with Vara Home for five years as director of new business development. With his background on the foamer side of the business, he was brought in to develop new accounts.
The company also recently hired a new director of product design and innovation, Amy Bell, who brings “a lot of experience in the industry. And that’s a huge benefit for us to be able to continue to work more on the design and development innovation side of things,” Wolno says.
Growth potential
Today, Vara Home’s hospitality and healthcare sectors are well-established, mature lines of business sold directly through distributors, with modest growth opportunities. “We’re dealing with most of the major players at this point in time,” Wolno says.
The retail bedding side is where Wolno sees greater growth potential. Historically, that side has focused on dealing directly with original equipment manufacturers, although that’s changed a bit since manufacturers have begun merging with or acquiring major brands. “Prior to that, our approach to the market was just work with the OEM manufacturers on supplying them the product,” he says, which includes mattress fabrics, covers, FR solutions, and sleep accessories.
Although Vara Home does not take a direct-to-retail approach, the retail background of the company’s senior leaders has enabled the company to determine how to offer a variety of packaged sleep accessories. “We have a lot of great experience with packaging innovations, so we’ve been able to work on that with the manufacturers and/or brand owners and add on to the accessory-type products,” Wolno says. “For example, if folks need a turnkey, retail-ready product, we’ve worked with many of our manufacturers to be able to supply bundled sets”—which may include a pillow, sheets, and mattress encasements, as an example.
“Again, we aren’t working with retailers directly, but our background has allowed us to be able to support our customers and [their efforts],” he adds.
An international supply chain
With its corporate headquarters in Shanghai and a global sales team based in the United States, Vara Home’s customer base is about 85% U.S.-based.
Among the three business units, the company’s supply chain network stretches across nine countries, each with a country manager and multiple facilities. “We have a very good network,” Wolno says. “One of our goals, even prior to President Donald Trump’s first administration, was to make sure that we had resiliency plans for the majority of our products, if not all. That’s ultimately our goal in our categories, to have those resiliency plans among the various countries.”
That resiliency is designed to guard against potential disrupters: “Act of God, act of war, act of political decision-making,” Wolno enumerates wryly. “It’s worked very, very well for us. When COVID-19 hit China, we were already doing some hospitality products, as an example, in Pakistan. And when [the disease] moved over to Pakistan and India, we were able to revert things back over to China quickly. So, it’s worked in both our and our customers’ favor over the years to be able to toggle the same products, have them qualified in multiple countries.”
The ability to produce bedding out of China, Thailand, or Cambodia and cost-averaging those processes provides great flexibility for the customer base, Wolno notes. “The key phrase there is ‘risk mitigation,’” Mucciarone adds. “That’s really what our customers are looking for, and that’s why we did what we did. And it’s worked very much in our favor.”
Future expansions
To date, Vara Home has had modest sales in Canada, Mexico, and Europe, but going forward, Wolno hopes to expand further into international markets. “Whether it’s institutional and/or basic bedding, we continue to look at venturing into other countries in a bigger way,” he says. “We definitely have some objectives and goals, and we’re working on some projects. So, that’s a growth opportunity there. But really, we also want to continue to secure our business in the U.S. and continue to innovate new products with the new innovation head and our product-merchant teams.”
Once the bedding market normalizes from its post-COVID-19 lull, Wolno believes Vara Home will be primed for organic growth. “I look at the mattress [market] as having a long sales cycle, and when everyone ordered so much during COVID-19, it’s naturally slowed down the industry,” he says. “If we’re well positioned and doing the job that we can do and are doing, as the market itself—from a consumer standpoint—starts picking up and products start selling more, we should be in a good position.”
Member value
While Vara Home once “flew under the radar” within the broader bedding industry, its involvement with the International Sleep Products Association and other industry organizations and events has begun to raise its profile, says Strickland, who worked previously for major foamers and has focused on growth in OEM bedding since joining the company. “I always had a profound respect for what ISPA did for the industry,” he says. “And I had a lot of good relationships with some of the individuals who have driven the ISPA brand forward.”
Joining and becoming involved in ISPA and supporting the association’s efforts overall seemed like a constructive way to get the Vara Home name more attention, Strickland continues, adding that the company was a sponsor of the 2025 ISPA Industry Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. “That’s kind of the evolution of the path that we’ve taken, and where we are right now in terms of our involvement with ISPA,” he says.
Mucciarone says that involvement also has opened the door to establishing new and stronger contacts with potential and current customers, respectively. “It acts as a conduit for us to be able to expand our business even further. We appreciate that,” he says.
As large as the bedding industry seems, like many industries, it’s not actually that vast, Wolno adds. “There’s a lot of players that don’t leave,” he says. “They might move around. … I would say I’m a textile guy before I’m a mattress guy. But those events have been rewarding for me, personally, just from a networking standpoint. People are pretty open about what’s happening in the industry, and it’s been an interesting time coming into it with some of the challenges at hand, as well. And with us being able to be nimble and take advantage of some of those and benefit.
AT A GLANCE
Company Vara Home
Headquarters Shanghai (and Charlotte, North Carolina, in the United States)
Founded 2004 by Eddie Xu
Ownership Privately held, self-funded, and debt-free
Employees 70
Production locations China, Thailand, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Colombia
Specialty Full line of accessories for the healthcare, hospitality, and retail bedding industries
Key brands As a contract manufacturer, Vara Home provides products to major brands across the industry.
R&D Charlotte, Shanghai, and satellite locations in Thailand and Cambodia
Learn more varahomeusa.com
Customer First
From a philosophical and company-culture standpoint, Vara Home takes a “customer first” approach. That includes responding to requests within 24 hours, says Vice President Mike Mucciarone. “Speed and efficiency are what we’re built on. We excel at that,” he says. “And that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been as successful here lately as we have been.”
President Bruce Wolno agrees that customer service is the company’s top goal. “We always say, ‘If you don’t hear from us in 24 hours, give us a health check,’ ” he says. “Between us [in North Carolina] and our organization in Shanghai, where most of our product-merchant teams are … we’re a very customer-centric group. So, there’s a lot of communication that comes directly from our product-merchant teams as well as our customers.”
