David Perry
SHAOXING, China — A new four-story building rises on the far side of the Xilinmen Group’s 2 million-square-foot complex here.


It’s called Building F, a 520,000-square-foot mega-mattress plant that doubles the company’s production to 4,000 pieces per day.

It is, according to Xilinmen officials, the single largest mattress factory in the world. And it is taking dead aim at the U.S. market.

“The North American market is a most significant reason for the mattress plant expansion,” said David Zhong, who heads North America sales for Xilinmen (pronounced SHILL-a-men).

Another reason, company officials said, is to serve the rapidly growing Chinese market for Western-style bedding.

Some 80 million people in China’s population of 1.3 billion want and can afford Western styles and brand names, one Chinese bedding producer estimates.

Xilinmen’s mattress factory in this old eastern China city has attracted the world’s attention, including visits by a number of leading U.S. bedding producers, company officials said. They declined to reveal names.
In a brochure on the company, Xilinmen says it has been hailed as “The King of Bedding in China.”
Xilinmen, which means “happiness to your doorstep” in Chinese, has been dabbling in the U.S. market for the past couple of years.

*For the complete article, which is the second installment of David Perry’s three-part series, Inside China’s Bedding Industry, see the July 17 print issue of Furniture|Today.  David recently returned from a weeklong trip to China, where he visited mattress factories and foam and fiber suppliers. The series is also offered in an exclusive electronic report.  For more details and to order the report, click here for Inside China’s Bedding Industry.