Mattress Warehouse-Old Hickory

Kim Brown Knopf is a native of Louisville, Kentucky. Knopf attended Sacred Heart Academy, which she attributes to giving her a strong foundation in ethics and hard work. She was involved in many leadership activities while at the academy, including the Student Council, where she was elected President her senior year. Knopf also played on the basketball team for four years, winning the state championship in 1976.

After high school, Knopf attended the University of Kentucky, involving herself in many social organizations including the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. She received her BA in International Studies in 1982.

Kim Brown Knopf is the personification of the recipe for business success that says “take an idea and run with it”.

At the age of 23, less than a year out of the University of Kentucky, Knopf was working for an insurance company while thinking about starting her own business. She answered an ad looking for people to sell mattresses and started investigating the bedding market. Spotting an untapped market in West Virginia, she moved to Charleston in August 1983 and opened her very first store in October of that year.

Knopf knew most businesses fail because they are undercapitalized, and she wanted to be sure she had sufficient capital. Her first investors were the parents of her then-boyfriend, whom she later married.

“I began with one small store. For the first year, I had no full-time employees. I worked it all the time, so there was a real consistency in service,” Knopf recalled.

“There were days when I didn’t see any customers,” but soon a buzz began to build about her store. Knopf remembers being in a restaurant and overhearing other diners taking about the store. “It was the first specialty sleep shop in the state, offering brand names, on-hand inventory, good service and the guaranteed lowest prices,” she said.

For nearly three decades, she has continued that formula – adding a strong marketing presence and community involvement – as the company has grown into a regional powerhouse. Today, Innovative Mattress Solutions runs 150+ stores – under the names Sleep Outfitters, Mattress Warehouse, Mattresses Unlimited and Mattress King – in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Alabama. The company is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

Throughout her years in business, Ms. Knopf has always believed in being involved in local community business affiliations. She has served in leadership roles for several organizations including the Putnam County Rotary, the Charleston (WV) Chamber of Commerce, the Putnam (WW) Chamber of Commerce, and served in the Young President’s Organization for over fifteen years. However, marketing representatives and store managers from all over the company’s footprint participate regularly in local chamber, high school and YMCA organizations, to name a few.

Growing the business has presented challenges, but Knopf looks at those as opportunities to grow and learn. “When you start a business, everything is new,” she said. “There is no game book that says ‘this is what you do when you get to 20 stores or 30 stores’.”

She credits “having the right people in place” as an important reason for Innovative Mattress Solutions’ success. “When I’m hiring people I look for ability to grow with the company. Many of the people in the company have been with me for 15 plus years. I look for people who are a good fit. When you go from one store to 150+, those skills take on a new dimension,” Knopf said.

Her employees’ work ethic mirrors her own. “We were the first sleep shop of any size to put in a point-of-sale system from GERS [a software company]. Our controller worked on the transition for two months, sleeping in the office at night,” Knopf recalled. When the company expanded into Lexington, she rented a house and she and her team lived together all summer. “There was lots of team building and bonding; we’d come home and cook together and share the day.”

The result is a company that truly has a “family atmosphere.” When Knopf’s daughters were young, she would bring them to work with her, and that helped create a company that understands the importance of balancing work and family.

Company outings have helped forge bonds between employees, but what sets her staff apart, Knopf said, is that when one employee is in need due to an illness, death in the family or other tragedy, many in the company are willing to reach and do whatever is needed to help. “There is a genuine sense of caring that is pretty amazing,” she noted. “People take pride in what they contribute to the company and in their accomplishments.”

Ms. Knopf and her husband Ken celebrated 27 years of marriage in 2012. Together they have two daughters. Karrie is 26 and following in her parent’s footsteps as a graduate of the University of Kentucky, and serves as a market specialist for the company. Their youngest daughter Kristin is a recent graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, and now works as a human resources recruiter in the Washington, area.