Business Spotlight

Blackberry Creek Mattress Outlet—
Helping the High Country Rest Well So They Can Live Better

Story by Sam Calhoun

On average, a regular person spends seven to eight hours of his/her day in a bed—the longest of any other activity of the day.

“If that bed doesn’t bring you rest, your quality of life is affected,” said Dick James, owner of Blackberry Creek Mattress Outlet, located at 7929 Highway 105 in the Shops at Twin Rivers in Foscoe. “It’s a great feeling to know that when a customer walks through our door, we can change their quality of life.”

Welcome to Blackberry Creek Mattress Outlet, where mattress sales center around an all-encompassing theme—rest well, live better. With dozens of mattresses and multiple brand names to choose from, Blackberry Creek sells beds from $100 to $10,000 and its employees are all trained to match customers with their perfect fit in a mattress.

“We’ve worked hard to find mattresses that fit all price points and value points that customers expect. And it works because we’ve sold mattresses to people who own the biggest to the smallest homes in the High Country,” said James. “That’s why it’s so important to have a diversity of product. When I came here, we quadrupled the size of the showroom. It’s really important in this business to offer customers a choice; that’s why we have the largest showroom in the area.”

Originally from West Virginia, James attended ASU in 1964 but left after one year to attend High Point College where he graduated with degrees in management and economics. After graduating, James took a job with Piedmont Airlines. He eventually became Piedmont’s vice president of strategic planning, but left the company after 25 years when US Airways bought it in a takeover. For the next 14 years, James continued to work in the airline industry for Boeing, serving as a vice president of marketing and vice president of Boeing Europe, spending his last three years before retirement living in Brussels, Belgium.

After retiring, James moved to an island 30 miles off the coast of Seattle, Wash. Even though he loved his adopted West Coast home, he missed his family that was scattered across North Carolina and eventually decided to move to the Southeast. Because the mountains reminded him of out west, James chose the High Country as a home base.

While getting acquainted with his new home, James started to feel the boredom associated with not working. He began to look around for businesses to buy and stumbled upon a mattress outlet for sale in Foscoe.

“I wanted to find a job where I could help other people and improve their quality of life,” said James.

Joann Malore opened Blackberry Creek Mattress Outlet five years ago in the Grandfather View Plaza in Foscoe, naming the store after one of her favorite vacation spots in Tennessee. In February 2007, James walked through the door and bought the store.

Before James arrived, Blackberry Creek served a good-sized clientele with the mattress brands of Spring Air and American Bedding. After James arrived, the selection grew to include the brands of Serta, Tempur-Pedic and Eclipse.
In addition to adding more brand names and a wider selection of mattresses, James hired new employees—there are now 10 total—and brought in a full line of sheets and mattress covers. He now classifies Blackberry Creek as a sleep shop, meaning that it offers the complete gamut of bedding products even though it specializes in mattresses.
“We’ve worked hard to become experts in the mattress area,” said James who hosts informal educational classes on new products every week or two for his employees. “We have good employees who give great customer service. We figure out who our customers are. There’s no commission here so we’re not pushing our products—we’re evaluating them and their specific needs, and it always ends up being a happy sale.

“We work hard to find ways to help people rest well and live better. Most people have a set notion of the type of bed that they want when they walk in our store, but we hope they’ll come with an open mind. We really believe that if people choose a good mattress that brings them rest and relaxation, it will improve their quality of life,” added James.

“We work really hard to make people happy,” said Blackberry Creek Mattress Outlet Manager Sherry Read. “[James] will work until the customer is happy. I’ve never seen a boss work so hard. He knows that if you’re trying to build a positive reputation, you have to go above and beyond for the customer.”

James often visits other sleep shops off the mountain to compare prices and selection. He believes, as one of his coworkers at Boeing used to say, that “you have to know your competition as well as they do, and you must know your own business better than they do.” Through this research, James said, surprisingly, you can get the same price on a mattress at his store as you can in any big city in the Southeast.

James loves his adopted home and business and is active in his local church. He enjoys running a business that doesn’t contain any of the “cruel and cutthroat” business tactics that he witnessed at times in the airline industry, he said.
“There really are some wonderful people in this region—I love them,” James said. “I plan to spend the rest of my life here.”

Blackberry Creek Mattress Outlet is located at 7929 Highway 105 in the Shops at Twin Rivers in Foscoe. The showroom is open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed on Sunday. For more information, call 828-963-5503 or click to www.blackberrycreekmattressoutlet.com.