Sleep Therapy, Sleep Care, Back Therapy and Simply Kids mattresses are widely promoted brands on the national market.

The manufacturer, family-owned Wickline Bedding Company, has operated in on Quince Street in Escondido for nearly 60 years.

"A lot of people don't know we're here," president Mike Malkiewicz said. "They drive by thinking we're a school or something."

Inside Wickline's 60,000-square-foot building are 65 employees moving sets of springs around with forklifts, hammering wooden mattress frames, and taping and sewing fabric on to them. Some operate machines that join the various layers of material together and do the quilting.

There are a few people who sit at small sewing machines. Staff turnover is low; the average employee tenure is 14 years. One employee has been with Wickline for 38 years.

The company brings in about $20 million in annual sales in a good year, Malkiewicz said. It's a long way from when founder Roy Wickline began making mattresses by hand without pay in San Diego during the Great Depression. The manufacturer moved to Escondido in 1983 in order to better serve Los Angeles and Riverside.

Wickline sold the company to Ray Malkiewicz, Mike's father, in 1978. Ten members of the Malkiewicz family now work at the Escondido site.

A strong local network began in the late 1940s when three friends started businesses that supported each other. When Wickline started his company, his friend Vincent James "Jim" Navarra founded a furniture warehouse in San Diego.

That operation, Strep Warehouse, has been renamed Jerome's, after Navarra's son, and the two companies still have close ties. Jerome's is the exclusive outlet in San Diego County for Wickline mattresses, Malkiewicz said.

Wickline Bedding also sells to Sit N Sleep, Sleep America and Famsa -- a Latino-oriented chain of 57 stores based in Los Angeles, he said. They have a contract division that sells to resorts such as La Costa Resort, Rancho La Puerta, Golden Door and some of the finer hotels on the Las Vegas strip.

The company has associate factories in Greenville, S.C., Omaha, Neb., and Oklahoma City, as well as a distribution facility in Sacramento, and a licensee in Seoul, South Korea.

With new-home sales in a sharp decline, Wickline's gross income has plunged 30 percent this year.

"We have had some layoffs, but mainly in entry-level positions," Malkiewicz said. "We are doing all we can to provide work to our skilled employees so they'll still be here when the economy rebounds."

"We just committed to making Mondays an optional day, meaning if we have the production, we will work," he said. "We are at the mercy of our customers and if they aren't seeing traffic, we aren't seeing orders."

Wickline sells its products to distributors in 14 Western states and eight countries, at a cost of up to $1,500 for a queen size. Some of the 2009 models will go up to $2,500.

The company seeks advice from orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists and chiropractors to produce designs that relieve pressure, mainly on the lower back, shoulders and neck.

He said the company will increase its selling efforts in its contract division and introduce a mattress for the cruise ship industry.

"We are developing an ultra premium line of bedding that is similar in design to the very expensive European models such as Hastens, Vi-Spring and Duxiana," he said. "You will see a new line of bedding made from soy-based gel named Gellogic."

He said this would make the beds more recyclable at the end of their life, and would reduce the usual off-gassing from the various foams used by the industry.