Zalmon Gilbert Simmons II (November 2, 1870 – April 26, 1934) was an American businessman, manufacturer, philanthropist and innovator.

II was commonly referred to as "the Chief" for his ability to recognize possibilities and make decisions that many felt were foolish but would prove to be extremely profitable.

[1] His unshakable character increased the company's profits from less than $5,000,000, when he became president, to over $40,000,000 at the peak of his incumbency and revolutionized the bedding industry.

[2] After returning home from military school Zalmon married Francis Ethridge Grant, the daughter of a Wisconsin lumberman, on September 6, 1892.

Skakel, founder of the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation paid Francis Simmons $160,000 for the property ($2 million today).

[8] The Simmons Manufacturing Company was known from its inception for woven wire mattress springs, cradles, metal beds and wooden folding chairs.

II's desire to revolutionize the company would eventually lead to a mass-produced pocketed coil innerspring mattress known as the Beautyrest.

The success of this new business venture led to the purchase of Atlanta, Georgia mattress maker Hirsch and Spitz and a Seattle plant in 1919.

[9] When Zalmon G. Simmons II took over the company after his father's death in 1910 he continued the tradition of innovation set by his predecessor.

This new mass-produced innerspring mattress was made of individual cloth pocketed coils that contoured to the body and led to a new world of sleep comfort.

In 1901, a planning mill operator in Canada named James Marshall patented the first innerspring mattress with individual cloth pocketed coils.

Since the Marshall inner-springs were made by hand they were very expensive, appearing only in few lavish hotels and on luxury ships such as the Titanic and the Lusitania.

In 1922 he charged a top Simmons engineer named John Franklin Gail with the task of inventing a machine that could mass-produce pocketed coil inner-springs.

After three years of dedication Gail finally returned to "the Chief" with the "Beautyrest Pocket Machine", a piece of machinery that revolutionized the bedding manufacturing industry.

He was also able to sell it for three to four times the price of other padded bedding because of his belief in educating the masses on the importance of good sleep combined with faith in effective marketing and advertisement.

In its first year of production the Beautyrest sold 16,168 units with effective marketing campaigns sales drastically increased to 464,214 by 1929.

At $39.50 this was three to four times the cost of the solid pad mattress that were commonly sold, there was also an objection to a manufacturer setting the price.

On September 19, 1925, The Saturday Evening Post ran the first full-page advertisement for the new Beautyrest mattress with its innerspring pocket coils and a headline that read, "Give Your Tired Brains and Body This Chance to Renew Their Energy Every Night".

"[12] After this first wave of announcements, Simmons ran a series of advertisements from 1928 to 1929 in The Saturday Evening Post that featured celebrities such as H. G. Wells, Thomas Edison, George Bernard Shaw and Henry Ford.

After Will Rogers underwent a surgical procedure he sent a wire stating that "THERE SHOULD BE A LAW THAT NO PERSON IS ALLOWED TO BE OPERATED ON WITHOUT HAVING A SIMMONS MATTRESS TO RECUPERATE ON".

[2] Simmons facility at the Mellon Institute in Oakland, Pennsylvania consisted of an eight bedroom suite where researchers could measure different variables during the sleep trials.

[13] Including: The study found that: "People do not sleep like logs; they move and turn from twenty-two to forty-five times a night to rest one set of muscles and then another. "