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Mattress Outlet
is getting a new
name and expanding

THE local ownership of Mattress Outlet is staying, but the name is outtahere and will be replaced by America's Mattress, effective Saturday.

President and founder Chris Eldridge and Tom Anderson, vice president and general manager, are expanding the 12-year-old business -- opening new stores on the mainland -- and will own 19 stores by month's end, seven of them in Hawaii.

"We operate stores on the mainland as America's Mattress and have been running Mattress Outlet here, where we started," Eldridge said.

The mainland stores are in Sacramento, Calif.; Reno, Nev.; and western Washington state.

With the name change, the retailer is joining a network of nearly 400 locally owned and operated America's Mattress stores in 37 states selling Serta mattresses.

Ownership twist

We often hear about local businesses being bought by mainland companies but the opposite is true for Celebrity Tuxedos.

Formerly Gary's Tux Shops, the formal-wear shop within three Oahu Sears stores -- and wholesaler to other isle formal wear shops -- was purchased out of bankruptcy a year ago by Ron Bongiovanni.

Bongiovanni, who originally worked in his father's formal wear business in Rochester, N.Y, came to Hawaii about 20 years ago, he said. Bongiovanni went to work for Celebrity Tuxedos, then based in Illinois.

Business mergers and name changes occurred while Bongiovanni learned more about the business, shifting from the retail store on Kapahulu to the company's laundry and dry-cleaning operations at Campbell Industrial Park.

Then, two years ago, "we got what we thought was bad news, that we were going to be out of work," he said.

Gary's, the largest formal wear company on the West Coast, had merged with East Coast big dog Gingiss Formal Wear "and it just grew too big and consequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy," he said. "I got a call from my boss saying that Hawaii was such a small operation that they were just going to close it up."

Thirty people, including Bongiovanni, would be left unemployed.

The call came in November 2003.

The players who bought Gary's and Gingiss out of bankruptcy had no interest in doing business out of isle Sears stores and planned "to walk away from Hawaii," Bongiovanni said.

"That's when God opened up the door for us."

"Sears approached us and said they liked us and liked the job we were doing in Hawaii. I was going to struggle it out through the wholesale business, but now I had (the opportunity to run) retail and wholesale. That was a blessing," he said.

Bongiovanni supplies most tuxedo shops in the state, through Bonjon LLC, under which Celebrity Tuxedos is a trade name.

"We are the only local wholesaler in the state," he said.

The deal closed on April 15, 2004, and since then Bongiovanni has employed the biblical principle of tithing 10 percent of each wedding tuxedo rental to the church where the ceremony is performed, or to the officiating minister's home church.

"We stress with employees that this is not a hook" or promotional ploy, he said.

The company writes checks to about 15 to 20 churches each month, "and we send it in the bride and groom's name," he said.