London Bridge Linens celebrates 25 years

LAKE HAVASU CITY, ARIZ. — This month marks a milestone for institutional bedding manufacturer London Bridge Linens as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. Owners Gary and Carole Hettick started their business in 1979, after relocating from Seattle.

"We began in a modest 10-by-10 storage building across from our current location with one employee who worked two hours each morning sewing mattress pads," explained Gary Hettick. "When she finished, we would call waterbed retailers, trying to sell what had been sewn that day."

Within a short time, London Bridge Linens expanded to two storage units, then four. The company hired another seamstress, working for six hours a day. In its second year, London Bridge grew to six employees strictly sewing mattress pads.

In the fall of 1983, the company ran out of space again, and decided to launch a building program for a larger and more permanent facility. The new location broke ground in April 1984 and, by October, the company was able to move into its present location.

Today, London Bridge Linens, with its staff of 22 employees, supplies the hospitality industry with a variety of mattress pads, sheets, bedspreads and specialized linens. These products can be found in such places as cruise ships, hospitals, health care facilities, prisons, specialty linen shops and waterbed stores.

"Our ability to manufacture quality bedding for any mattress, no matter how thick or how oddly shaped, has proved a tremendous asset to many customers around the globe," said Hettick. "From our humble beginnings, we have always focused on quality of workmanship and customer service. With steady growth over a quarter of a century, our one-on-one customer relationships have not changed. We still apply painstaking attention to the details of every order."

London Bridge Linens offers its products through several local retailers, over the Internet and through its showroom, where the public can purchase its entire product line.