Non-family member chosen to lead San Francisco's McRoskey Mattress
For the first time in its nearly 120-year-history, mattress retailer McRoskey Mattress of San Francisco has turned to a non-family member to lead day-to-day operations.
The company announced Vanessa Contreras, who became part of the management team in 2007, the new president of the Bay Area company.
Contreras reports to Robin Azevedo, the granddaughter of co-founder Edward McRoskey. Azevedo was president of McRoskey until the recent sale of the manufacturing, marketing and national distribution rights of the brand to Fresno-based Pleasant Mattress.
Under terms of that transaction, Pleasant planned to begin production of McRoskey products as of January 2019 at its manufacturing campus in California and will handle new product development, sales and marketing responsibilities for the brand nationally.
Azevedo, 77, the third-generation McRoskey family member who joined the company in 1980, will become brand ambassador and oversee the company’s three retail showrooms in the San Francisco area, including its prominent flagship location on Market Street. The announcement stated the company’s current sales staff and customer service team would remain in place.
Pleasant is a 160-employee manufacturer of mattresses operating in Fresno.
McRoskey’s new president, Contreras, joined the company in 2007 as human resources director. She was promoted to director of human resources and manufacturing in 2012, and was named vice president of human resources and manufacturing two years later.
Earlier, she spent nearly 17 years in various management posts at cleaning contractor PWC Hawaii, Levi Strauss and the Hotel Durant in Berkeley.
“McRoskey is a San Francisco institution and I am honored to have been chosen to lead our operations going forward. Robin has been a great mentor of the brand and we have a terrific management team and a sales team that will help us grow the business in the years to come,” Contreras stated in the company announcement. “Our consumer-driven culture and unique product story make the brand stand out in a crowded mattress retail space, and that will continue to drive our decision-making as we move forward.”
Contreras attended the University of Hawaii-Maui.
McRoskey, with a store in San Rafael, is a San Francisco heritage brand that has been making luxury sleep products since 1899. Brothers Edward and Leonard McRoskey started the business in San Francisco and Edward’s sons, Leonard and Robert, joined the family business in the 1930s after graduating from Stanford. Robert’s daughter, Robin Azevedo, joined the business in 1980.
