50 Fastest Growing Private Companies 2017: RELIEF-MART INC.

Agoura Hills CEO: Rick Swartzburg Growth Rate: 245% Memory foam mattresses, pillows and natural pain relievers are the big sellers of Relief-Mart’s product line. The company makes about 70 percent of its sales on the Amazon website. Its Snuggle-Pedic brand memory foam body pillow ranks as a bestseller in its category, with 75 percent of customers giving it five-star reviews. The company reported revenue of $14.2 million last year, an increase of 245 percent since 2014. But the company’s future lies in its “bed-in-a-box” strategy. Because the mattresses are foam, they can compress to a size feasible for direct shipping to customers. Relief-Mart sells its queen size Snuggle-pedic mattresses through Amazon for $749. “We think we can take off in that (bed-in-a-box) category,” Chief Executive Rick Swartzburg told the Business Journal in an interview earlier this year. “We are just getting started.” Swartzburg was a practicing chiropractor in the late 1990s when he began to work on the side designing websites to provide information on health issues. At the same time, Swartzburg worked with a biochemist to create Therapain Plus, a spray that relieves pain from backaches, bruises, strains, sprains and arthritis. He began selling it on his website in 2001, and in 2003, he went part-time with his chiropractic practice to concentrate on Relief-Mart. In 2008 Swartzburg patented his memory foam mattress that reduced pressure on joints and had a new way of increasing air circulation to reduce heat by using both holes and grooves in the foam. “This is something that is the real deal and not just a gimmick,” Swartzburg said. In addition to the traditional head pillow, the company also sells knee wedges, to take pressure off the lower back while sleeping on the back. It also makes knee spacers to prevent twisting of the spine while sleeping on the side. The company also sells books on pain management and nutrition by Swartzburg and other authors. – Joel Russell