Australia-native Paul Longman worked in his home country's mattress industry for more than 30 years before falling in love with his Ozarks-born wife, moving to Springfield, and beginning his own Midwestern mattress company.

Longman's Advanced Sleep Technologies mattresses are sold nationwide but manufactured in the Ozarks. When founding his company, Longman did not expect to manufacture his mattresses in his new home, but soon found Springfield's central location in the United States was perfect to lower shipping costs.

"A lot of our sales go to Texas, California, Florida, all over the United States. So, we're kind of sitting in the middle of a world that's around us. And so, it's a great hub for us to have one central manufacturing location and be able to efficiently ship beds around the country," Longman said.

"When I started the company, it wasn't my intention to manufacture. But the more we customized the product, the less the current manufacturing industry around America was helping us achieve our goals. We started downtown in Springfield with a marketing office. We ended up realizing that our future was going to be in customization and really doing things that the mass market couldn't do, and to do that we needed to invest in manufacturing. So we did. We started at a small facility; it was only like 1,000 square feet. But we recognized where we were heading and relocated a year ago to 70,000 square feet. We've been investing in equipment to people and really just trying to get a nice, efficient process happening right here in Springfield."

According to Longman, the goal of Advanced Sleep Technologies is to provide mattresses that "take care of individual needs" even sleeping in a bed with a partner. That mission began with their luxury brand isense, which is a premium product that allows a high level of customization on each side of the bed.

But with their new brand, Beyosa, Longman hopes to bring the same type of customization but at a more affordable price point.

"The tagline for Beyosa is 'be yourself.' So it's still very much about couples who share a bedroom and a mattress and sleep environment but still have individual needs," he told the News-Leader.

"When you order online, you get to choose the comfort — one of three choices of comfort and firmness on both sides of the mattress — so one partner can have a plush mattress, the other person can have a firm and we actually build that mattress to that specification."

While an isense mattress may cost up to $3,500, their Beyosa mattresses cost anywhere from a $1,000 to $1,500.

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Longman said the local and small-scale production of mattresses in Springfield allows their highly customizable mattresses to be constructed at the same cost as the big-box stores.

"When you're dealing in mass, it's very hard to customize, to know what the customer wants. We have a 70,000-square-foot facility here in Springfield, Missouri. When we manufacture, we manufacture to order. That means we don't have any inventory sitting between our factory and the consumer, which means that when they tell us how they want to be configured, we have the opportunity to build it that way," Longman said.

Asked what brought Longman all the way to the Ozarks, he pointed to his wife — who is a Carthage native. The pair met in the mattress industry as Longman's former Australian company contracted with an American firm that employed his future wife.

"She moved to Australia to be with me," Longman said. "But I realized there was a gap in the market and we as a couple wanted to get the benefit of conventional mattress with adjustability and that was the seed of innovation that sort of sparked a desire to build my own company having worked for others for many years. So we decided to move back to America."

According to Longman, having that comfort for both partners in sleep is essential to a long-lasting, successful marriage.

"We spend 33% of our lives sleeping and many of us with a sleep partner. And yet the industry doesn't tailor products with individually, you have to compromise as couples," Longman said. "The whole essence of our business is to say 'hey, enjoy your relationships, but at the end of the day you need to be sleeping on something that's right. Not something that's an average between the two.' And no other product expects you to do that except our industry. We're trying to break through that mold and really design products for couples as individuals."

Interested readers can purchase a Beyosa mattress at beyosa.com.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Australian founds Advanced Sleep Technologies in Springfield