{"id":652048,"date":"2026-05-05T23:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/652048\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T23:11:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T23:11:15","slug":"australian-mattress-business-a-h-beard-folds-under-labor-borne-economic-conditions-after-surviving-two-world-wars-and-the-great-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/652048\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian mattress business A.H. Beard folds under Labor-borne economic conditions after surviving two world wars and the Great Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Australian mattress manufacturer, A. H. Beard announced that it had in entered voluntary administration after 126 years in business.<\/p>\n

Chairman Garry Beard was reportedly in tears as he told staff that the company\u2019s future was uncertain and a major restructure was imminent.<\/p>\n

And just like that, 340 jobs are on the line as another Australian manufacturer buckles under the weight of increasingly difficult economic conditions.<\/p>\n

The mooted causes of the collapse?<\/p>\n

Falling household spending, rising manufacturing costs and a consumer shift towards cheaper imports.<\/p>\n

This all sounds very familiar.<\/p>\n

It echoes, even. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Revenue<\/p>\n

Now, running a business is hard work.<\/p>\n

It just is.<\/p>\n

Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows some 48 per cent of new Australian start-ups fail within four years.<\/p>\n

Make it to five years and you\u2019ve reached Base Camp.<\/p>\n

Not the summit, but a place where you\u2019ve earned the right to take stock for a minute before you set off again.<\/p>\n

In Australia, small and family businesses come in all shapes and sizes.<\/p>\n

They can be sole traders, partnerships or companies.<\/p>\n

They can have two or two hundred employees.<\/p>\n

Many of us wouldn\u2019t trade it for anything; there is a certain satisfaction to running your own show and creating something from nothing.<\/p>\n

But small and family businesses are especially exposed to the economic elements \u2013 and for want of a better phrase \u2013 if the economy sneezes, we catch a cold.<\/p>\n

And if that\u2019s not enough to keep you sharp and motivated, it is very common for private business lending to be secured by the family home or directors\u2019 guarantees.<\/p>\n

So not only is your capital on the line, but the roof over your head as well.<\/p>\n

This is important context, because when a mature, established family business goes bust, you pay attention.<\/p>\n

A. H. Beard isn\u2019t a small family business \u2013 it turned over $134 million in the last financial year.<\/p>\n

But the point is that a business with generations of competent operation doesn\u2019t just fall off a cliff – there must be particular challenges in the trading environment. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In the case of A.H. Beard, we still need mattresses, right?<\/p>\n

Sure, there are cheaper imports, but the product sold by this 126-year-old business is not obsolete.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not Kodak nor Blockbuster.<\/p>\n

And we can\u2019t sleep on AI.<\/p>\n

Their mattresses are sold in Harvey Norman, Forty Winks and even Costco.<\/p>\n

The product line \u2018King Koil\u2019 is a household name, and the company estimates that it has produced over 10 million mattresses in its history. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not a fly-by-night outfit.<\/p>\n

This is an established business that has died by a proverbial thousand cuts.<\/p>\n

\"Insolvency<\/p>\n

While we cannot control the price of cheap imports, there are two things which we can work to improve in this country: declining productivity and inflation.<\/p>\n

One is the ugly cousin of the other.<\/p>\n

On inflation, we know that inflation is a tax on disposable income.<\/p>\n

The higher prices rise, the less we can buy with the income we earn.<\/p>\n

On its own, it acts to dampen demand.<\/p>\n

Increasing input costs also squeeze margins, meaning business is pinched from both sides.<\/p>\n

For March 2026, annual inflation rose to 4.6 per cent, with headline inflation up 1.1 per cent on the month of February.<\/p>\n

While it declined at the start of 2025, rampant government spending followed by elevated fuel prices has seen it kick off again.<\/p>\n

Both the International Monetary Fund and the Reserve Bank of Australia have warned the Albanese Labor government about its dangerous levels of spending and yet it takes no heed.<\/p>\n

\"Gas<\/p>\n

And so, we go around the mountain again, with increasing pressure on the pinch, for both households and business.<\/p>\n

Add to that, increasing labour costs, decreasing labour productivity, and reduced flexibility are now entrenched in our economy.<\/p>\n

In 2022-2023 alone, Australia saw labour productivity decline 3.7 per cent across the whole economy. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2024-2025, market sector labour productivity fell by 0.2 per cent while non-market sector productivity fell by 1.9 per cent.<\/p>\n

Every time productivity declines, input costs increase as a proportion of output, margins suffer and so does affordability.<\/p>\n

Similarly, increased energy costs and regulatory compliance put more pressure on margins and efficiency.<\/p>\n

While each of these things individually may not appear to be business killers, cumulatively they become oppressive.<\/p>\n

Smothering.<\/p>\n

And here is the sad irony of the matter: while the Albanese Labor government spruiks a \u201cA Future Made in Australia\u201d, its legislative agenda is loading business with cost and compliance, thereby diminishing economic viability.<\/p>\n

The consequence is that it drives the consumer to imports on both price and availability. \u00a0<\/p>\n

So here we are.<\/p>\n

A.H. Beard may not survive this.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

Without a unionised workforce, they\u2019re unlikely to be prioritised for government support.<\/p>\n

The reality is that Labor\u2019s \u201cA Future Made in Australia\u201d isn\u2019t so much a nation building policy as it is a fund desperately attempting to paper over the consequences of failing government policy, including Net Zero.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s promoting bailouts as economy development.<\/p>\n

No doubt, if business was given room to breathe and freedom to operate efficiently, the taxpayer wouldn\u2019t have to keep propping up obliterated profit and loss statements.<\/p>\n

Back to A.H. Beard \u2013 and it isn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

In 2025, clothing retailer Rivers shuttered after decades of operation citing similar causes for its demise. The company had its roots as a footwear maker dating back to 1863.<\/p>\n

And there you have it: two businesses that survived two world wars and the Great Depression couldn\u2019t survive Albo and his merry band of midwits.<\/p>\n

That should make any casual observer grimace at the state of it all. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Caroline Di Russo is a lawyer with 15 years of experience specialising in commercial litigation and corporate insolvency and since February 2023 has been the Liberal Party President in Western Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, Australian mattress manufacturer, A. H. Beard announced that it had in entered voluntary administration after 126…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164,315368],"class_list":["post-652048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-eoncomy-small-business-ah-beard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}