James Franklin McIngvale, also known as Mattress Mack, is a businessman from Houston, Texas. He is known for owning and operating the Gallery Furniture retail chain.
Biography
McIngvale was born on February 11, 1951, in Starkville, Mississippi. He graduated from Bishop Lynch High School in Dallas and attended North Texas State University, now University of North Texas, in Denton where he played football. He and his wife have three children. Their daughter Elizabeth was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder at age 12, and at one point several doctors declared her illness too severe to be treatable. McIngvale and his wife sent her to the Menninger Clinic when she was 15, where she underwent Exposure Response Prevention Therapy and eventually learned to manage her OCD. She later became an assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine, and founded the Peace of Mind Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people with OCD. In 2002, Jim McIngvale co-authored the book Always Think Big with Thomas Duening and John Ivancevich, which chronicles the ups and downs of McIngvale's entrepreneurial career. He lives in the Northgate Forest community in an unincorporated area of Harris County, Texas. Ericka Mellon of the Houston Chronicle said that he was "one of Northgate's most recognizable residents." McIngvale is best known for his energetic, fast-paced sales pitches, typically ending with some variant of his catchphrase "saves you money!" His distinctive sales style originated from an incident that occurred early on in Gallery Furniture's history. Faced with financial difficulties, McIngvale invested all his remaining money, approximately $10,000, in a television commercial to be aired on two stations. While watching the commercial being produced, he became dissatisfied and ad-libbed a sales pitch, speaking rapidly because of the limited amount of time available. The commercial proved very effective, and his sales increased dramatically afterward. In 1999, McIngvale spoke to the British Deming Association annual conference about the influence of W Edwards Deming on his business methods. In May 2009, the Houston Chronicle reported that McIngvale refused to pay $48,000 dollars of taxes to the Greater Northside Management District that was assessed from 2005 to 2007; he paid taxes to the district in 2008. His northside facility is within the district's boundary. McIngvale said the management district does not do enough to maintain the area; the business owner described the management district's taxation policies as "taxation without representation." The district sued McIngvale to try to force him to pay the taxes, and McIngvale said he's willing to dispute the charges in court. In June 2019, McIngvale suffered a possible transient ischemic attack. When Hurricane Imelda flooded Houston in 2019, McIngvale once again opened the doors of Gallery Furniture and partnered with Crisis Clean Up to provide free meals and shelter at the North Freeway location.
