fire to keep people in work. >> reporter: amid the clatter of nail guns and sewing machines, 1,400 mattresses a day roll out of the carolina mattress guild. at least on a good day. but the owners of this small company, katherine and neil, have learned how to handle bad days, too. >> we had to, to survive. we lost half or more of our customer base. so to survive we had to be very proactive. >> reporter: ten years ago, just after they'd opened in the heart of carolina's furniture belt, a devastating fire struck. wiping out their inventory, their life savings which they'd invested here, and leaving a huge question -- >> my god, what are we going to do? how are we going to overcome this? >> reporter: the answer -- rebuild. fast. moving into temporary space, they raced to repair. once again dropping as much money into their dream as they could scrape up. this is all highly specialized equipment. >> oh, absolutely. >> i'm guessing kind of