Businessman's mission: Helping orphans sleep at night

Scott Moriarty's business goal is to sell furniture that helps suburban children sleep comfortably at night. His personal mission is to help Cambodian orphans do the same thing.

The owner of Roomz 4 Kidz & Teenz in Arlington Heights is combining the two in an effort to provide food and financial assistance to about 40 orphans living in the Our Kcheay Church Orphan Home in northwestern Cambodia.

As a way to help the children, the entrepreneur recently opened Bedding Outlet next to the furniture business he has operated at 1302 N. Rand Road for 15 years.

All profits gained through the mattress sales go toward the orphan home, which Moriarty visited several years ago.

"I get more joy out of helping those less-fortunate children than anything else in my life," Moriarty said.

Many of the children at the Our Kcheay home have lost their parents to land mines and other violence, he said. Others were orphaned because of AIDS and other diseases,

The spark for the concept occurred several years ago when Moriarty, 49, discovered Warm Blankets, a nondenominational Christian organization based in Rolling Meadows designed to help orphans in Third World countries. Traveling by elephant and kayaks to the orphan homes in Cambodia, Moriarty saw the way the children lived and felt a strong desire to help.

"It's amazing. They are so isolated," he said.

Moriarty's goal is to raise at least $1,500 a month to cover the cost of running the orphanage.

In setting up the concept for his new Arlington Heights mattress shop, Moriarty met with the president of Englander Mattresses, who agreed to assist the cause. The mattress company, established in 1893, agreed to provide free floor models and advertising help for the Bedding Outlet.

It was an advertising flier with the Warm Blankets logo that drew Tim Dini and his wife into the new bedding store a couple of weeks ago. The Wheeling couple was shopping for mattresses for their teenage boys and Dini was familiar with the charitable organization. He had heard about the orphanage mission and even supported it in the past.

"It's a wonderful cause. I felt like supporting them. This was an added bonus," Dini said. His sons tested the mattresses at the shop. "They are good, quality mattresses," said Dini, who spent about $1,400 on the bedding.

Mattresses at the outlet range in price from $299 to about $4,000, with the average shopper spending about $2,000 on the mattress and box spring. About $375 of that typical bill would go to the orphanage, Moriarty said.

Moriarty, a resident of Schaumburg, said the initial support in getting the outlet going has been inspiring. His landlord gave him a break with reduced rent and contractor friends assisted him in getting the showroom ready.

Moriarty has been in the furniture business for more than three decades. His father and three brothers started a water bed store on Harlem Avenue in the 1980s. The brothers eventually branched off and Moriarty launched his own shop 24 years ago in Arlington Heights near the South Point Shopping Center. About 10 years ago, he moved to his current location.

His store is filled with more than a 100 children's beds and cribs and furniture to match. He notes that the large showroom is not "super fancy," much like his lifestyle. He and his wife, Carol, have raised two children in an 1,800-square-foot home in Schaumburg.

"We need to be content, not extravagant," he said.

His wife has worked full time for 21 years as a school bus driver for District 211.

Moriarty credits his modest approach to profits with keeping the business afloat even as other companies have fallen to the recession. He said some of his most prosperous years have occurred during this economic downturn.

"My best year in business was 2008," he said.

He said he is grateful he now can help children less fortunate with a meal of rice and beans "and a chance to make their life a little bit better."