San Francisco’s McRoskey Mattress Co., which was founded in 1899 and has manufactured high-end mattresses in the city since that time, has been sold to the Fresno company Pleasant Mattress.

“To really be relevant, we saw the need to have a luxury brand to be the jewel of our portfolio,” Pleasant Mattress CEO Rion Morgenstern said.

McRoskey has a showroom on Market Street in San Francisco and locations in Palo Alto and San Rafael. The company has about 26 employees total, and its current sales staff will remain in place. But its San Francisco manufacturing facility on Minnesota Street will close, with 13 factory employees there laid off, according to Robin Azevedo, whose family founded McRoskey.

Azevedo will become a brand ambassador for McRoskey. She has known Morgenstern’s family for years, so Pleasant felt like the right company to acquire McRoskey, she said.

“We have customers across the nation that buy our mattress, and this is an opportunity to expand retail and show the product with more people, and that’s been in my mind for a number of years — how we might do that,” Azevedo said. “And we’ve had inquiries over the years, of people showing interest (in) acquiring the business.”

Pleasant Mattress is renovating a 25,000-square-foot space at its Fresno campus to manufacture McRoskey products, the company said. Production is scheduled to begin in January, and the area will also include space for a showroom. Pleasant Mattress also plans to immediately begin handling McRoskey’s manufacturing, distribution and marketing.

The decision to end manufacturing in San Francisco was made because Pleasant has a facility in Fresno, Azevedo said, and McRoskey is looking to expand its showrooms in Northern California. Pleasant will be hiring eight to 10 employees to work in McRoskey Mattress manufacturing in Fresno, Morgenstern said.

“It’s really about bringing together two companies to do what they’re the best at,” Morgenstern said. “The manufacturing just happens to be in Fresno for my company, and has been for 60 years.”

Pleasant Mattress is a significantly larger company and aims to bring McRoskey mattresses, which sell on average from $5,000 to $7,000 for a queen-size set, to a larger audience, including internationally.

“The McRoskey brand is a San Francisco heritage product that we really believe is competitive on both the national stage and the international stage,” Morgenstern said.

Pleasant Mattress has been making mattresses since 1959 and employs 160 people.

SFMade, a nonprofit that champions manufacturing in the city, has often promoted McRoskey as a local manufacturer, and the company has offered tours of the factory.

Patrick Marks, owner of San Francisco’s Green Arcade bookstore, has partnered with Azevedo and McRoskey to host literary events at the mattress company’s Market Street showroom. The company is a San Francisco staple, he said, and has been part of the community with such activities as being a sponsor of the annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre.

“It’s a multigenerational business, and it still will be,” since Pleasant Mattress is also family-owned, Marks said.

Sophia Kunthara is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sophia.kunthara@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SophiaKunthara