Specialty sleep units drop 11.7%
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, February 16, 2009
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Last year was bad for conventional mattress sales but even worse for specialty sleep sets, the International Sleep Products Assn. indicated in its preliminary report on industry performance in 2008.
ISPA's Bedding Barometer report tracks monthly unit and dollar performance data as recorded by 18 large producers.
For the full year, the report indicated that units declined by 11.7% and the dollar value of shipments dropped by 11.8%. ISPA's annual sales census, now in the works, will provide a more definitive look at industry performance in 2008.
The Bedding Barometer showed that the steep declines producers reported in October and November eased somewhat in December, when unit shipments declined by 13% from the same month a year earlier and the dollar value of those shipments dropped by 16.6%. In November, units were down 29.1% and dollars dropped 29.2%.
One of the most striking findings in the preliminary report on 2008 sales activity was a sharp decline in the specialty sleep segment, which lost ground to the innerspring category for the first time since ISPA began breaking out the specialty sleep numbers in 2004.
For the full year, innerspring mattress units were down by 9.8% and the dollar value of those shipments declined by 9.5%. But in specialty sleep, mattress units dropped by 21.3% in 2008 and the dollar value fell 21.2%.
Bedding producers say one possible reason for those results is that specialty sleep sets usually sell for more than $1,000, a segment of the market that some say has been particularly hard hit by the recession.
Whatever the reasons, the steep decline of specialty sleep apparently marks the end of a strong growth story that the segment had been writing in recent years.
In 2007, for example, ISPA said that the unit volume of specialty sleep mattresses grew by 9.4%, while innerspring mattresses suffered a 4.9% unit decline. The dollar value of specialty sleep mattresses grew by 10.2% that year, while the dollar value of innerspring mattresses declined by 0.2%.
The figures from the latest Bedding Barometer report represent 45.9% of unit shipments and 58.1% of the dollar value of those shipments, based on ISPA's 2007 annual report, the association said.
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Bedding sales decline 11.8% in 2008
Feb 6, 2009
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