Bedding execs see growth in '02
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, December 30, 2001
As the worst year in recent bedding history comes mercifully to a close, the industry faces an exciting prospect: The new year should be a lot better.
The latest forecast from the International Sleep Products Assn. sees sunny skies rolling in after the dreary storms of 2001. The wholesale dollar value of shipments of adult mattresses and foundations is predicted to grow by 3% in 2002, with units up 2%.
Those increases are modest, but they would represent a major turnaround for the industry, which ISPA projects to drop 5.5% in the dollar value of shipments this year and 7% in unit sales.
Major producers echo the optimism of the ISPA forecast about next year. They say the new year should be a solid one.
A look back through the ISPA archives fails to find any year as weak as it appears 2001 will turn out to be. On the dollar side, the industry has recorded but one negative year since 1979. In 1982, the dollar value of shipments dropped by 1.9%, far less than the dollar drop forecast for this year.
In that same time period, wholesale unit shipments have declined four times, in 1981, in 1982 (the largest decrease down 4.8%), in 1989 and in 1990. Again, the expected unit drop this year is much larger than any of those downturns.
The ISPA numbers, by the way, are benchmarked to the 1999 Industry Census.
What went wrong in 2001?
Bedding producers have the answer: The recession.
Actually, the news began getting bad in 2000, according to Sealy Chairman Ron Jones, but the problems were not addressed at that time.
"The economy began to soften in 2000, but the environment of political campaigning created a situation that no one wanted to admit or recognize, let alone address," Jones observed.
Now, he added, there is a readiness in Washington to do what it takes to get the economy moving again. He sees bedding having a growth year in 2002.
While bedding tends to be a bright spot even in tough times, even it is not immune from the kind of general downturn that hit the furniture industry this year. And bedding took some major hits in the high-profile retail bankruptcies that occurred, too.
An encouraging word
The ISPA record books offer some encouragement as 2002 dawns.
The bedding industry came roaring out of the 1982 recession with a rebound in 1983 of units up a whopping 13.9% and dollars up 16.4%.
No one thinks the recovery in 2002 will be that strong. But ISPA forecasts that units will move from a minus 7% to a plus 2%. The dollar turnaround is expected to be almost as strong, at 8.5 percentage points.
Those kinds of gains are not that surprising, given the continuing importance of bedding on retailers' sales floors. Bedding continues to be the most profitable category that many retailers carry.
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