Specialty sleep carries its weight
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, November 4, 2001
COON RAPIDS, Minn. — True to their waterbed industry roots, HOM Furniture owners Rod and Wayne Johansen still keep watermattresses and a variety of other specialty sleep products in their bedding departments.
Many furniture stores abandoned the specialty sleep category long ago, but it represents about 12% of HOM's total bedding sales, and the Johansen brothers aren't about to give that up.
"In today's market, foam is the hot (specialty) product," said Tim Sommer, HOM's bedding buyer. "I spent a good deal of time at High Point working on this."
He said Tempur-Pedic's high-end "memory foam" bed is the hottest specialty sleep product on his sales floor, despite its $1,700 queen-size price tag.
"You need to keep the customer on the bed for four or five minutes to let the memory foam begin to cradle their body, but if the salesperson can do that, it becomes a pretty easy sell," said Sommer.
In addition to Tempur-Pedic, the retailer also carries three watermattresses and two airbeds from Strata, which is the U.S. brand name for products made by Canadian producer Halcyon/Waterspring.
Plus, Sommer says there is still a huge market for replacement mattresses needed by owners of hard-sided waterbeds.
"Our replacement business is stronger than ever, and we do no advertising … except for the Yellow Pages," he said.
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