Shorter warranties are good for everyone
By David Perry, Executive editor -- Furniture Today, March 21, 2004
We have a big problem in the mattress industry. The warranties on our products are too long. The 10-year warranties on many flagship lines should be shortened to something more in line with the warranties carried by other consumer products.
Think about it. Cars have warranties for only three to five years. Why are we going so far beyond that? Well, we have only our highly competitive natures to blame. It's time for us to move beyond those concerns and take action that will be good for the entire industry.
Here's the problem: The warranties we offer are warranties against defective workmanship. They are not claims of useful product life. But the more we talk about warranties with consumers, the more we confuse them. They don't read the fine print and just remember the "big print," the 10-year or 20-year or even lifetime warranties that are out there.
The unpleasant result is that we probably are giving consumers an unrealistic view of how long their bedding will last. And that is costing us replacement sales.
Many senior executives in our industry probably would agree with everything I've written so far. So the next question is: How do we shorten our warranties?
Antitrust issues keep bedding producers from getting together in a room somewhere and agreeing to make a change. The way it works in the real world is that a major producer offers a shorter warranty, and its competitors have to decide if they want to shorten their warranties. The catch is, those competitors just might think they can get a market advantage by offering a longer warranty.
The fact is, there always will be bedding producers out there who will tout long — even absurdly so — warranties. But we think a market leader might be able to spark meaningful changes in warranties.
Sealy's Dave McIlquham made some very accurate and provocative comments on warranties in the Bedding Newsmaker feature in our Feb. 16 issue. Asked what he would do if he could change one thing in the bedding industry, Sealy's president and CEO said, "Reduce all bedding warranties to a level commensurate with other consumer durable products, and have manufacturers compete on their brand, value and product merits."
He added, "Consumers' post-purchase satisfaction in our category is extremely high. Manufacturers do a disservice to the industry and to our retail partners when they distort and lengthen consumers' expectations of our products' life cycle by using warranty duration to make quality and workmanship superiority claims at the point of sale."
Well put. Shorter warranties would be good for everyone, producers, retailers and consumers. Is a bedding major ready to assert leadership on this critical issue?
Opinion columns are available online atwww.furnituretoday.com.
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