Privacy screens offer solution for consumer
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, July 4, 2005
New York — Privacy, please.
1-800-Mattress got the message when its consumer research found that mattress buyers don't like the impersonal feeling of large bedding stores, but instead want the greater privacy and attention afforded by smaller spaces.
Ideally, some consumers said, they would like a wall between the beds in the store, giving them their own private space to try out the mattress.
That idea wasn't practical, but company officials came up with a clever way to add privacy in their stores: Privacy screens.
"They give consumers a little more privacy and they are light and portable," said John O'Connell, head of the company's retail stores division. "They also impart a comfortable feeling."
Sales associates place the privacy screens around the mattress to help the customer relax. O'Connell knows that many consumers are not comfortable lying on a mattress in a store. "When you are lying on a mattress in public," he said, "you feel exposed."
The privacy screens are part of a new merchandising and display strategy 1-800-Mattress is refining. The retailer, with showrooms throughout the New York metro market, as well as in Maryland and California, successfully tested its new concepts at a prototype store it opened last year in Hoboken, N.J., and has since incorporated them into a new store in Manhattan at 64th Street and Second Avenue.
The retailer is offering a taste of bedroom furniture to make the stores feel more home-like. It also is adding lifestyle graphics in the store that show various consumer benefits of a new mattress. That wall art "promotes 1-800-Mattress and also shows consumers enjoying their new set of bedding," O'Connell noted.
The company also is finding success with a "less is more" approach to merchandising, reducing the number of beds in its 64th Street store by 25% and recording sales that "are significantly higher," according to O'Connell.
With a more airy product placement, consumers can more easily try out the beds.
"It is a more comfortable shopping experience for consumers and it is easier for the salespeople to sell mattresses," he said.
The retailer also is merchandising beds by comfort, rather than by price, making it easier for consumers to find the beds that are right for them. It classifies its beds as falling in the firm, pillow-top or plush categories.
O'Connell said the new moves are paying off.
"I look at my competitors and see them selling price," he said. "I am selling sleep.
"When I look at the quality of people we are attracting and the success of our stores, I know what we are doing is working."
