Bedding majors post healthy 15.8% gain
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, June 12, 2008
High Point — Serta-Exclusive Sleep Shops, No. 38 on this year's Top 100 ranking, didn't have the bang-up expansion year it thought it would, but that didn't stop the 11 bedding specialty stores on the Top 100 from having a great sales year.
The healthy results were a continuation of the previous year's rebound as the combined group posted a 15.8% gain in 2005 sales to $2.6 billion. That beat the results for the combined Top 100, the Top 10, the combined conventional retailers and combined specialty retailers as well as all other specialty subcategories. The only Top 100 subcategory with a better rate of growth was the single-source, or dedicated store networks, which grew sales 18.7%.
Just like last year, the biggest percentage gainer among the bedding players was No. 12 Select Comfort, which also had the ninth-greatest gain among all Top 100 companies.
Six others posted double-digit gains: No. 21 Sleepy's with a 21.2% gain to $394 million; No. 82 Sleep Country USA, up 21%; No. 25 Mattress Firm, up almost 20%; No. 41 The Sleep Train, up 17.2%; No. 75 Sit 'n Sleep, up nearly 12%; and No. 64 Dial-A-Mattress, up 10%.
None of the bedding retailers posted sales declines, though four fell below the 8.3% Top 100 average. No. 62 Mattress Discounters showed the slowest growth at 4.1% to $111.3 million.
The combined group grew its store count 5%, or by 108 stores, to 2,248 units, with the strongest growth coming from No. 21 Sleepy's, the Northeastern sleep giant, which added a net 57 stores on top of its leading 42 net new stores added the year before, for a total of 375 units.
Only one company had a net decline in store count, No. 36 Mattress Giant, which sold its 29 Chicago-area stores to Itasca, Ill.-based Back to Bed at the end of the year and finished with a net 27-store decline to 235 stores.
The big expansion was expected to come from Serta-Exclusive Sleep Shops, a network of independently owned, dealer-operated stores going by America's Mattress, Mattress Outlet and a variety of other names. The network planned to open more than 100 new stores last year, but finished with a net gain of 10 new stores for a total of 400 units and estimated sales of $210 million, up 7.7% from the year before, but below the Top 100 average.
Serta International, which supports the stores, is saying again that it plans to open more than 100 Serta-only sleep shops this year.
| Top bedding specialists | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked by sales of furniture, bedding and accessories | ||||||
| ESTIMATED FURNITURE, BEDDING, ACCESSORY SALES IN $ MILLIONS | NUMBER OF UNITS | |||||
| RANK | COMPANY | 2005 | 2004 | PERCENT CHANGE 2004 TO 2005 | 2005 | 2004 |
| Source: Furniture/Today's Survey of Top 100 U.S. Furniture Stores | ||||||
| 12 | Select Comfort | $639.2 | $525.3 | 21.7% | 396 | 370 |
| 21 | Sleepy's | 394.0 | 325.0 | 21.2 | 375 | 318 |
| 25 | Mattress Firm | 356.0 | 297.0 | 19.9 | 314 | 314 |
| 36 | Mattress Giant | 221.0 | 205.0 | 7.8 | 235 | 262 |
| 38 | Serta-Exclusive Sleep Shops | 210.0 | 195.0 | 7.7 | 400 | 390 |
| 41 | The Sleep Train | 201.6 | 172.0 | 17.2 | 121 | 108 |
| 55 | Rockaway Bedding | 135.0 | 128.0 | 5.5 | 180 | 168 |
| 62 | Mattress Discounters | 111.3 | 106.9 | 4.1 | 115 | 106 |
| 64 | Dial-A-Mattress | 110.0 | 100.0 | 10.0 | 45 | 44 |
| 75 | Sit 'n Sleep | 94.0 | 84.0 | 11.9 | 15 | 13 |
| 82 | Sleep Country USA | 80.9 | 66.8 | 21.0 | 52 | 47 |
