Specialty sleep units reach 9.1%
David Perry -- Furniture Today, December 31, 2006
High Point — There is widespread agreement that specialty bedding has been on the ascent in recent years. But there have been questions about exactly how strong the growth has been. Now those questions are being answered, and the numbers are impressive.
The International Sleep Products Assn. has broken out specialty bedding as a separate category for the past two years. And ISPA's latest figures, contained in the association's 2005 annual report, show that specialty sleep is cutting a wide swath in the industry.
According to ISPA, specialty (non-innerspring) bedding represented 9.1% of all mattress (excluding foundation) shipments in 2005.
That is an increase of 1.5 percentage points over 2004, and it means that almost one out of 10 mattresses shipped last year was a specialty mattress.
But the dollar figures are even stronger. ISPA said specialty sleep's market share by dollar value was 22.3% last year — or almost one-quarter of all mattress dollars. The reason for that is that specialty bedding is usually offered as a premium product, at prices well above $1,000.
In its report, ISPA presented this explanation: "Since these products are considerably more expensive to produce and are marketed as premium bedding, the high price points for specialty bedding continue to boost average unit prices."
The dollar growth for specialty bedding in 2005 was dramatic. ISPA put the dollar value of specialty sleep mattresses in 2004 at 15.9% of sales. That means the category grew by 6.4 percentage points, a big swing in a single year.
Since Furniture/Today first included specialty sleep majors Tempur-Pedic and Select Comfort in its list of top bedding producers in 2003, those companies have shown tremendous growth, but growth that is moderating.
Last year, Tempur-Pedic's wholesale bedding volume was $420 million, a 31.3% increase over 2004. But the growth rate for 2004 was 70.2%.
Similarly, Select Comfort had wholesale bedding shipments last year of $323 million, a 22.8% increase. The year-earlier increase was 33.5%.
It should be noted that both of those companies have large sales bases that make it much more difficult to record the kinds of huge increases they posted in the past.
Together, Tempur-Pedic and Select Comfort had a market share of 11.6% in 2005, up from 10.4% in 2004. Together, those two posted a 27.4% sales increase last year, more than twice as strong as the industry's overall growth rate, pegged by ISPA at 10.6%.
