N.Y.'s Metro Mattress buys Lockport's Buffalo assets
By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, July 16, 2007
Buffalo, N.Y. — Syracuse, N.Y.-based Metro Mattress has acquired the assets of bankrupt Lockport Mattress here as part of its continuing expansion in Upstate New York.
Metro Mattress paid $475,000 for the four-store, factory-direct retailer's assets, or nearly $750,000 including the assumption of current payables, said David Shiroff, Metro Mattress president and CEO.
The deal included the mattress manufacturing operations of Lockport, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March 2006.
The move brings Metro's store count to 28 and gives the retailer its first Buffalo-area stores. Two more stores are planned for the market by the end of the year, and Shiroff said he sees it growing to a nine- or 10-store market over time.
He would not disclose sales or projected sales for the company, which operates stores throughout Upstate New York, in Syracuse, Rochester and Albany, and in the Southern Tier area, just north of the Pennsylvania border.
"Buffalo was the final major upstate New York market that we had not penetrated," Shiroff said.
By the end of this year, Metro Mattress expects to have 32 to 33 stores, he said, including three more units in Albany — for a total of six there — and another Syracuse store.
As for Lockport's manufacturing operation, Shiroff said he's still evaluating it. As a factory-direct operation, Lockport offered a single brand, but Metro has a multi-brand strategy, carrying Simmons, Sealy, Comfort Solutions, Tempur-Pedic and Kingsdown.
"It's a complex financial analysis of the company, and hopefully we'll make some sort of determination (on the manufacturing segment) within 30 days," Shiroff said.
The Lockport stores will convert to the Metro Mattress name quickly, he said. Over the next week or so, Lockport's 10 or 15 best-selling SKUs will be supplemented by Metro's brands, "buying us some time as we attempt to get our arms around this monster and figure out what it is we've acquired as it relates to the manufacturing division," Shiroff said.
