Survey provides overview of key bedding price points

David Perry -- Furniture Today, May 28, 2012

In a recent Retail Bedding Playbook feature we noted that specialty sleep beds play a major role on furniture stores' sales floors, but that innerspring beds are most prevalent on those floors.
     In this report, we break down those product categories by price points. The results show that innerspring beds carry the promotional burden on furniture store floors, with a median opening price point of $299, a price that looks attractive in bedding ads.
     Specialty sleep beds, on the other hand, typically start at $999, where the higher end of the market begins, and move up from there. Memory foam beds start at $999, gel beds start at $1,299 and latex beds and air beds start at $1,599.
     A comparison of those opening price points by product type and the best-selling price points by product type shows that furniture stores are having the greatest step-up success with memory foam beds. The difference between the opening memory foam price and the best-selling price is $850, an impressive step-up performance by furniture stores.
     Gel beds are also doing well in the step-up arena; there is a $700 difference between the opening gel price point and the best-selling gel price point.
     The step-up for innerspring beds, in contrast, is $500. That's the difference between the $299 starting price point and the $799 best-selling innerspring price.
     The air bed segment has a $400 step up from the opening price point to the best-selling price point. For latex beds, the step is just $200, the smallest of any of the bedding types.
     Overall, the survey shows that furniture stores are consistently able to sell consumers better beds, of any construction type, than the beds that open their merchandising lineups and are often promoted in retail ads.