They are our hope for a bright future in Mattressville, USA. They don’t keep their old bedding for ridiculous periods of time. And they are planning to replace their new bedding sooner than their parents plan to replace theirs.

We are talking about Generation Y, the children of that most famous generation of all: the Baby Boomers.

We’ve all heard about the marketing clout wielded by the Boomers, and it is considerable, but there are a couple of things about the Boomers that we must keep in mind. The older Boomers are approaching retirement. And the younger Boomers are going to be facing some big college expenses.

What’s a bedding marketer to do? Easy. Get ready to target Gen Y. Those consumers, born between 1976 and 1994, are going to be the next big spenders, it appears. There are 76 million of them. That’s not quite as m...Read More

It’s time to introduce a new business model in the bedding industry. Let’s scrap those absurdly long warranties (20 years and more) and replace them with a much more reasonable and realistic one-year warranty.

Then let’s allow bedding retailers to sell extended warranties, working from that one-year base manufacturer warranty. That will give retailers a chance to add a very profitable new business, one with few risks and great rewards.

If consumers want a warranty longer than one year, they can pay to extend it.

This would be a relatively new model in the bedding industry, but it’s a model that’s already working well in a number of other industries, such as consumer electronics and automobiles.

Barrie Brown, the insightful CEO of retailer Mattress G...Read More

May is for mattresses! That’s one slogan that bedding marketers could use as our industry seeks to create greater awareness of the role that a good bed plays in getting a good night’s sleep.

I’ll share a few more with you below, but first let’s set the stage for this week’s topic: Why don’t mattresses get more love?

A while back, I lamented the fact that national media are a lot more interested in talking about trendy sleep cures, expensive sleeping pills, etc., than something as fundamental as the mattress. Several of you thanked me for those comments and agreed that we’ve got to get a stronger mattress message out to the media.

Now that we are in the middle of Better Sleep Month, it’s a good time to reflect on a basic dilemma facing our industry: We make the tools that lead to better sleep, but we...Read More

Here’s my recap of the weird and wonderful happenings in the High Point bedding arena:

* Strangest press release: The bedding producer who described his mattress offerings as being “of reasonable quality.” Well, in a way that’s refreshing, given the steady diet of phrases like “premium materials” and “luxurious materials” and “the highest-quality materials” that I usually see in press releases, but “reasonable quality” is unreasonable in our marketing-savvy arena. Who was the guilty party? I’m reasonably sure I don’t want to embarrass the company.

* Best media event: Sealy. The producer got a lot accomplished in two hours, feeding several harried reporters a quick lunch, giving us an ov...Read More