Firm’s latest weapon in the mattress wars: Copy Casper
MATTRESS man Scott Thompson may be missing some sleep these days. Tempur Sealy International Inc., which Thompson leads, posted a small increase in fourth- quarter sales Thursday morning, not enough to stave off a full-year decline in revenue at the company behind Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, and Stearns & Foster beds-its first annual decline since 2012.
The sales figures come just a couple of weeks after Tempur Sealy’s divorce from Mattress Firm, its largest North American retail partner. The two companies split after contract negotiations broke down, closing a distribution channel with 3,500 stores that moved one in five Tempur Sealy mattresses. The Mattress Firm orders will stop by the end of March.
Investors, now truly woke, bailed out as well, taking onethird of the company’s market value with them the day Mattress Firm walked away. Tempur Sealy beat expectations by cutting costs and trimming its product line.
Investors were further cheered by news that the company snapped up US$ 200 million ( RM900 million) of its stock, but the shares have a long way to go before they recover the ground they’ve lost.
It’s actually a pretty good time to be one of the big mattress companies. Bed sales tend to move in step with the economy, and lately the conditions have been kind of dreamy. The stock market is at record highs, the unemployment rate is below five per cent, and the housing market continues its steady climb out of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Housing starts, or the Moving Out of Mom’s Basement indicator, are back at pre-recession levels.
The business is also getting a boost from a cultural obsession over wellness. As consumers plug in to an ecosystem of watches and bands that track their sleep, they’re likelier to invest in the latest proprietary sandwich of cooling foam, organic cotton, and springs tuned like the thing’s a Swiss watch. Tempur-Pedic’s new marketing slogan says it all: Sleep Is Power.
But many consumers are no longer setting foot in stores where beds are lined up like sad, inert cars waiting for a sleepy test- drive. The crowd of manufacturing startups selling mattresses online is almost laughably large at this point. — WP-Bloomberg