Serta springing online with mattress deal

Serta Simmons, the nation’s largest mattress maker, is trying to reverse declining sales by merging with a rival in the red-hot bed-in-a box sector as the company announced the deal to acquire Tuft & Needle on Tuesday.

Tuft & Needle will help Serta, which sells mostly in physical stores, accelerate an e-commerce business.

The move could be seen as a surprise as T&N last year ran a national marketing campaign with the slogan “Mattress Stores Are Greedy.”

The Tuft & Needle team will be building an e-commerce platform that will sell Serta Simmons beds directly to consumers, Serta Simmons CEO Michael Traub told The Post.

Presently, 20 percent of mattresses sold in the US are bought online, Traub said, adding that could rise to 30 percent in the next five years. He declined to reveal the price of the merger.

Most online sales are through new mattress entrants, including Amazon and bed-in-a-box start-ups.

Meanwhile, Tuft & Needle will continue to open its own stores, and they will not include Serta Simmons beds, Traub said.

The Post reported exclusively Aug. 15 that Advent International, the buyout firm that owns Serta Simmons, was actively exploring buying the nearly bankrupt Mattress Firm chain, the nation’s dominant mattress retailer.

“We need Mattress Firm to be successful,” Straub said, referring to The Post story as a “very thoughtful” article. However, he declined to comment on whether Advent was bidding for Mattress Firm.