Bed-in-a-box mattresses springing up on Amazon
Serta Simmons’ Tuft & Needle wants you to sleep well for $275
The nation’s largest mattress maker is introducing an ultracheap bed-in-a-box mattress sold exclusively on Amazon.
The move illustrates the traditionally store-centric industry’s new attitude toward e-commerce: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
After merging in September, Serta Simmons Bedding and Tuft & Needle are tightening their ties to Amazon, which is aiming for a bigger slice of the mattress business.
The decision escalates competition in the mattress industry’s intensifying fight for customers – a fight that has led to declining prices, store closures and aggressive marketing.
It could also accelerate the industry’s pivot toward digital sales, which now represent about 10 to 15 percent of the market, according to industry experts.
The Nod by Tuft & Needle, which comes with free shipping and a 100-day trial period, ranges from $275 for a twin to $395 for a queen to $495 for a king. Like its competitors, which are typically several hundred dollars more, it’s stuffed in a box for delivery to the customer’s home, where it slowly unfolds into its resting shape.
For Serta Simmons – the largest mattress maker in the U.S., according to market research firm IBISWorld – the new product will enable the company to diversify its revenue after the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Mattress Firm rocked the bedding industry.
Mattress Firm, the nation’s largest mattress retailer, is closing up to 700 stores as it seeks to shore up its business, which has been undermined by nimble bed-in-a-box competitors such as Casper and Leesa.
Serta Simmons had bet big on Mattress Firm’s future in 2017 when it won a key contract to sell products there after the retailer’s previous deal with Serta Simmons rival Tempur Sealy International fell apart.
Tuft & Needle co-founder JT Marino told USA TODAY that Amazon contacted Tuft & Needle several months before the Mattress Firm bankruptcy and asked the company to develop a less-expensive version than its namesake model, which ranges from $350 for a twin to $750 for a king.
“Amazon saw a need for a really well-designed mattress in this price point, which isn’t traditionally the price point that we have served,” Marino said. “We hadn’t even thought of it.”
The working partnership between Amazon and Serta’s Tuft & Needle comes several months after Casper partnered with Amazon big-box chain rival Target to deliver its cheapest model yet: the Casper Essential, which ranges from $350 for a twin to $600 for a queen and $725 for a king.
Marino said Tuft & Needle product developers focused on “value engineering” to deliver The Nod. He said it will turn a profit despite its low price – in part because Tuft & Needle, with more than $170 million in sales in 2017, is gaining cost advantages from its increasing scale.
The end result is a product that has multiple layers of open-cell polyurethane foam but few of the other features offered by more-expensive options.
He said the company expects the product to appeal to shoppers who are “scrappy” and have “no interest in trading up” or who are looking to buy a mattress for their kids or a guest room.
“If we’re going to hit this price point, we do have to take out some of the features and performance, but we still want to make a really comfortable mattress,” he said. “We really honed in on pressure release and support – not so much on cooling technology, not so much on enhanced durability.”
Tuft & Needle has been selling mattresses on Amazon since 2013. But Serta Simmons doesn’t have a big sales presence there.
Marino said Amazon didn’t pay Tuft & Needle to develop the new mattress but is expected to help boost the product’s visibility to shoppers.
“We need to be wherever our customers are, and people are starting to shift to different platforms, like Amazon,” he said.