Former Graystone Furniture on Paseo to get new life as Mountain Lifestyle
Death and taxes may be life’s guarantee, but local entrepreneur Mary Domito is expanding her regional furniture and mattress business to bring more Taos-area residents a coveted and all-too-elusive good night’s sleep.
Domito is branching out from her anchor store, Taos Lifestyle in the Albertsons shopping mall. She has leased the former Graystone Furniture building, 815 Paseo del Pueblo Sur and, come December, plans to launch Mattress Mary’s Mountain Lifestyle.
Besides offering a selection of furniture and mattresses to outfit vacation homes, Domito is pitching the new store as filling a void for affordable, entry-level furniture in the Taos market. She said sofas will start around $500 and kitchen dinette sets at about $400. A basic twin mattress will run about $100. Domito plans to have a large selection of children’s furniture, too.
“As a longtime Taos resident and an active member of the community, I’m excited to bring this vision to life and to new products to make any house feel like a home,” Domito said.
Domito told The Taos News she plans a “total remodel and upgrade” of the 10,400-squarefoot Graystone Furniture building, which is located near Walgreens and El Taoseño on Paseo del Pueblo Sur. Jude Ann Gochee, who started Graystone in 2002, passed away in August.
Taos Lifestyle started in
2004 as Sleep Sanctuary. Domito was in the corporate mattress industry in California, she said, “learning my trade from the best.” Burned out, she made the move to Taos. “I thought I was going to have a little sleep shop.”
At the time, Domito said, the mattress selection in Taos consisted of box frames still wrapped in plastic, leaned against the walls of older shops. Domito wanted to bring “big-city professionalism with the down-home feel,” she said.
Since then, the business has expanded throughout the region. Sleep Sanctuary became Taos Lifestyle in 2012, moving to a larger space in the same shopping center in Taos. Between 2008-2012, Domito also had Toto Home. About three-and-a-half years ago she opened Alamosa Home in a historic downtown property in Alamosa, Colorado; the store has since expanded. And two years ago she opened a luxury mattress store in Santa Fe with business partner Sharon Scott.
Still, Domito notes the ways the mattress market has changed in the 14 years since she started her business in Taos. Topping that list of shake-ups in the industry is the rise of “beds-in-boxes,” mattresses from start-up companies that are sold directly to consumers online. Those mattresses are typically delivered through UPS or FedEx, an attractive option for people without their own vehicles or who live in far-flung rural areas.
The rise of those mattress companies, she said, has cut into her mattress business by 5 to 10 percent, which is consistent with trends across the industry, according to a 2017
Forbes article on the expansion of online shopping habits.
Still, Domito said people are buying better-quality mattresses from her Taos store, which has made up for the loss.
Opening Mountain Lifestyle is one way to get to larger swathe of the Taos market, be they younger families who are used to shopping online or folks who don’t want to spend their dollars in Albuquerque, where big-box furniture stores sometimes set up shop right across the street from one another.
Taos Lifestyle is to remain in its current location and keep the same selection. Mountain Lifestyle will offer a large selection of furniture brands that include Liberty, Mayo Upholstery, Best Furniture, AAmerica, Flexsteel and Polywood, Domito said.