It’s an obvious question.
Does mattress store owner Keith Moneymaker — yes, that’s his real name — make money in mattresses?
“It’s my honey pot,” he responded. “That’s the plan.”
Further questioning revealed that, yes, Moneymaker is making money at Sweet Dreams Mattresses & More, the sleep shop in Southern Pines, North Carolina, that he’s been running for the past 14 years.
Money-making runs in his family; he’s the second generation of Moneymakers to operate a mattress store.
Philip and Linda Moneymaker, Keith’s parents, originally opened a used furniture store in nearby Aberdeen. When it burned down, they decided to rebuild and pursue a new retail channel. Used furniture got an upgrade to new mattresses, and Sweet Dreams opened in Southern Pines in 2002.
The mattress store began with a single brand — Beautyrest — but now encompasses an assortment of the industry’s leading brands, one that includes Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, Stearns & Foster, Englander, Bedgear, Beautyrest, Serta, Avocado and Bed Tech.
A key new vendor is Englander, which has been on the floor for six months. Moneymaker said the Englander line offers “a good story” and has features that differentiate it from the competition. It also provides “more value” than some other bedding lines, and, importantly, he enjoys protected distribution with the line.
The six Englander models, retailing from $999 to $1,799, fill key middle price points, where the retailer had a void on the floor.
“Everybody wants to fill those price points with beds in a box,” Moneymaker said. But he’s not like everybody else in the mattress arena, and he would rather fill those price points with traditional beds with “great margins.” Exactly how great Englander’s margins are he doesn’t want to say, but those margins are one of his profit drivers.
Another is his commitment to higher-end beds. He says his bedding lineup, which starts at $299, tops out at a lofty $18,000 for a Tempur-Pedic sleep set. He estimates that his bestselling sleep sets fall in the $3,000 to $5,000 range, with adjustable bed bases.
Southern Pines (2024 population: 16,987) is a more affluent community than many similarly sized towns in the state. Pinehurst, North Carolina’s famous golf enclave, is 6 miles down the road. Retiring baby boomers are a key demographic in the region.
Moneymaker attributes much of his success to a compelling story, one that includes a commitment to giving back to the community. In 2016 he founded the Dreams 4 All Foundation, which provides beds to those who need them. A percentage of the store’s profits goes to the foundation, and that charitable drive is one of the ways that Moneymaker has built his brand and his reputation.
“We are extremely well known,” he said. “People want to see that you are human. They see our story and they support our growth. They see a local business owner succeeding.”
Sweet Dreams has plenty of mattress competition, with strong players like Mattress Firm, Sleep Number and Ashley in the area. But Moneymaker said that word-of-mouth advertising is particularly important in his community and contends that gives him an advantage in his market based on his years of service to the community and the many positive relationships he and his staff have established with their customers over the years.
He also takes a different approach to his competitors. Rather than viewing them as business antagonists, he aims to establish friendly relationships with them. “Everyone looks at things like this the wrong way,” he said. “I want to help consumers. I like to know the other mattress retailers. No retailer will win every piece of the business, but all of us should be working to meet our customers’ needs.”
There’s another way that Moneymaker stands out in his market; he’s got a flowing beard, one that he’s been growing for seven years. “It’s part of my brand,” he noted. “I’m the guy with the beard.” Yes, he’s a genuine Moneymaker.
