We start the new year off with some unfinished business. And that unfinished business happens to portend some good business for the mattress industry this year.
We won’t have the official numbers on the mattress industry’s performance in 2024 for some time, but it’s clear that it was another down year for the industry. Retail traffic was down, business was challenged across the board and many companies struggled to get traction in a year of great uncertainty.
The International Sleep Products Association’s Statistics Committee is forecasting that the total U.S. mattress market for U.S.-produced and imported products saw a significant 4.5% decline in the wholesale value of mattress shipments last year and a sizable 7.5% decrease in unit shipments.
Those are some discouraging numbers, but they hold some of the keys to better business this year, according to Consumer Insights Now research we conducted last year.
It turns out that inflation and price increases last year led many consumers to delay purchases of home furnishings in 2024, with mattresses high on the list of delayed home furnishings purchases.
Fully half of the consumers we surveyed on economic issues last year said inflation had led them to put home furnishings purchases on hold. That’s the bad news, and one of the many reasons why home furnishings sales last year were sluggish.
But here’s the good news: Most consumers who put mattress purchases on hold last year say they are planning to purchase mattresses this year. More than four in 10 of those consumers (43%) say they plan to purchase mattresses in the first half of this year. And another 36% say they plan to purchase mattresses in the second half of this year.
When we add those delayed purchases to the normal mattress purchases we can expect in any given year, we have a nice bump in business. And that’s exactly what many analysts are forecasting for the mattress industry this year.
ISPA’s Statistics Committee is squarely in that better business camp. It is forecasting a 3.0% increase in the value of mattress shipments this year, with a 1.5% increase in unit shipments. That would be a swing of 7.5 percentage points in the wholesale value and a swing of 9 percentage points in unit shipments from 2024 to 2025. Those would be major surges of business for the mattress category.
And our CIN research found more good news for our category. A solid majority of shoppers — 70% — say they will be more quality driven when it comes to mattresses rather than price driven (30%). Consumers shopping for primary bedroom furniture, by contrast, are evenly split between being price driven and quality driven.
The overwhelming interest of mattress shoppers in being willing to pay more for quality, as opposed to shopping primarily on price, sets the mattress industry up for a year of better business with better goods.
One of my frequent laments is that the mattress category too often touts low prices rather than high quality. Our CIN research reveals that mattress consumers are clearly willing to pay more for quality products.
Our research also identifies the consumers most likely to be looking for higher-quality mattresses and home furnishings. They are most likely to be baby boomers (60 or older when they were surveyed last year), Gen X consumers (44 to 59 last year) and older millennials (36 to 43 last year). That is a very broad swath of consumers.
All of this adds up to a nice dose of good mattress news as we welcome in a new year. Hey, we deserve some good news in our neck of the woods. Here’s hoping this is a strong year for all of us in Mattressville.
