In its first report on business conditions this year, the International Sleep Products Assn. said bedding units declined 2.3% in the first quarter, while the wholesale value of bedding shipments rose just 0.2%.

The average unit price was up 2.6% in the quarter to $229.67.

The report marked the debut of ISPA’s Bedding Market Quarterly, which offers a three-month look at industry performance rather than the monthly reports ISPA had issued for many years. ISPA said it switched to a quarterly frequency because that provides “best in class” timing.

The new quarterly report presents shipment data from companies that accounted for about 70% of total industry units and about 78% of the wholesale revenue of shipments in 2014, ISPA said.

Participating manufacturers include Serta, Simmons, Select Comfort, Tempur Sealy International, Corsicana, Kingsdown, Omaha Bedding, Restonic, Southerland, and Standard Mattress, among others, ISPA said.

The bedding industry’s trade association cautioned that the quarterly data may not necessarily reflect the performance of the full mattress industry because of market share or distribution changes rather than increases or decreases in the overall market.

The report includes a “Quarterly Insights” column by guest columnist Jerry Epperson, a managing director of Mann, Armistead & Epperson and a member of ISPA’s Statistics Committee.

“After a strong 2015, month after month, the retail malaise experienced in the first quarter was troubling, since no obvious indicators were evident,” Epperson wrote. “Early excuses pointed to the strange and bothersome presidential campaigns, but would that stop someone from buying a mattress?”

Epperson also noted that “the mattress industry internally is digesting a lot of changes on both the vendor and retail level that could have led to more conservative/less aggressive strategies.”

The first quarter report said that mattress units declined 1%, while foundation units dropped 4%. Mattress dollars were up 1.4% in the first quarter, while foundation dollars were down 6.3%, ISPA said.

The average unit price for mattresses was up 2.4% in the first quarter to $354.03, while it dropped 2.5% for foundations to $76.98, ISPA reported.

Those figures do not include adjustable bases, one of the fastest-growing categories in the industry.

But elsewhere in the report, ISPA did provide a breakdown on motion foundations sold through mattress manufacturers. The dollar value of those foundations was $152.3 million in the first quarter, with a total of 232,635 motion foundations being shipped. The average unit price for motion foundations in the first quarter was $654.79, ISPA reported.

No prior year quarterly data on motion foundations was available, ISPA said.

(Source: Furniture Today  Author: David Perry)