Big Mattress - Not a Front for the Mob After All
I'm ready to grudgingly accept that the absolute market saturation of mattress retailers in America over the past 10 years isn't tied to money laundering, even though it's one of the few internet conspiracies that kind of, sort of, might possibly be true. I bought a mattress yesterday. First time in my life. I've lived on this planet 61 years without having that experience. All I can say after nearly selling a kidney to buy a common household item is DAMN. The one we bought cost more than every television I've ever owned, added together. It cost more than any computer I've ever used. And I've used literally thousands of computers (source: 30 years fixing them for a living).
The reason they cost so much is easy to explain. It's the capitalism. Specifically, the markup at the retail level. Gross margins on mattresses run 40 to 75 percent depending on the retailer, and the fancier the bed, the fatter the markup. It's almost as bad as the markup on eyeglasses. Retailers don't need high volume. They do fine selling a few a week.
The overhead on running a mattress store is next to nothing. Staff it with one or two people a shift. Skip the inventory; a showroom with a few floor models will do, and when a customer's ready to buy, you order it from a warehouse. No costly displays to maintain. The only real bill is cleaning.
That's why you can find three Mattress Firms in the same stretch of road. It's not an accident. Mattress Firm's own executives talked about "weaponizing real estate" to surround smaller competitors and starve them out. Land grab first, competition later. No matter which side of town you're on, there's a Mattress Firm. You see the brand everywhere you go.
Buying a box mattress off a podcast ad is a thing now, but it's still not a big thing, comparatively. People want to test drive whatever they're about to spend a third of their life lying on. That's why every mattress store lets you lie down and try it before you buy.
So it feels like these places ought to be going under. They're not. A store that looks completely empty is usually doing just fine, selling a premium bed or two a day. That's the way it is.
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