Amazon’s mattress business is booming
Time：2019-02-15 13:41:24 Share：
Amazon’s mattress business is booming and is estimated to be running at an annual rate of $2 billion, analysts say.
“Amazon is speculated to be running at $2 billion of annual mattress sales with growth running at plus-50%,” said Piper Jaffray analysts Peter Keith and Robert Friedner in a report issued during the recent Las Vegas Market.
The analysts also wrote that online sales of mattresses were 20% of total units in 2018, which was up from 12% to 15% in 2017, “marking notable disruption for the industry.”
Looking at trade issues, the analysts noted that, while a preliminary ruling on the China anti-dumping issue was due no later than April 15, “this ruling has now been pushed back by 34 days (the length of the shutdown).”
They said that import mattress activity “appears to have slowed already, as any ruling would have a 90-day look-back period.” But they added that “there is still a large inventory glut of late 2018 imports that will likely take through Q2 to sell through.”
The analysts observed, after two days of meetings at market with a variety of mattress industry players, “there is a wide range of opinions on where China-sourced product ends up (domestic or other Asian countries). We expect (at most) 50% of China imported product is moved to the U.S. Over time, most China-sourced product will be produced in other Asian countries.”
Keith and Friedner also wrote that overall industry trends “remain challenged” and that Mattress Firm is potentially moving to a less promotional cadence.
“The early read from the (market) is that January has seen the sluggish trend from late 2018 continue, albeit perhaps slightly better than December, which was slightly better than a very weak October/November,” they wrote.
“Trends remain challenged from e-commerce share gains and Mattress Firm reducing ad spend in recent months. Mattress Firm has been slightly less promotional and didn’t appear to run its free adjustable base promo over the recent Martin Luther King weekend.”
