HIGH POINT – As consumers continue to pull back on spending, mattress brands are looking to cut costs and delay product introductions, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

Publicly traded companies, including Sleep Number and Tempur-Sealy International, were cited in the Wall Street Journal story as examples of brands that said demand has started to decline due in part because of inflation and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine. Sleep Number said last week that it cut $10 million from its planned expenses for the first quarter ended April 2.

In conversations with mattress manufacturers and home furnishings retailers over the past couple of weeks, the consensus is that consumer traffic has slowed significantly from the past two years when consumers were nesting during COVID-19 shutdowns.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, consumers spent $298.5 billion on home furnishings in 2021, up 22% from 2020 and up 31% from 2019, prior to the pandemic.

I’m Sheila Long O’Mara, executive editor at Furniture Today. Throughout my 25-year career in the home furnishings industry, I have been an editor with a number of industry publications and spent a brief stint with a public relations agency where I worked with some of the industry’s leading bedding brands. I rejoined Furniture Today in December 2020 with a focus on bedding and sleep products. It’s a homecoming for me, as I was a writer and editor with Furniture Today from 1994 until 2002. I’m happy to be back and look forward to telling the important stories impacting bedding retailers and manufacturers.

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