Survey: Mattress Sales Disappointing for Black Friday Weekend

Manufacturers’ mattress promotions for the Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend were elevated, but mattress sales were mixed.

That was the reading from Piper Sandler’s preliminary holiday weekend checks with a sample of furniture and mattress retailers.

The New York-based firm estimates that mattress sales were in the range of “flat to down slightly” for that holiday weekend. “That would place Thanksgiving weekend’s performance right in the middle of the last two big selling weekends: Memorial Day weekend, which was disappointing at down 11%, and Labor Day weekend, which was a positive surprise at up 6%,” Piper Sandler writes in its report.

The firm calls the mattress performance “a slight disappointment.” It says that larger retailers appeared to outperform in the mattress category, while smaller retailers, on average, underperformed in the category for the holiday weekend.

Piper Sandler says retailers commented that “mattress manufacturers across the board all ran promotions — making the overall promo cadence elevated.”

It says that furniture sales for the weekend “appear to be better than expected,” in the range of 5% to 10% increases.

“Across the board in our checks with retailers that sell furniture and mattresses, furniture sales outperformed — in most cases by a wide margin,” Piper Sandler says.

Looking at sales trends in recent months, the firm says that sales peaks over holiday weekends appear to be getting steeper, while the troughs in between key selling periods are getting deeper, particularly for mattress retailers.