Gallery, Select Comfort lead in performance

By Clint Engel -- Furniture Today, May 28, 2008

High Point — High Point— It's getting to be a broken record, but Gallery Furniture again took the crown in two out of three Top 100 performance categories, duking it out with Select Comfort, which was tops in the third.

The Houston-based Gallery, No. 56 on the Top 100, was the sales-per-square-foot leader, reporting an average of $1,600 — blowing away all comers as well as the $289 median for the 49 companies for which estimates were available.

Gallery's stock turns also were tops (again) among the Top 100, turning an average of 28 times.

In both categories, No. 12 Select Comfort was second again with sales per square foot averaging $1,264 —the only other retailer to top $1,000 — and stock turning an average of 23 times.

The Minneapolis-based airbed maker and retailer was the leader in the gross margin category with a 59.4% average, followed by No. 91 Domain at 52.1%, and No. 3 Pier 1 Imports at 51.6%.

Gallery tied for fourth with No. 72 Norwalk — The Furniture Idea and No. 64 Dial-A-Mattress, all with 50% average margins.

Gallery and Select Comfort were the only companies to appear on the Top 10 of all three performance categories — again — while No. 1 Rooms To Go, No. 64 Dial-A-Mattress and No. 75 Sit'n Sleep made it on two of the three lists.

RTG posted the third-best sales per square foot at $900 and the 10th-best stock turns — averaging 8 times.

Long Island City, N.Y.-based Dial-A-Mattress tied for third with an average gross margin of 50%, and was fourth again with stocks turning an average of 16 times.

Gardena, Calif.-based Sit 'n Sleep, which appeared twice last year and the year before, posted the seventh-best stock turn rate, an average of 11 times, and the ninth-best sales per square foot.

The median inventory turn for the Top 100 was 5.6 times based on 33 estimates, an improvement over the 5.4 median turns for last year's Top 100. With 25 estimates, the median gross margin was 46%, up from 45% for the Top 100 last year.

Despite Gallery's strong sales-per-square-foot performance — bettering its number last year by $230 — the median of $289 in sales per square foot for this year's Top 100 was below the $300 median for last year's group.

When a product is certified organic it really means the covers themselves, what you want to look for in an organic mattress with regards to rubber cores is simply 3rd party certification testing for polymer content (ratio of NR to SBR) and VOC, PBDE, heavy metal content.  I am actually also a dealer of Natura product, and they have been using latex green natural dunlop cores in their organic mattresses for the past year or 2.  The rubber is fantastic quality and has always had 3rd party certification for the natural content, I was told recently that they are seeking organic certification and maybe already have it...however the product has not changed...their natural rubber IS what they are seeking to label as organic rubber.....personally I believe that to be a little bit misleading from the sense that there are a couple different makers of the same quality and purity of natural rubber cores and the companies for good reason do not label the rubber as being organic.  Saying it is organically grown is really the proper terminology. 

Up until recently most people (that I talked to anyway) believed that this was simply a "relabeling" of their 100% natural product (at a higher price of course) using latex that had been segregated from their "main" plantation and certified as not using any pesticides in the early years of the trees growth and all the other things that "certification" requires, however there are some indications that their organic latex is qualitatively different from their 100% natural latex.

NAOMI "organic"

http://www.naomiorganics.com/naomicertifiedvendors.html

Phoenix

PS: Changed one of the links to the Bedroom magazine article instead of a vendors article.

Added later: link to USDA certified latex article was removed as Bedroom magazine is sleep related and accepts advertising which is against the TOS here. It basically said that there was now USDA organic certified latex

One of these is "Oregon Tilth" which certifies fibers and textiles for GOTS and others (including the USDA). http://tilth.org/certification/standards/standards-and-regulatons

OMI, NATUREPEDIC, and LIFEKIND claim that they are GOTS certified (Through Oregon Tilth).

I couldn't find LIFEKIND on either the Oregon Tilth website or the GOTS website so I phoned them. Well it turns out that they and OMI both manufacture in the same facility and are sister companies owned by the same people. They told me that they had just noticed a couple of days ago that Lifekind was not listed and plan to correct that.

So at this point here are the "organic" mattresses in North America

OMI (Cotton mattresses only)

LIFEKIND (yet to be listed as to which mattress)

NATUREPEDIC (Ultra crib mattresses only)

Since there doesn't seem to be a list on the USDA site of approved organic products, and since the USDA superceded all other private organic standards when it was implemented in 2002 http://tilth.org/certification/standards/standards-and-regulatons it "appears" that Latex Green at this point has the only "certified organic" latex available.

This also means of course that the NAOMI standard which I included in the last post ... while it may show "purity" levels higher even than the USDA standards (don't know the exact USDA levels) it cannot certify something as organic in the US (only tests for purity and not necessarily for the entire "organic chain of production" and it is not on the USDA or GOTS list of certifiers).

Phoenix

Do you carry the Sueno and Obasan as well as the Vimala?

If you do what do you (and your customers) think of them?

Phoenix

the Vimala was just recenty revised although it was our most popular mattress.  my brother sleeps on one, and I probably would have gotten one for myself however before we got the line I took the plunge on a Natura Eco Haven, which I am very happy with btw.  More than anything I just really like the base systems the GreenSleep beds use.

we do carry some Sueno product which we have actually private labelled so we could get Obasan's fabric on one of the beds.  The name Obasan is only sold direct from the manufacturer.  they are fantastic mattresses, customers generally like them a lot very comparable to the Natura organic line interms of the different build ups.  Although they do things a little bit differently. 

I really do believe though that when it comes to the quality of the raw materials and construction that GreenSleep is in a league of its own...we usually end up comparing those mattresses to beds in much higher price categories like Hypnos and Vi-Spring because from a build quality stand point that is really the more direct competition.  So a lot of really happy people there, although I think that rubber has some limitations so there is no real guarantee that the beds will deliver 100% of what people want, however I do believe that if someone had a Vimala or the new Dolcezza model from them and they were not satisfied then really no all latex mattress would have worked. 

I lay on the eco haven there and it was too firm for both of us but it was a good reference point. The transcend was too firm as well although it was on sale for a very good price and we "tried to like it" because of the price. We both liked the slats. They also carried the OMI Terra and that spoiled both of us, especially in it's softest configuration which we liked the best and it became our initial reference point for what we tended to like. They also had some Englander "all latex" as well and also carried slabs of latex to make your own but we didn't know that at the time (cause they didn't show us).

The other store had their own brand of "custom layers" but while we learned a lot about the feel we liked, we didn't like the quality of their ticking (well actually my other half didn't like it cause she notices stuff like frayed edges more than me). They also carried magniflex which didn't impress us with either the price or the "features" in all their different types of "additives" in the ticking. When we went back to the first place after this was when we found out they also had "make your own layers".

We made a lot of trips to other places as well and at that point I hadn't even discovered this forum yet.

I never did lay on a green sleep but I liked the look of the obasan a lot when I saw it online.

Anyhow, I'm just rambling on as she is marking papers (she's a teacher) in our bed so I can't go and crash yet (laughing).

Gonna go and see if I can convince her to go to sleep.

Good night

Phoenix

OMI is all 'natural' talalay right?  They actually tried to contact us a long time ago to carry their product....how would you compare the product to the Natura's you tried on the overall? 

We also had Magniflex contact us to become a dealer....their product seems very confusing and very gimmicky, I really was not interested in it whatsoever.

The Terra has a Talalay core and then "softer" latex on either side and then the topper. They do say it's all natural but their literature doesn't say the other layers are Talalay although I would think they were (and some other places say it is all Talalay). At the time I wasn't really considering it due to the price but I did like it's feel a lot. It would probably be safe to say that if it wasn't for the Terra and that we both wanted something that felt as good as that but within our budget, I would probably have bought something much sooner. It was the desire to reproduce it and see "what else was out there" that was the initial impetus to my research before it took on a life of its own. It to me felt and looked much nicer than any of the Natura's that I either lay on or even saw. It was very impressive. Their 81 was also very interesting and from a retail point of view could be quite practical as there are no comfort exchanges (it has 81 different configurations).

The magniflex to me was one big series of gimmics. I did lay on a couple and they were ok but nothing special ... especially for their price range. Even the salesperson there didn't treat them too seriously. I guess I just couldn't see the benefit of 22 karat gold impregnated yarn ... or any of their other "special benefits".

Phoenix