While the ecommerce market has grown significantly in recent years, brick-and-mortar retail remains a valuable piece of the sales puzzle. Over the past year, we’ve seen more and more online bedding brands branch out to include traditional retail distribution strategies. This shift will come as no surprise to industry veterans, who understand how integral the rest-test is to finding the right mattress. Yet despite the clear benefits of trying before buying, many consumers still find the mattress rest-test process to be confusing or tedious. For brick-and-mortar retailers looking to stay competitive in today’s marketplace, the key to success is creating a more comfortable, enjoyable and informative retail environment for their customers.

How do you help brick-and-mortar retailers provide a more positive shopping experience?

Nick Bates, President of Spring Air International

The online disruptors continue to nibble away at sales from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. However, pure e-commerce retailers can’t provide consumers with the critical information about why one mattress meets their sleep needs over another. At Spring Air, we’re working with our retail partners to educate consumers on better sleep, as well as helping drive those buyers into stores through our website. Most consumers start their mattress shopping online through research. That’s where we capture them and then push them into retail stores to connect with a well-trained sales associate who can guide and direct them to the right mattress for their needs. We’re also continually working to develop in-store promotions and special purchases, like our Love Your Melon partnership that provides a social benefit component, to entice consumers into stores.

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John Rachid, President of Protect-A-Bed

We help retailers separate their stores from the others and move beyond the sea of sameness into a sales environment designed to enhance understanding, education and interest. From ensuring that interested customers are coming into the store with traffic-driving promotions and marketing, to equipping the sales staff with industry-leading training, to providing eye-catching displays and interactive tools like Sleep Tailor, Protect-A-Bed provides a comprehensive approach to improving the shopping experience, lifting incremental sales and “Growing the Retail Basket.” To lift incremental mattress sales, we have introduced the REM-Fit brand stores. These in-store build-outs take an underperforming portion of the sales floor and transform it into an attention-grabbing means of capturing the try-in-store-shop-online consumer. The REM-Fit brand stores also connect the dots between mattresses and sleep accessories to offer a whole sleep system. This approach not only provides shoppers with the ideal sleep experience, but provides another way for retailers to “Grow the Retail Basket.”

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David Binke, CEO of King Koil

The amount of training—both in terms of product and the importance of sleep—that our network of King Koil representatives provide the RSAs is extremely helpful in giving brick-and-mortar retailers a differentiating factor. We arm them with facts about a better night’s sleep and how quality sleep can impact one’s overall life. E-commerce sites can’t engage consumers with critical information about sleep and the role different mattresses play in it. Sales and sleep education are incredibly important tools for traditional retail stores in competing against online sales.

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Kevin Damewood, Executive Vice Presiden of Sales and Marketing of Kingsdown

The pure e-commerce bedding retailers have invested heavily in telling consumers that one bed fits all, and that’s just not true. Bedding is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Kingsdown continues to work with our retail partners to dispel that myth. By using our bedMATCH technology, through its scientific approach, consumers receive assurance that the mattress they are purchasing is the best fit for them and will provide proper support to deliver the best night’s sleep possible.

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Denny Boyd, President of Boyd Sleep

Our Sleep Metrics program offers an in-store experience that cannot be matched on-line. The consumer can answer questions about their sleep profile and then have their body pressure mapped in the store. A mattress firmness level is recommended along with accessories that are appropriate based upon the data provided.