The most common business model for new brick and mortar furniture stores is large chains adding another location to saturate a local market.

Adding locations in a local market makes advertising dollars more efficient. The same amount of advertising dollars produces a higher return on investment.

There are almost no small independent mattress stores popping up currently.

New small mattress companies are appearing online rather than by opening brick and mortar stores.

The total number of mattress stores in the U.S. has actually been shrinking in recent years.

In October 2018, Mattress Firm, the largest mattress retail chain in the U.S., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In a statement issued by the company:

Houston-based Mattress Firm plans to close as many as 700 of its 3,230 company-owned stores. Those stores are located “in certain markets where we have too many locations in close proximity to each other.”

Mattress Firm is not the only mattress retailer that is downsizing the number of street front locations.

According to the May 27 edition of Furniture Today, Top 100 Mattress retailers Sleep Outfitters, Mattress1One, Mattress & More and FFO Home are also closing stand-alone mattress stores.

On the other hand, many of these same firms are aggressively expanding into alternative marketing venues.

40 years ago there were only a dozen major mattress manufacturers with national distribution. Another dozen smaller second tier firms sold their products on a regional basis.

Local mattress makers were everywhere but made up a very small percentage of overall mattress sales.

Now there are over 120 different brands sold online and shipped nationally.