Sleep Train to rename all 318 mattress stores

[bing101]

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article136239718.html


The Sacramento based chain will be renamed Mattress Firm

[Brandon]

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article136239718.html


The Sacramento based chain will be renamed Mattress Firm

Sounds like they (like Sleepy's and a few other chains) were purchased by Mattress Firm.  So, gotta wonder if the two, or even three Mattress Firms on a corner will spread to California.

[Bruce]

What a generic name. I liked Sleep Country USA better.

[jp the roadgeek]

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article136239718.html


The Sacramento based chain will be renamed Mattress Firm

Sounds like they (like Sleepy's and a few other chains) were purchased by Mattress Firm.  So, gotta wonder if the two, or even three Mattress Firms on a corner will spread to California.

That was a Sleepys practice.  I know of two Mattress Firms within a mile of each other on the same road, and it used to be that way in my town.  Sleepys bought up a local chain after one of the owners of the local chain passed away.  For a while, there were two Sleepys within a mile, but the one they absorbed closed.  A few months later, the surviving owner of the old chain opened a new store in the old location with a new name and it there to this day.

[Henry]

One by one, the mattress industry is being monopolized. It's a shame that Sleepy's would never get to celebrate its 60th anniversary due to its being acquired by Mattress Firm; in fact, I could hardly believe it when a commercial on the radio told me that "the Mattress Professionals (Sleepy's longtime slogan) are now working for the Firm".

[inkyatari]

The Freakonomics podcast did a really interesting episode on why there are so many mattress stores...

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/

[Brandon]

The Freakonomics podcast did a really interesting episode on why there are so many mattress stores...

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/

And this guy nails it as to why we have retail trouble:

So to Dholakia, if the question is, "are there too many mattress stores in America?"  the answer would be no. Unless you change the question slightly and ask, "are there too many stores in America?"

    DHOLAKIA: In the U.S., we just have too much retail overall, period, not just mattress stores.

That's right. The proliferation of mattress retailing is just a subset of a larger problem: a proliferation of retailing, period, which is an interesting claim for a professor of marketing to make.

    DHOLAKIA: So one statistic which I found to be very interesting is that America has 46 square feet of retail space per capita. In contrast, U.K. – United Kingdom – has just nine square feet, less than a fifth. And in fact, the U.K. is the European country with the most retail space per capita. So all other European countries have much less retail space. And so in America, we just have a lot of retail, even with the online retailing shift. We still have too many retail stores of every type, not just mattresses.

In other words, the internet is not doing in brick and mortar stores, brick and mortar stores are doing it to themselves.

[Rothman]

Square feet by capita is a strange metric to use to come to that conclusion.  To have too much retail to me would mean we have too many businesses popping up and then going out of business due to lack of demand.  Retail space is degrees removed from what I would think really indicates if there is too much retail.

[Brandon]

Square feet by capita is a strange metric to use to come to that conclusion.  To have too much retail to me would mean we have too many businesses popping up and then going out of business due to lack of demand.  Retail space is degrees removed from what I would think really indicates if there is too much retail.

However, that seems to be exactly what's happening.  Why else do we have chains folding?  How many sporting goods chains do we really need (to use a recent example - MC Sports, Sports Authority)?

[Rothman]

Show me the data and then compare that to the UK.  Despite having less retail space per capital than US, is their turnover just as high?

[Brandon]

Show me the data and then compare that to the UK.  Despite having less retail space per capital than US, is their turnover just as high?

That part I don't know, but I do know that we do have way too much retail.

[catch22]

Show me the data and then compare that to the UK.  Despite having less retail space per capital than US, is their turnover just as high?

That part I don't know, but I do know that we do have way too much retail.

Bingo. As an example, within a 20 minute drive of my house (western Detroit suburbs), we have:

6 Kohl's
4 JCPenney
3 Macy's (soon to be 2, the Westland Mall location is closing any day now)
4 Walmart
4 Home Depot
3 BestBuy
3 Sears (for how long is anyone's guess)
7 Walgreens'
3 Lowe's

The over-saturation of fast-food restaurants is even worse.

[Rothman]

Again, how are you determining over-saturation?  They're viable businesses, right?

[jeffandnicole]

Show me the data and then compare that to the UK.  Despite having less retail space per capital than US, is their turnover just as high?

That part I don't know, but I do know that we do have way too much retail.

Bingo. As an example, within a 20 minute drive of my house (western Detroit suburbs), we have:

6 Kohl's
4 JCPenney
3 Macy's (soon to be 2, the Westland Mall location is closing any day now)
4 Walmart
4 Home Depot
3 BestBuy
3 Sears (for how long is anyone's guess)
7 Walgreens'
3 Lowe's

The over-saturation of fast-food restaurants is even worse.

What's the population in that area?  That's usually the driving force behind all those stores.  There'd be no sense to have 6 Kohls around 20 people.  If there were 6 Kohls around 2 million people then they may not even have enough.

[inkyatari]

Bingo. As an example, within a 20 minute drive of my house (western Detroit suburbs), we have:

6 Kohl's
4 JCPenney
3 Macy's (soon to be 2, the Westland Mall location is closing any day now)
4 Walmart
4 Home Depot
3 BestBuy
3 Sears (for how long is anyone's guess)
7 Walgreens'
3 Lowe's

The over-saturation of fast-food restaurants is even worse.

What's the population in that area?  That's usually the driving force behind all those stores.  There'd be no sense to have 6 Kohls around 20 people.  If there were 6 Kohls around 2 million people then they may not even have enough.

Looks rather huge, given the western Detroit suburbs.

[ARMOURERERIC]

I live in a town of 18000, it has 5 Food Lions, 3 Ingles, a Bi-Lo, 2 Walmart Neighborhood Markets and a Walmart Super center.

[jwolfer]

I live in a town of 18000, it has 5 Food Lions, 3 Ingles, a Bi-Lo, 2 Walmart Neighborhood Markets and a Walmart Super center.

How many live in the surrounding area?
Is a suburban town of 18000in city limits with 70000 in unincorporated areas. Or other towns.

Some smaller towns have lots of retail because they draw from a large trading area.. For example Secaucas, NJ is a retail mecca for northern NJ and NYC but onlt 15000 live in the town

LGMS428

[inkyatari]

I live in a town of 12,000. We have two Subways, just got our first Starbuck's, one Walmart, one each of McD's, BK, Taco Bell, Chili's, KFC, Long JOhn Silver's and Buffalo Wild Wings.  And not much else,  I have to drive 20 miles to get anything else. I'm slightly outside the Chicago Metro Statistical Area (last I checked)

[catch22]

Show me the data and then compare that to the UK.  Despite having less retail space per capital than US, is their turnover just as high?

That part I don't know, but I do know that we do have way too much retail.

Bingo. As an example, within a 20 minute drive of my house (western Detroit suburbs), we have:

6 Kohl's
4 JCPenney
3 Macy's (soon to be 2, the Westland Mall location is closing any day now)
4 Walmart
4 Home Depot
3 BestBuy
3 Sears (for how long is anyone's guess)
7 Walgreens'
3 Lowe's

The over-saturation of fast-food restaurants is even worse.

What's the population in that area?  That's usually the driving force behind all those stores.  There'd be no sense to have 6 Kohls around 20 people.  If there were 6 Kohls around 2 million people then they may not even have enough.

Wayne County has about 1.8M people.  I'm also close to Oakland County, which has about 1.2M but I only counted stores in the SW corner of it that met my 20-minute limit.  Lots more of all of these in the remainder of Oakland County.

[rawmustard]

I live in a town of 12,000. We have two Subways, just got our first Starbuck's, one Walmart, one each of McD's, BK, Taco Bell, Chili's, KFC, Long JOhn Silver's and Buffalo Wild Wings.  And not much else,  I have to drive 20 miles to get anything else. I'm slightly outside the Chicago Metro Statistical Area (last I checked)

Are a lot of those places near a freeway interchange? Of course, being slightly outside of the Chicago MSA is still close enough to draw significant people from the fringes, and there's constant growth within those fringes. I'm amazed at how much an area like Huntley has developed, for instance. Your town might be experiencing a similar boom.

[lordsutch]

Well, labor, building, and utility costs are far higher in most of Europe than they are in the U.S. for a variety of reasons. So in general European retailers get by with less floor space and selection, and cut corners on service (Aldi-style "bag it yourself," for example), to stay profitable.

We do have an issue with income tax depreciation being skewed in favor of new greenfield construction rather than reusing existing buildings, but I don't think that's due to "too much retail" per se. I can't find the article offhand but I remember reading something years ago that said this helped explain why the US "dead mall" phenomenon is much less common in Canada despite similar land use rules, culture, etc.

[inkyatari]

I live in a town of 12,000. We have two Subways, just got our first Starbuck's, one Walmart, one each of McD's, BK, Taco Bell, Chili's, KFC, Long JOhn Silver's and Buffalo Wild Wings.  And not much else,  I have to drive 20 miles to get anything else. I'm slightly outside the Chicago Metro Statistical Area (last I checked)

Are a lot of those places near a freeway interchange? Of course, being slightly outside of the Chicago MSA is still close enough to draw significant people from the fringes, and there's constant growth within those fringes. I'm amazed at how much an area like Huntley has developed, for instance. Your town might be experiencing a similar boom.

Only the Walmart and Buffalo Wild Wings are at the interstate.  And I forgot a Subway. We have three.  One is in the Walmart, and one is in a truckstop at the interstate.

It's really been fairly stagnant here until the last couple years.  I expect it to boom as soon as the Brisbin Road area develops.

[Thing 342]

So to Dholakia, if the question is, "are there too many mattress stores in America?"  the answer would be no. Unless you change the question slightly and ask, "are there too many stores in America?"

    DHOLAKIA: In the U.S., we just have too much retail overall, period, not just mattress stores.

That's right. The proliferation of mattress retailing is just a subset of a larger problem: a proliferation of retailing, period, which is an interesting claim for a professor of marketing to make.

    DHOLAKIA: So one statistic which I found to be very interesting is that America has 46 square feet of retail space per capita. In contrast, U.K. – United Kingdom – has just nine square feet, less than a fifth. And in fact, the U.K. is the European country with the most retail space per capita. So all other European countries have much less retail space. And so in America, we just have a lot of retail, even with the online retailing shift. We still have too many retail stores of every type, not just mattresses.

How many times do we have to listen to academics restate "OMG, America has suburbs, you guys" until they stop? Comparing US development patterns to those in countries that have been settled thousands of years earlier is a fundamentally flawed idea.