Reading the title you must be rolling your eyes thinking there are already lots of bed shops around, but there is a reason there are so many beds shops and that the fact they have been around for many years. Here is why a bed shops is one of the safest bets if you decide to open a retail shop.
The reason there are bed shops everywhere that stay in business is due to many factors: large markups – you don’t need to sell a lot of beds to keep the store open, bed and mattress stores are also some of the cheapest stores to operate: it is basically a big room with display mattresses, showrooms that is all bed shops are this is because bed shops fulfill orders by direct shipment from warehouses, meaning there is no need for space or the cost to hold stock.
You don’t need expensive fittings or shelving, you don’t need hoards of sales people, when people come in and test the mattress, they decide whether they want to buy it or not – you only need one salesman to take order which is then fulfilled by bed and mattresses manufacturers. You don’t hold any stock (maybe a few foam mattresses if you want to). But you only order from the bed factory once an order comes in and the client has paid.
You also don’t need expensive shop space for a bed shop as consumer buying patterns does not require you to be in a shopping mall, people don’t just walk past a bed shop and say “Ooh today I will buy a bed”, they go out and look specifically for a bed shop, and they often go to cheaper places where the prices are less.
Another reason why there are often lots of mattress shops clustered together comes from a comment by Roger Cline:
Say there’s one mattress store in a town. It does advertising, and people know that’s where to go to get a mattress. Then say another mattress store decides to open up in the town. They realize that the first store has already built a presence, and people are likely to go there looking for mattresses, so they open up nearby in hopes that they can attract some people who are already headed out to get a new mattress. After a few stores do this, that area gets known as the “mattress district”. That’s where all the demand goes to look for mattresses in that town, and new stores would be crazy to open up anywhere else because they’d be missing out on all the traffic of people out looking for mattresses who don’t have a specific destination store in mind, but are simply heading out to the mattress district to see what they can find.
You also don’t have to worry too much about online competition, beds is one of those things that people prefer to physically feel before they purchase it.
Business Model
Simple retail business model, get your product mix right (see below), put one of each on display, add markup, once client pays, you pay the factory and the factory delivers, either to the shop where the customer can collect or to the customers house (at an extra fee).
Product Mix
There is two things to consider when selling beds: price points and purpose, you get budget beds, middle and high-end beds as well as beds for different purposes: children, adults, back ailments, geriatric, heavier clients and the hospitality industry. Your location will play a role in the variety that you sell. But because most of your floor area is beds, this allows you to display as much as you can.
