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Questions about beds and mattresses answered & stories told.

Of all the consolidations, bankruptcies and near bankruptcies in my over twenty years in the bedding business this is the one that shocked me the most.

First, a little history. We have not sold Sealy beds here at Nine Clouds Beds & Mattresses in a number of years because of a run of bad luck our customers experienced with their quality control. Almost a full one quarter of the Stearns & Foster (an ultra-Sealy brand) mattresses our customers purchased that year was collapsing within months of delivery. Maybe this reduction in build quality was caused by the U.S. financial crisis and Sealy's striving to reduce their costs? The returns started to pile up and Sealy became more and more resistant validating our customer's claims. We reached a tipping point and simply said enough was enough and parted ways.

We also tried Tempur in the store as well a number of years back but ceased doing business with them within days of an insightful visit from the owner of their Canadian division. During this visit I asked him why his product was so expensive in comparison to all other mattress in our showroom and his very candid answer shocked me. “Bill 40% of what you pay me goes into marketing our brand” I don't believe I even had an intelligible response. I just walked into my office and printed up "Tempur floor model on sale” signs and we were done.

I have to give Tempur credit though as they became even more profitable over the next few years, so much so that they could afford to buy Sealy for $229,000,000 (a mere fraction of their prior worth when they were most recently taken public).

It is a sad end of an era for Sealy, but at least they are now in business savvy hands.