Centuary Mattresses aims to expand its market share to 13% in FY21, perform even better than last year

• Centuary Mattresses is expecting to close Financial Year 2020-2021 with 18-20% growth.
• Currently, Centuary Mattresses enjoys about 10% of the market share in the organised segment and aims to increase its share to 12-13%.
• Uttam Malani, Executive Director, Centuary Mattresses shares with us the strategy behind its ambitious expansion and revenue goals.

The COVID-19 induced lockdown had put brakes on every business but Centuary Mattresses saw its business bouncing back to normalcy in August. As consumers started focusing more on their health and well-being and became more conscious of following a tight schedule, sleep also started playing a vital role in this aspect.

Centuary Mattresses, a 30-year-old brand that takes pride in being a ‘sleep specialist,’ was quick to recognise the growing importance of ‘immunity and health’ in the market and launched an antimicrobial foam shield mattresses across its range and online range of pocket spring roll mattresses. The brand is aiming to position its mattresses not only as a wellness product but as a health product which could help in boosting immunity.

On how important the wellness proposition has become in the current market, Uttam Malani, Executive Director, Centuary Mattresses, said, “We strongly believe that every business in the post-COVID era will have to bring a certain wellness proposition for the consumer. As a mattress brand, we also intend to leverage this position by tailoring most of our products and communication in this direction. We have a host of new product line ups and health-based brand communications. The post lockdown period will certainly bring optimism for the manufacturing industry. However, few things which should be kept in mind after lockdown are spending the money sensibly with judicious buying. The companies need to implement a proper credit management system, control the operational expenses, plan logistic management, and streamline the labour/manpower management.”

According to Malani, Centuary Mattresses is amongst the top 3 brands in the country with a presence in 19 States and availability across 3500+ retailers. It is looking to expand its presence in East/North-Eastern markets and currently has exclusive 400 + EBOs in the country.

As the market slowly limps back on its track, Centuary Mattresses is optimistic about achieving 18-20% growth this fiscal. Centuary Mattresses enjoys about 10% of the market share in the organised segment and it aims to increase its share to at least 12-13% in Financial Year 2020-2021.

Organised and unorganised put together, the mattress industry in India is currently worth Rs 10,000 crore and only about 40% of the market is occupied by organised players.

Talking about the advantages of operating in a market dominated by unorganised players, Malani said, “63% of the mattresses sold in the country still comes from the unorganised sector as per a recent survey conducted by the ISPF; the opportunity presented to the organised sector through the implementation of GST is huge. Add to that the explosion in the health & wellness industry; coupled with growing awareness levels & studies on the importance of sleep in an individual's wellbeing, and it doesn't take long to realise that the category is ripe for transformation to a well-structured, regulated, and largely organised sector. The Online sales of mattresses has gained more traction post-COVID, with nearly 7-8% revenue contribution coming from online channels.”

However, the mattress industry is expected to shrink by 10% and that hasn’t shaken its spirit.

Malani said, “While growth of the industry will be pegged at -5% in the current fiscal, it may witness a healthy growth in 2021-22. However, we did not waste the lockdown period and rather looked out for opportunity amidst this crisis. We are already on the recovery mode and should be back on the growth track from the festive season. Even though the mattress industry which was growing at 8% annually, is expected to shrink by 10% this year, we are optimistic we will be able to achieve a growth of about 18%-20% Y-oY this financial year onwards,”

It was on the back of demand from rural markets that Centuary Mattresses saw an early recovery. With the festive and marriage season, the brand is now hoping to clock good numbers in the urban market as well.

“Consumer spending has become more cautious with COVID as consumers are preferring to place their confidence in known and reputed products and brands. Although the average selling prices have shrunk marginally, there is a huge spike in business particularly from rural belts in recent weeks, which bodes well for the organized sector. While mattresses demand is becoming normal in Tier-II & III rural areas, the momentum is yet to pick up in the urban. In the initial period, we were anticipating a hit of around 25% on the business, however, with the current developments, we foresee it to be down by around 5% now this fiscal with healthy growth in 2021-22,” said Malani.

Communication Strategy

The Indian consumer has been shifting to the online world over the last few years and this trend has only been accelerated post-COVID.

“Centuary has been one of the first mattress brands in India to create an e-commerce footprint right from 2015. We are betting big on our first ‘Online Exclusive’ product range – ‘Sleepables by Centuary’. We invested a year on developing it and it's an extension of the umbrella brand Centuary Mattresses and restricted to an online space. The mattress is also made available in the revamped website of Centuary to leverage its own web engine and utilize it as a powerful e-commerce engine with a better customer interface. The traffic has increased 3 times as compared to the Pre-COVID days,” said Malani.

On changing its social media to meet the rising consumer demand, Malani said, “We are keeping all our customers and followers engaged through various means of Social Media platforms by providing required information clubbed with some entertainment in these stressful times. We have started a social media campaign to engage and educate people not only on the benefits of sleep but also helping the family members to understand the advantages of better sleep. At the same time, we have also initiated a conversation with all our customers to understand their worries by addressing each of the issues being raised because we are concerned for a better health and longevity of our customers.”

Elaborating on the social media strategy further, Malani said, “In continuation to our efforts in engaging with our audience during the lockdown period, we have organized campaigns like ‘KaroNa’ wherein we motivated people to start learning to play musical instruments, indoor games, have a family discussion to enhance the bonding, etc., we thought of making it more interesting and provide relief from boredom to all our audience through an interesting #SleeptimeStories campaign which is still running. Sleep Time or bedtime stories are the most cherished moments of everybody’s life; be it grandparents, parents, and kids as well. So, we wanted them to be more relevant and non-preachy. Therefore, we made them light-hearted, hopeful, and value-driven stories clubbed with fun. We introduced a storytelling expert who interestingly narrates a specific story on social media platforms to impress the audience of every age group. The activity is helping the audience to inculcate a habit of sleeping on time leading to a night of better sleep and feel relaxed in the morning.”

Centuary Mattresses will continue to ride on this robust demand by augmenting its presence on social media, increasing its retail presence and focus on launching health and hygiene product range.