Shutterstock Mattress Firm lures customers in with financing options.
- Mattress Firm is the largest specialty mattress retailer in the United States, with around 3,400 stores.
- It has increasingly come under pressure as new startups such as Casper innovate the experience of mattress shopping and take market share.
- The company plans to close 175 stores in 2018, and analysts say it's likely more will follow.
Mattress Firm has commanded the American mattress market for years, but it has increasingly come under pressure as new startups like Casper find ways to improve the experience of shopping for this high-ticket item.
With 3,400 locations in total, the company is frequently criticized for being overstored in the United States. Parent company Steinhoff Holdings, which is currently being investigated after it reported "accounting irregularities" in its year-end results, said that Mattress Firm would be closing 175 stores in 2018.
"Management is focused on optimizing its store estate in an effort to right-size the overall estate and reduce the number of underperforming stores," the company wrote in its unaudited quarterly update in March.
But analysts say it's likely more closures will follow.
"Considering the accounting irregularities at Steinhoff and the operational troubles at subsidiary Mattress Firm, we believe there is a high probability that Mattress Firm will close significantly more than 200 stores announced in December," analysts at Wedbush wrote in a note to investors in February.
It continued: "Our base case is now 600 store closures in 2018, with potential for as many as 1,000 closures out of the 3,400 store base."
We tested the experience of shopping it its stores. Here's what it was like:
