Blog: FT Consensus Bedding Forecast less positive than ISPA forecasts

It’s a tale of two forecasts, one more pessimistic than the other. It’s also a comparison of apples and oranges. We’ll explain that in a moment.

But first let’s start with the more pessimistic forecast, because that’s the one that Furniture Today is publishing in this week’s print issue. It is our Consensus Bedding Forecast, and it calls for a slight unit decline this year (0.6%), with a modest increase (1.7%) in the dollar value of bedding shipments.

If you want a more bullish forecast, try the one issued last November by the International Sleep Products Assn. It sees unit growth this year of 2.5% — a big difference from the Furniture Today forecast — and dollar growth of 3.5%, more than twice as strong as the Furniture Today forecast.

Before we dig into those differences, we must make a key point. Our forecasts don’t cover the same product categories.

For the first time, the Furniture Today Consensus Bedding Forecast covers the total bedding market, which includes domestic production, imports and motion bases.

While ISPA now includes all of those categories in its quarterly and annual bedding reports, its forecasts cover only mattresses and stationary foundations. And ISPA actually issues two forecasts: oOne for U.S.-produced mattresses and stationary foundations, and the other for the total market for mattresses and foundations, which includes imports.

The ISPA forecast we cited earlier in this column is the forecast for the total mattress and stationary foundation market. ISPA’s forecast for U.S.-produced shipments is much less bullish. It sees units flat this year and dollars up 2.0%, both numbers that are in the neighborhood of the Furniture Today forecast but are still more optimistic than our forecast.

Presumably the inclusion of motion bases in our forecast would provide a boost to our figures, as motion foundation dollars were up 32.2% in 2018, and motion foundation units were up 52.8% that year.

Motion bases were down last year in most of ISPA’s quarterly bedding reports, a finding that we question, by the way, given the category’s strength in recent years. It could be that our forecasts were influenced by those negative motion numbers.

Given the motion base category’s choppy history in recent years, it’s difficult to know what kind of growth potential the two dozen producers who shared their estimates with us might have factored in for the category this year.

And to be candid, it’s also difficult to know if all of the bedding producers who gave us their estimates for bedding’s performance this year were, indeed, thinking about the total bedding market, vs. the U.S. mattress and foundation market.

We acknowledge the presence of these uncertainties in our forecast. And we agree with a point that ISPA Forecast Committee member Jerry Epperson made in his comments accompanying the ISPA forecasts: “The ability to read factors often assumed in the past is not necessarily true today.”

Yes, it’s a complex bedding world these days. Hey, that’s just the way it is.