When it’s time to buy a new mattress, my wife and I go to physical retail stores and try to make sure we’re going to feel comfortable with whatever we decide to purchase.
That’s not a foolproof plan, as our current bed took a few years of use before it actually felt like the bed we tried in the store.
It does, however, seem like testing a mattress before buying it at least gives you the best possible chance of actually liking your purchase. We have purchased mattresses online, but only for guest beds and vacation properties, which would mostly be slept on by other people.
Sleep Savvy, a trade magazine for the bedding industry, has conducted research that shows we’re not alone in wanting to try a bed before buying it.
“When consumers show a preference for brick-and-mortar retailers, it seems linked to their desire to rest-test a sleep set before buying it. An overwhelming 92% of consumers say it is very (66%) or somewhat (26%) important to try out a mattress before making a purchase,” the data showed.
And at a time when many formerly digital-only direct-to-consumer mattress brands have opened brick-and-mortar locations or partnered with traditional retailers, one regional chain has decided to do the opposite.
Dream City Mattress has decided to close its physical stores and become a digital-only retailer.
Consumers send mixed messages
While the data above shows that most Americans prefer buying mattresses in physical stores, many actually opt to buy online.
The Provoke Fall 2024/Winter 2025 survey, conducted in conjunction with Furniture Today, showed that about two-thirds of those polled made furniture purchases online.
“The leading reasons given for buying online were better prices (27%), free delivery (25%), wider selection of products (19%), and a faster shopping experience (16%). A lack of nearby in-person locations was cited by 7% of respondents, with 8% noting their preferred source only sells online,” the survey of 1,501 adults ages 21 to 65 showed.
“Looking at the broader picture of which furniture items consumers have bought in the past year, mattresses were the clear frontrunner at 41%, followed by lamps/lighting (34%) and bedroom sets (21%),” according to the survey.
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In addition, while people do like to physically test mattresses and other furniture, buying online gives them access to more opinions than just whoever they might be shopping with in-store.
“Most Furniture & Home Decor shoppers say they use reviews to evaluate long-term quality and durability when shopping for these products online,” according to a 2026 survey by the Baymard Institute.
“That behavior makes sense in an industry where purchases are often relatively expensive, expected to last for years, and difficult to return once delivered and assembled.”
Dream City Mattress closes its stores
Dream City Mattress, which served central and upstate New York, shared its decision to close its physical stores on its Facebook page.
“EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!! Liquidation Sale! After 25 incredible years in the community, we are closing both of our physical locations on August 31st. Before we transition entirely to our online store, we are clearing out every single item in our inventory. For the next 30 days, we are giving you exclusive access to our cost to empty our inventory,” the company shared.
TheStreet was unable to access the company’s website on multiple occasions between Aug. 3 and Aug. 6.
Dream City’s brick-and-mortar shutdown happens as the entire U.S. mattress industry has contracted.
“Total U.S. mattress market value declined 6.5% year over year, while unit shipments fell 13.2%, underscoring continued softness in consumer demand,” according to The International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) 2026 Mattress Industry Trends Report (MITR).
It’s a broad decline across the entire country.
“Domestic shipments declined across every U.S. region, while imports also softened, suggesting broad-based demand weakness rather than sourcing shifts,” the report showed.
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Digital retailers move to brick-and-mortar
Operating a store without having to pay for a physical location seems like a great idea, but there’s a reason many direct-to-consumer, formerly pure-digital retailers — such as Warby Parker, Cotopaxi, Brilliant Earth, UNTUCKit, and, to bring it back to the mattress space, Purple, Casper, Nectar, Saatva, Helix Sleep, and Avocado Green Mattress — all moved from online-only to operating stores.
“Now, with so much turnover in the space, some early online mattress players are opening more of their own stores to appeal to shoppers who want to touch and feel products in person. Several told Modern Retail their businesses have improved as a result,” Modern Retail reported.
Chad Lundeen, who joined Saatva in 2021 to oversee its physical retail plans, told Modern Retail that Viewer Rooms, the company’s name for its brick-and-mortar stores, “have contributed an 18% increase in the DMA [designated marketing area] within a very short period of time.
“If you put a new store in here and match it against a location of similar demographics with no store, we see a very quick spike in overall DMA, where the non-VR location stays pretty flat,” said Lundeen. “This is really driving our revenue growth.”
Online-only mattress retail comes with challenges
Dream City Mattress moving to an online-only model reduces some expenses, but it also comes with significant challenges.
“Online sounds easier to the retailer until the bills come in. Selling mattresses digital-only is a financial meat grinder,” RTM Nexus CEO Dominick Miserandino told TheStreet.
The biggest challenge is the physical size of the product.
“First, returns eat you alive. When a customer hates the bed, they aren’t stuffing a 100-pound expanded mattress back into a box. You have to pay a team to go into their home, haul it away, and write it off. At a 15% to 20% return rate, your margins vanish,” he added.
Costs, he noted, aren’t really as low as they seem.
“Second, you’re just trading store rent for ad spend. A physical storefront is a 24/7 billboard. Take that away, and you’re forced to bid on Google and Instagram ads against national giants like Wayfair and Nectar. Acquiring that single customer gets insanely expensive, fast,” he added.
Miserandino does not believe you can effectively run a digital-only mattress brand, and he based that on what he has seen in the market.
“Look at the pioneer DTC brands: Casper, Purple, Nectar. They all started pure-play digital, and where are they now? They’re opening physical showrooms and selling in wholesale stores. Why? Because pure digital mattress sales don’t scale profitably,” he told TheStreet.
A study by Cushman Wakefield lays out the challenge for digital-only retailers broadly.
“As more competitors have entered the market, digitally native brands have been vying for customers through the same digital marketing channels, which has compounded the challenge. Not only are these retailers trying to differentiate themselves in an often too-crowded field, the crowd itself has driven up digital marketing costs,” according to the research firm’s “Why More Digitally Native Brands Are Coming to a Corner or Lifestyle Center Near You.”
Dream City Mattress, if it actually does open an online-only store, is betting consumers will sacrifice that in-person experience in exchange for lower prices and convenience. That’s a bet that many of its better-known rivals have shown is a challenging one to win.
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