Sleep Country Corp. says its acquisition of Sleep Number will give the retailer a foothold in the U.S. market while adding what CEO Stewart Schaefer calls the industry’s most technologically advanced mattress brand to its growing portfolio.
In an interview with Retail Insider, Schaefer, President & CEO of SleepCountry, Dormez-vous, Endy, Hush, Silk & Snow, Casper, Simba, and Sleep Number, said the deal is about more than adding another mattress brand. He said Sleep Number’s network of about 600 U.S. stores, established brand recognition and proprietary sleep technology provide an opportunity to expand the company’s North American footprint while also bringing the brand into Sleep Country and Dormez-Vous stores in Canada and into the U.K. through its Simba business.
Schaefer said the acquisition fits the company’s long-standing strategy of buying brands that offer products, technology or customer appeal it does not already have, adding that he believes Sleep Country’s current collection of brands now serves virtually every segment of the sleep market while leaving room for continued organic growth.
“What a lot of people don’t know is that the Sleep Number product is the most advanced, innovative technology mattress in the world. It’s huge in the United States,” said Schaefer.
“The mattresses – there are like seven different mattresses – mattresses are air-controlled, so you can make the bed itself softer or harder at any point in time and on both sides of the bed. You also can make the bed cooler or hotter. It actually blows air conditioning or heating, like stuff you’ve seen in some of the cars now.
“It also has the adjustable component, and it comes with health apps and checks your heart rate. It really is the crown jewel. They’ve been around for 42 years. It’s longer than we’ve been around, which is 32 years.
“For 30 years, I’ve always admired it. We used to actually sell the product in Canada about 20 years ago, but we were a very different business, and we were importing it from the United States. We weren’t very good at importing at the time because everything in our business was from local distributors.”
Not only was it the quality and uniqueness of the product, but being able to have that with the 600 stores across the United States allows Sleep Country to enter the U.S. with store distribution, with the quality of this incredible product, with their fulfillment centres, and brand awareness that is literally through the roof, explained Schaefer.
“It’s rare that I can find something that’s unique to Canada because I’m going to bring that into our 300 stores in Canada, since all the other brands I already have here in Canada,” said Schaefer.
“I’m going to take it to the UK, and we’re going to combine it with our Simba brand in the UK, and we’re going to open up brick-and-mortar stores in the UK with that brand.”
He said the plan is to roll the Sleep Number brand into the company’s Sleep Country stores and Dormez-Vous stores. Although there’s no need to do standalone stores, there may be a few flagship stores.
“I might put one in Yorkdale Mall. I might put one in Calgary, in Chinook mall, some of the high-profile malls in the country. But the majority is going to roll seamlessly into my own stores,” he explained.
Over the past few years, Sleep Country has been on a buying spree of different brands. What’s the strategy behind all this?
“I always ask myself the question when I’m looking at something: build or buy?,” said Schaefer.
“If I can build it, in most cases, anything related to our business we can build. The only times that I buy are when they have something uniquely different that I guess, over time, I could develop myself, but it’s something uniquely different that I don’t have.
“When we bought Endy, it was clear that they were unbelievable as the number one bed-in-a-box company in the country. Hush was edgy and cool on the accessories side of the business.
“Silk & Snow was affordable luxury, a whole other category besides their beds, which were fantastic, between all their linens, sheets, and some of their introduction into furniture. Again, something uniquely different than what we did.
“Simba was the same thing in the UK—a brand that resonated unbelievably with the consumer.
“Every single time when I saw these companies, we would meet the teams, and the teams themselves would be uniquely different from our teams. In many ways, they created an incubator of talent within the sleep space.”
Whenever there’s an opportunity to expand, the company only does so after measuring how the brand scores with the consumer.
“If the brand scores unbelievably well, that’s the first interest we take. If the product is innovative and different from what we currently have, that’s the second part,” he shared.
“Then, if there’s an opportunity to give us something—in this case, Sleep Number—we could have gone to the United States and opened up stores ourselves, I guess. But it would take me at least a decade to build out that many stores, maybe even longer. It’s taken me 32 years to build out 300 stores.
“Instantly, I now have 600 stores in the U.S., and 600 stores with a very powerful brand name that I would say is equal to the Sleep Country name in Canada, as Sleep Number is in terms of brand awareness in the United States.”
Schaefer believes Sleep Country has hit its critical mass of quality, amazing brands that really tackle all customer segmentations, all merchandising hierarchies, and all marketing demographics.
“You never want to say that you’re done, but between all the different brands that we have right now, there’s really nothing I’m missing for the consumer. It always goes back to the consumer. I always think through the eyes of the consumer,” he explained.
“I still walk through my stores today after 32 years, and I act like a consumer and ask myself, “What am I missing? What can’t my customers get?” In these Sleep Number stores, I’m going to bring Silk & Snow’s sheets, pillows, linens, and all their beautiful products into those stores.
“In the UK, Simba is the number one digital brand out there, but I’m going to bring the Simba digital brand into a brick-and-mortar environment with Sleep Number because you couldn’t probably do Simba by itself.
“I think we have the collection of brands that resonate incredibly well with the consumer, and we’re just going to continue to grow organically, just like we’ve been doing with Sleep Country.
“Now I think, between all these brands, we have enough of a portfolio to open greenfield locations for the rest of our larger plan. If something comes along, we’re always opportunistic. If some brilliant young person comes up with a new idea or something different worldwide, hopefully someone will knock on our door and show us something because we’re always curious about something a little more special.”
Schaefer also said Sleep Country is looking to launch the new Bed Bath & Beyond concept in the fourth quarter of this year.
“There’s a technology stack that we’re working on, the merchandising. They’re taking their time in curating a really special type of collection. It’s not going to be your everyday. We’re not looking to compete against the world of Amazon or Walmart. We want to make it really special and have a curated collection of products,” he said.
“Recently we also just took over Kitchen Stuff Plus, which is a chain of 20 stores in Ontario. They’re in the kitchen business. The reason we did that, once again, is that we know bath and we know bed. I didn’t know the “Beyond” part—the kitchens part—very well.
“So here was this wonderful opportunity to create some type of partnership with Kitchen Stuff Plus. We’re going to help with that brand, but at the same time, we’re going to take the talented people from Kitchen Stuff Plus to help build out a broader kitchen selection in Bed Bath & Beyond. So the online store is going to launch in the fourth quarter. Brick-and-mortar will launch sometime in 2027. I don’t know when. It’ll probably be in the back half of the year.
“We want to get it right. We want to listen to our customers and see what they say. If they’re happy with the selection, it’s easier to make adjustments online than in a brick-and-mortar environment. Once we feel that we’ve got the recipe right, then we will look to open up stores across the country.”
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