As the online mattress industry saturates, stores provide a growth opportunity for revenue-hungry digital natives selling a good night's sleep.

The growth of online mattress sales is slowing, with online revenue growth for mattress sellers in the Internet Retailer 2018 Top 1000 down to 60.6% in 2017 compared with 90.6% growth in 2016. 2018 numbers are not out yet. But bricks-and-mortar locations may help boost those sales growth back up for these retailers that were once thought to kill the ubiquitous mattress store.

Online native Nectar Sleep (No. 654) isn’t following in the footsteps of e-commerce mattress giants like Casper (No. 132), which has plans to open 200 stores in the next three years. Nectar, which started in 2017, is instead making its store debut at Mattress Warehouse, a chain with more than 250 locations on the East Coast.

Mattress shoppers can test out the retailer’s mattresses in stores and still get Nectar’s year-long trial period to make sure they want to keep the mattress. They can take the mattress home directly from the store, or it can be delivered by Mattress Warehouse.

The move to offline retail comes as bricks-and-mortar shops and department stores struggle to sell the sleep surfaces. Mattress Firm Inc. (No. 305) filed for bankruptcy in October. The retail chain is closing up to 700 stores as part of the restructuring, leaving Serta Simmons Bedding (No. 817) down one major distributor and as one of the firm’s largest creditors in the bankruptcy filing.

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