Furniture and Rental Industry Competes to Capture the 'Kkuljamjok' Market

New Battleground Emerging: the 'Sleep Market'

Coway Launches 'Sleep Care'
Managed by Korea's First Certified Experts

Mattress Market Competition Intensifies
Ace Bed and Simmons Lead, Joined by Zinus and Hanssem

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The domestic furniture and rental industry is intensifying efforts to enter the sleep market and enhance related services. In particular, competition is expected to become fiercer in the mattress sector due to an increase in market participants.

According to the industry on the 30th, Coway, a home appliance rental company, recently launched ‘Sleep Care,’ a service that provides consulting on sleep environments. This service offers professional consulting to customers whose quality sleep is disturbed due to inappropriate sleep environments. ‘Homecare Doctor,’ who holds the country’s first private certification in sleep specialization, the ‘Sleep Environment Manager,’ visits customers’ homes to improve sleep quality. A Coway representative stated, "About 70% of Homecare Doctors hold this certification, and we plan to increase the number of certified personnel gradually." Shinsegae Casa recently decided to expand the ‘Campo’ category, a flagship product of the Casamia brand, to include bedroom furniture.

Companies are focusing on capturing the ‘sweet sleep’ consumer segment because the domestic sleep market has been on a growth trend recently. According to the Korea Sleep Industry Association, the sleep market, which was worth 480 billion KRW in 2011, has already grown to the 3 trillion KRW range by 2019.

The sleep market includes a variety of products from bedding to supplements, but mattresses account for a significant portion. The mattress market alone was about 1.8 trillion KRW last year. In fact, the highest-priced mattress product sold by Simmons, the ‘Beautyrest Black,’ priced between 19 million and 35 million KRW, has been selling about 200 units per month on average this year. Sales of Simmons’ premium mattress line priced above 7 million KRW accounted for about 70% of total mattress sales last year.

Marketing efforts by latecomers in the mattress market, which is dominated by Ace Bed and Simmons, are also being aggressively carried out. Zinus, the ‘Amazon Mattress’ acquired by Hyundai Department Store Group for 900 billion KRW in March, recently launched promotions at all Hyundai Department Store and Shinsegae Department Store branches to target the domestic market. Hanssem also plans to launch a new mattress product around June in collaboration with the design furniture brand Aidenew.

With the increasing trend of the MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z) opting to rent mattresses, the industry has become even busier. SK Magic took its first step into the mattress market this month by launching ‘Eco Hue,’ a bed rental and care service including frames. Cheongho Nice also focused on securing rental accounts by releasing new products such as ‘First Class’ and ‘Sleep Pure’ earlier this year. Kyowon Wells introduced a ‘Sleep Care Solution’ service earlier this year that analyzes sleep patterns by installing Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in mattresses.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.