Since September, 2005, memory foam prices to retailers have risen dramatically – many retailers have seen price increases of over 50% in just one month. The reasons behind this price increase have to do with severe shortages of key components for making polyurethane foam. This is just one other offshoot of the damage done by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Both Hurricanes severely damaged the only plants in the US that make one particular key component (called TDI), and while these plants are getting back on line industry experts warn that these shortages may last for a year or longer. And they are also warning that prices may never come down – these price increases may well be permanent.
What has this meant to the memory foam industry? Well, since memory foam is made only of polyurethane, it has led to unimaginable price inceases and shortages. There are only a few main manufacturers of foam in this country, and all have been severely impacted by these unprecedented shortages. Bottom line – they are able to produce about half of the foam that they were making before, and their cost of production has gone up almost 80%.
So far we’ve been fortunate and our supplier has continued to be able to supply us in full (I guess that is one of the benefits of being a good customer). But shortages have occurred and prices, as a result of both the price increases and shortages, have sky rocketed.
We’ve raised our prices the absolute minimum to cover these unbelievable price increases, and we will continue to do this if there are future price increases as well. As for now, we don’t see having any supply shortages either because of our buying power. One thing I want to caution you about is that we are hearing through the grapevine that some resellers are going to lower grades of memory foam to save costs – but still advertising the memory foam to be of a higher grade. I don’t know if this is really true or not, but given the times you may want to make sure who you are dealing with and not let price be your only guide. We’ve worked hard to make sure that we continue to get and sell only the best grade of 4 lb memory foam. This meant we had to raise our prices 20% or so to cover the new price increases, but we only want to carry the best foam possible and wouldn’t ever consider cheapening out the product just to save a few bucks.