Poundland beds into homewares with mattress trial

The value retailer has teamed up with Steinhoff stablemate Bensons for Beds on the range, which comprises a £79 single and £99 double mattress.

The retailer will sell the mattresses, which will have the brand name Snooze, to gauge customer appetite as part of a potential wider push into the homewares market.

Poundland will start selling the vacuum-packed mattresses this week in branches including Woolwich, Lewisham, Loughborough and Blackpool.

Pepkor chief operating officer Sean Cardinaal, whose remit was expanded to oversee the Poundland business in September, told Retail Week: “It will be at a price point that is significantly higher than we will have sold in Poundland before, but it is at a price point that is amazing value.

“That’s the beauty of having as many stores as we have, we can stick it into 20 and see what the reaction is.”

Poundland unveiled its push into multi-price in March and has also ramped up it shop-in-shop tie-up with value-led fashion chain and Steinhoff stablemate Pep&Co, which is set to roll out into Europe next year.

Cardinaal said the success of Poundland’s tie-up with the fashion retailer gave him confidence that selling homeware items outside of its traditional price points could be a success.

“What the Pep&Co thing has demonstrated is that we’ve got more scope and the customer is more understanding on a non-pound price point when the product doesn’t look like it is a Poundland product, but one that Poundland is bringing to them,” he said.

“If we had Poundland-branded clothing selling for £25 we might get a kickback, but the fact that it is an external brand buys us some leverage.

“We’re still sitting on some gems in terms of categories where we’re quite dominant, but we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we can do, and homewares is a good example of that.

“Multi-price gives ability to look at categories where we were once quite restricted and gives the customer a much better offer than they have had before.”