How Smart Financing Strategy Can Drive Double-digit Growth (15%-20%) YoY Growth in Furniture & Mattress Retail
Walk into most furniture or mattress stores, and you’ll see beautiful merchandising, strong sales teams, and aggressive promotional signage.
But in many cases, financing is still treated like a closing tool.
That’s the mistake.
The highest-performing retailers in today’s environment don’t use financing to “save” a sale. They use financing to expand the guests' buying power from the moment they walk into the store.
And when done correctly, this single shift can drive 15–20% year-over-year growth without increasing traffic.
Let’s break down how.
Most RSAs are trained to present financing at the end:
“How would you like to pay for this? Would you like to finance that?”
By that point, the customer has already anchored their budget.
Instead, Top 100 retailers introduce financing early in the conversation:
- “Just so you know, we take Cash, Credit Card, and have multiple low monthly payment options available. Let me know if you want to fill out an application.”
- “Are you planning to pay cash or take advantage of one of our low monthly payment options?”
-“Most of our guests like to see what they’re approved for first. It often increases flexibility and lets you know what's in the realms of possible.”
When you identify buying power up front, everything changes.
A guest who walked in thinking they were a $2,000 buyer may discover they qualify for $5,000. Now:
Financing doesn’t just close deals. It increases Average Order Size (AOS).
Consumers are not one-dimensional.
You have:
- If you only offer one lender, you are automatically losing out on incremental revenue.
A multi-lender strategy increases:
Every additional approval is not just a transaction; it’s incremental revenue that likely would have walked out the door.
Of course, offering multiple options is only half the equation.
If your process requires separate applications, different portals, and manual follow-up, your team won’t use it consistently, and the customer experience suffers.
The retailers getting the best results pair a multi-lender strategy with technology that makes it simple for the RSA and seamless for the customer. (And saves you hours of overhead costs)
**Please note: This does not mean going out and signing up with every lender in the market. Over-indexing creates noise, dilutes relationships, and can negatively impact approvals if lenders question where your loyalty or volume commitment lies. The goal is strategic balance — not volume for the sake of volume.
A multi-lender strategy only works if it’s easy to execute in real time. Because let’s be honest, in today’s society, people don’t want to spend all afternoon in your store, regardless of how beautiful or awesome it is. They want to get in, get out, and get on with their day.
Modern financing waterfall platforms, like FormPiper, now allow retailers to work with multiple lenders through a single application, simplifying the process for the RSA while improving customer approval outcomes.
The benefits are immediate:
Once the process is simple and consistent, your team can stop worrying about online forms and start focusing on what really drives growth: helping customers get the right solution — not just the cheapest one.
“Upselling” has a bad reputation.
It shouldn’t.
If financing increases buying power responsibly, then upgrading comfort, durability, and long-term satisfaction is not manipulation; it’s good customer service and a way to create the experience your customers want.
A mattress customer approved for $4,000 who buys a $1,200 set because no one showed them options didn’t “save money.” They left potential comfort and long-term satisfaction on the table. And that ultimately will reflect on your brand for years to come.
Consumer Financing makes:
When customers understand the monthly impact instead of the sticker price, the conversation changes.
You are no longer selling price.
You are selling comfort, sleep quality, lifestyle, and long-term value.
Let’s address the elephant in the room.
Many retailers obsess over merchant discount rates.
“Is it 3.9% or 5.9%?”
“Is the 60-month program too expensive?”
“That lender charges more.”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If financing drives higher AOS, better close rates, and incremental approvals, the lift in revenue often dwarfs the cost of MDR.
Example:
Same traffic. Same team. Different strategy.
That $600 lift per ticket covers MDR differences many times over.
But here’s the analogy I give merchants all the time, and I hope this one hits home.
If a customer wants to buy a $5,000 living room set and says:
“I’ll give you $4,500 in cash.”
Are you taking that deal?
That’s a 10% discount. You just gave up $500 to close the sale.
If it’s a $2,000 couch?
You gave up $200.
And 99.99% of retailers will take that deal all day long.
So my question to all of you: Why are we stressing about paying 3%, 5%, even 8% in MDR when we’re willing to give away 10–15% in discount just to close?
Financing often eliminates the need to discount.
Instead of lowering your price to make the payment fit, financing makes the payment fit without touching your margin.
You won’t go out of business because of a 1–2% variance in MDR.
You struggle when you discount unnecessarily and leave profit on the table.
The real question isn’t:
“What percentage am I paying?”
It’s:
“How much margin am I protecting?”
When you shift your mindset from protecting MDR to protecting margin, something interesting happens:
Financing doesn’t just grow revenue. When used properly, it can actually increase profitability because you’re no longer leaning on discounts to close deals.
You’re leveraging buying power instead.
Here’s where growth becomes predictable.
Let’s assume:
Now the math becomes powerful.
If every 10 applications produces 6–7 approvals,
and each approval averages $3,000…
That’s roughly $18,000–$21,000 in revenue from 10 applications.
Your team doesn’t need to obsess over:
“Did we hit $80,000 this week?”
Instead, they focus on:
“How many applications did we run?”
Applications are controllable.
Revenue is the result.
And most importantly, cash/credit deals will now just be the gravy on top. Your RSAs are more than likely commissioned based; don’t worry, they are still taking these deals all day long.
The best retailers are doing anywhere from 60-70% of their revenue from financing. Shift your store goals from dollars to application volume, and I promise you will see less volatility in your Gross Cash Receipts and, more than likely, grow your overall cash flow.
This way, the law of numbers starts working in your favor.
Track these weekly:
When teams see the connection between application activity and income, behavior changes.
Growth stops being accidental.
It becomes engineered.
Traffic is expensive.
Advertising is expensive.
Payroll & commission are expensive.
Buying power is not.
If you want predictable growth in a competitive furniture and mattress market, the answer may not be more customers.
It may be unlocking the full potential of the ones already standing on your showroom floor.
Stop selling products. Start selling buying power.