Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from John Baugh of Stifel, Nicolaus.
John A. Baugh – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division
I wondered if you could just go into the International piece, in particularly as it relates to guidance, maybe get a little more detail about specifically where the pockets in Europe are week and what the assumptions are, going forward, in that region of the country? And then walk around the globe, you mentioned Asia Pacific, strong, what the outlook there is?
Mark A. Sarvary
Let me give you some commentary, and then maybe I’ll ask Dale if he could just give a little bit of the numeric detail. But for me, we’ve been reading, obviously, a lot about Europe and the weakness in Europe. And we have, as we’ve said in previous calls, seen weakness in pockets of Europe. We’ve never seen the systemic weakness across the whole of Northern Europe. We’ve seen pockets of weakness. But we’ve seen, like I said in the prepared comments, some strength for our business, for example, in Germany, despite the fact that we know that the industry in Germany is actually quite struggling. So we are seeing pockets of strength and occasional pockets of weakness in Europe. But as of yet, we still haven’t seen a systemic weakness in Europe, but we have been cautious about it and we continue to keep our eye on that.
John A. Baugh – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division
And Mark, what specifically are you going to be doing in Europe in terms of advertising new products or, if you will, things outside of the macro that may drive the business in ’13 versus ’12? Or will it be very similar in terms of what you’re trying to do last year?
Mark A. Sarvary
It’s similar — similar discontinuation. So for example as, again, I’ve said in some of the countries, like Germany and other of the major European countries, advertising is quite effective. And we find it, it has really quite good ROI, and we will continue to invest in those countries in doing that, in building awareness. And remember that our awareness levels in Europe is still way, way lower than they are in the U.S. And secondly, we’ll continue to introduce new products. I talked about the new TEMPUR-Original, which is essentially a new version of our original line and its improved in a variety of ways. But what it is a continuation of the intention of broadening the offering in each of the retailers, so that they will carry some representation of all 3 of our collections, the Original, the Sensation and the Cloud, and because we know that having that range of offerings is what really — it makes sales really take off in a given store. So those are both continuation, but there’s a lot of road left in there.
John A. Baugh – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division
And, I guess, my last question it would be in advertising, both U.S. as well as outside of U.S. Could you tell us — I don’t think you gave us what it was, as a percentage of revenue, for the year just ended, and then what — rough guidance for those 2 regions for ’13?
Dale E. Williams
Okay. The year — John, I don’t know if you’re still on, for the year ended — for the full year or…
John A. Baugh – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc., Research Division
Full year, full year ’12.
Dale E. Williams
For the full year ’12, North America, obviously, was down 4% in ’12. Our International business was up 6% for the full year ’12. Our Asian business actually was — Asia-Pacific business actually was up more than that 4%. Our Asia-Pacific business for the year was up double digit. Our European business was up, kind of, probably, broadly, and I don’t have it exactly in front of me, but the European business probably was up in the low-single digits, but some countries performed very well. Certainly, Southern Europe was especially weak, as you might expect. And there were some pockets of weakness in other parts of Europe that as we experienced through the year. In general, the overall European market got softer. As we’re looking at 2013, we are expecting, as I said earlier, from a North American standpoint, first quarter continues to be a very difficult comp. But for the balance of the year, we expect North America to be up mid- to high-single digits. On international side of the business, we are expecting our International business to be up for the year and in the low- to mid-single digits.
Operator
Our next question comes from Budd Bugatch of Raymond James.
Chad Bolen
This is actually Chad, filling in for Budd. A couple of questions, I was surprised to hear you say that domestic mattress units were up 2% year-over-year, if I heard that correctly. Can you give us a little bit of color on where you saw that growth and kind of what drove that?
Mark A. Sarvary
Well, first thing I want to say is that, it’s a little bit colored by the fact that we had floor models. So if take out new floor models, it would probably be down 1% or so. But it’s still fine as the stabilization that we’ve been talking about. And it’s consistent with what we had expected. Obviously, there is a greater proportion in the fourth quarter of products, of the — well, there is Simplicity included in the fourth quarter, which wasn’t in the fourth quarter of last year, and obviously those are retailed at a lower price. So that affects the sales, not the units. But the units are relatively flat year-on-year.
Chad Bolen
Okay. And so if I do the math in domestic mattress AUSP would have been down roughly 7-ish percent and, of course, that’s affected by the floor models, that’s affected by Simplicity as well. Any other major drivers of that or does that really sum it up?
Mark A. Sarvary
No, that sums it up.
Chad Bolen
Okay. And just a housekeeping, Dale, would you repeat what you had said about what your expectation is for Q1 operating margin?
Dale E. Williams
Yes. That’s 17% on an adjusted basis, excluding transaction and the things related to Sealy.
Chad Bolen
Got you. And talk a little bit about some of the other product categories. It looks like domestic, other sales, lagged mattresses. Can you talk a little bit about what’s going on there? I would have thought that maybe around the holidays that would be a better category. Has there been any kind of a change in the adjustable attachment rates or any color you can give us there?
Mark A. Sarvary
The bottom line is, you’re right. The adjustables is the key component of that, and the adjustable attach rate hasn’t changed materially in retail at all. There was a promotion in the prior year, in the fourth quarter and last 2012, we had it in the third quarter. So that caused some change, a bit. And also, it’s like the attach rate on Simplicity, which is our biggest seller on direct is slightly lower. But there’s no fundamental change to the attach rates, overall.
Dale E. Williams
The floor models impacted that as well.
Mark A. Sarvary
Yes, of course.
Dale E. Williams
You don’t have Ergos on floor models.
Chad Bolen
Okay. So technically, year-over-year, it was down because of the promotion in the prior year, the floor samples and the Simplicity mix issue. But structurally, you don’t think there’s any major change there, is that the right interpretation?
Mark A. Sarvary
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right, yes.
Chad Bolen
Okay. And Mark, I was very much intrigued by your comments about TEMPUR-Choice and an adjustable firmness product. Can you give us any more hints about it, are we talking about an adjustable air bed? Any other teasers that you could provide?
Mark A. Sarvary
We are quite excited about it. But, as I said, it is first and foremost, a Tempur-Pedic bed. And it has TEMPUR material and it is — provides the support and the comfort of TEMPUR, it feels like TEMPUR. But it does have the ability to adjust, and I’m not going into great details, but it does use air as a component of its overall structure.
Operator
Our next question comes from David MacGregor of Longbow Research.
David S. MacGregor – Longbow Research LLC
Just to build on the international question, I know historically your European gross margins have been somewhat greater than your North American gross margins. So as you put together your guidance for 2013, what are you assuming in terms of change with that relationship?
Dale E. Williams
Actually, David, we do expect the international gross margins to continue to be higher. Now as we’ve talked frequently, there are 2 components to that. One is the fact that the North American business pays a royalty; 2, our Danish business, where the technology was developed. So it’s one pocket to another, but it does abstract comparatives, gross margins. And then we have the benefit internationally of slightly higher pricing with thinner mattresses, so there’s a little bit less cost in them. But from a go-forward standpoint, we would not expect that to change dramatically. Actually, over time, those royalty rates are reducing, so that will squeeze the difference a little bit, but not dramatically in the short-term, like a year.
David S. MacGregor – Longbow Research LLC
With respect to the quarter just completed, can you just talk a little bit about variance and unit volumes within the price points in North America?
Dale E. Williams
Yes. No, we don’t break our business down by price point for obvious competitive reasons.
David S. MacGregor – Longbow Research LLC
Sure. I just wondered if you could talk qualitatively in sort of bigger scale mix.
Dale E. Williams
Well, the only thing I would say is we had some new products, the Breeze products that performed very well. Those are higher-priced. So the higher-priced segment was benefited by the strong uptake on the Breeze. The other new products that we introduced, Weightless did well, but the Breeze was the one that was more of the shining star right out of the gates.
David S. MacGregor – Longbow Research LLC
Okay. Great. Final question, just again back to the guidance, could you to talk about your net sales growth for next year, 1.5% to 2%, what are you assuming in terms of net sales growth for North America versus net sales growth for international?
Dale E. Williams
As I said earlier, for the balance of the year — for the whole year numbers, what we are looking at is International business being low- to mid-single digits and U.S. business actually for the balance of the year being similarly in a low- to mid-single digits. We look at them as potentially having roughly the same growth rate, but over the course of the year now it won’t come out that way. So that’s why I gave a little bit of a range on each, but we do expect to both segments to show growth next year.
David S. MacGregor – Longbow Research LLC
Okay. And one more if I could just quickly, you talked last quarter about number of manufacturing issues you were facing with the Breeze and the Weightless. I’m just wondering if those have been cleared up or whether those conditions would continue to the extent that they might impact shipments regarding some of the new products you’re going to roll out next week.
Mark A. Sarvary
Well, the Breeze — the issues with the Breeze and the Weightless have been resolved. And there would — the issue as we said on the call last time, we had underestimated the demand. And so it was a function not so much that we weren’t manufacturing, it’s just that we didn’t realize how many we were going to need. So that has been addressed. And on the new products, we’re going to do as we do with any product, we’re going to make sure we have the amount of inventory and so on that we need, but again, there’s always a degree of risk in when you’re projecting what things are going to be. So I think we’ve made the right preparations and I think — but I can’t say until we’re further down in the path. But we’ve made the same preparations as we normally do.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Reza Vahabzadeh of Barclays.
Reza Vahabzadeh – Barclays Capital, Research Division
Dale, on the gross margin guidance, can you just maybe outline some of the key puts and takes that goes into your thinking whether it’s input cost, sales leverage, mix, anything of that sort?
Dale E. Williams
Yes, for this — for 2013, as I said earlier, from a gross margin standpoint, we’re expecting very slight decrease in gross margin on a year-over-year basis, flat to slightly down. And that’s really a function of a couple of things. One, we are expecting some slight increases in commodity cost; number two, the big negative driver there is product mix as the Breeze is doing well, Weightless is doing well, I think one of the things David may have been hinting at earlier but didn’t specifically say is with any new product, you can have some startup cost but then also these are brand-new technologies that are a little bit more expensive technologies and any time you have a completely new technology, you’ve got a tremendous learning curve to go through to improve the cost. So the mix of those. And then we’ve got other new products that we’re going to be introducing this year, along with Choice and others. So those are the key negative factors that are affecting gross margin this year, but we do expect — our productivity program is back and fully invigorated. So we’re looking for good productivity improvements and ideally, a lot of those will come on some of the new technologies to improve those margins over the course of the year.
Reza Vahabzadeh – Barclays Capital, Research Division
Got it. And maybe, Mark, if you can just outline some of your assumptions and your comfort around North America sales being up mid-single digits starting in the second quarter. What goes into that thought process?
Mark A. Sarvary
Well, it’s a function of the comparison. I mean obviously, we’ve got a tough, I don’t know if you can call it a good compare, but a horrible compare, whatever, from year-to-year. But the other thing though is that, obviously, the steps that we took in the third quarter, which created the stabilization that we started to see, is going to have the effect going forward. And that’s one component of it. And the effectiveness of our promotion and promotions and so on is one component of it. And then the other component is that we’re going to have a full year of Breeze, which is Breeze and Weightless, which are both doing quite well. So where with that with something that didn’t exist in the first half of last — in the second and third quarter of last year at this time. And also, we have the new products that we will be launching at Vegas, and then, again, we expect that there will be more again in the August to Vegas.
Reza Vahabzadeh – Barclays Capital, Research Division
Right. So the full impact of the new products to be launched in Vegas, you expect them to be realized and impact the sales, I suppose, in the second quarter?
Mark A. Sarvary
Second half, starting in the second quarter.
Dale E. Williams
We’ll start rolling out the new products from the January Vegas show next week. We will start rolling those out in the second quarter.
Reza Vahabzadeh – Barclays Capital, Research Division
And then did you outline your new product introduction cost and the inefficiencies that go along with that for 2013?
Dale E. Williams
Reza, we actually never really broken that out. It’s something that is an ongoing component of the business. Probably for 3 quarters of any given year, we have new products rolling out. The floor model cost associated with that is partly a function of the price of the products and also a function of how broadly distributed it becomes.
Operator
Our next question comes from Keith Hughes of SunTrust.
And we’ll go ahead and move on to the next question. Our next question comes from Brad Thomas of KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Bonanza Chalaban – KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division
This is Bonanza Chalaban in place of Brad. So just going back to the fourth quarter. You had a good improvement sequentially on top line trends from the third. Could you maybe just talk a little bit about the trends and how they played out into the quarter? We would just be interested because one, it seems like consumer spending was a little bit choppy during the quarter from a macro perspective; and two, you had a lot of initiatives going on and it sounds like those are gaining traction.
Mark A. Sarvary
Yes. I mean, the fourth quarter was relatively consistent through the quarter. There was obviously the hit of…
Dale E. Williams
Sandy.
Mark A. Sarvary
Which did have an impact. But within the bounds of normal volatility that one gets because of when Christmas falls and so forth, it was relatively consistent through the quarter. Except for Sandy, which wasn’t consistent.
Dale E. Williams
Sandy impacted a couple of weeks there pretty severely.
Bonanza Chalaban – KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division
Okay. And then you just launched the Breeze and Weightless in August of last year. It appears that you’re going to be launching a couple of more in the coming weeks and months of this year. How many models do you think is the right number to be launching each year? And do you think something like 2 is the right number or are the company resources being a little stretched?
Mark A. Sarvary
I think that’s a good question, and it’s an important question. The critical way to think about it this is that we need to be sure that the product range viewed as a whole is A, is optimized from, obviously, from our point of view but very importantly, from a retailer point of view. We want to make sure that the range of offerings we have in totality provide a very broad range of — satisfy the needs of a broad range of consumers at premium price points in a differentiated manner that are effective together for the retailer. Some part of that is — some component of that is adding new products as we find ways to meet the needs of consumers that we, until then, had not been able to meet the needs of and sometimes, it’s going to be improving products that exist already. And overall, it’s going to be viewing it from a category management point of view of how do we optimize the collective offering. And that is something that will be of increasing importance to us in this year and going forward. Over the last years, we’ve grown from having a relatively smaller group of offerings to quite a larger — to having a large group and it’s important but they — and we always think about this, how they fit together. So it’s not so much as saying we can have 1 or 2 new products a year as it is we are constantly working to optimize the collective — the range as a whole.
Operator
Our next question comes from Jon Anderson of William Blair.
Jon Andersen – William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division
I wanted to start with — gross margin improved sequentially, I think you said 80 basis points. You talked about that one of the reasons for the improvement, I guess, was less promotion, less discounting. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing from that standpoint at, I guess, the retail on a wholesale level? Do you think we fit a point where the worst of that is behind us?
Mark A. Sarvary
Well, what it is I would say is more of an efficiency gain than — as I said when we started to modify our approach in light of the competitive environment, that we were going to be working at ways to improve our effectiveness in promotions with retailers and that some of the things that would work well and some would work less well but that we would learn and we would apply what we learned. And we are doing just that. And I think we’re getting a bit smarter and a bit more efficient. But on the other hand, I think it’s an ongoing process of learning, and we will continue to learn and continue to develop. So it’s not like we now know the answer and we’re going to apply it. But on the other hand, I think we’re a lot — we’re smarter than we were and we will continue to get smarter.
Jon Andersen – William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division
That’s helpful. A point of clarification on your sales guidance for the first quarter. You had commented earlier that you expected sales to be flat to slightly down year-over-year. Was that accurate or slightly down sequentially?
Dale E. Williams
Sequentially.
Jon Andersen – William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division
Okay. Given that, it looks like that kind of implies a double-digit decline on a year-over-year basis, which would be the — that would be the, I guess, the highest decline over the past year, which is just a little surprising to me given the commentary area around some improvement or bottoming in North America. Just any color there would be helpful.
Dale E. Williams
Yes. Well, I think, from the color standpoint, as we said, we did have benefit in the first quarter this year of — I’m sorry, in the fourth quarter. So from a sequential basis, the Breeze, the Weightless were still, and we just started shipping those in September, the bulk of the rollout occurred in the fourth quarter, they’re basically substantially complete and from the rollout of those products by the end of the year. So that did have a benefit to the fourth quarter that is not going to be there in the first quarter. Plus on a year-over-year compare, we did have the Simplicity starting to roll out at the end of the first quarter last year that we’re not expecting today to start shipping the new products we’ll introduce next week until the second quarter. And then from an international standpoint, which is also a key component, we are not expecting internationals to turnaround on a dime. The International business is hanging in there. Asia-Pacific continues to do fairly well. Europe has been a little disappointing with the economic environment but we don’t expect that suddenly — substantially get better.
Jon Andersen – William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division
Okay. That’s fair. I guess you can could see why I would raise the question because the compare actually — the Q1 compare year-on-year is easier than the compare you had in Q2, 3 and 4 of ’12. And it seems like things are getting better on the margin in North America. It just feel like maybe there’s some conservatism in that, maybe that’s what I’m trying to get a sense for.
Dale E. Williams
I think as Mark has said before, from your mouth to God’s ear. Yes, we’d love for that to be the case.
Operator
Our next question comes from Joe Altobello of Oppenheimer.
Joseph Altobello – Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division
I just wanted to follow-up on Jon’s question. I mean, obviously, I understand the commentary you gave regarding the timing of new product introductions, et cetera. But if you look back historically, seasonally, I think, it’s been probably 4 years since the financial crisis where you haven’t seen a sequential improvement from 4Q to 1Q. I mean, is it all due to timing? Were there certain promotions that might have happened late in the quarter that might have pulled some demand forward?
Dale E. Williams
Yes. No, Joe, we understand that from the North American standpoint, seasonally, there’s usually a little bit of an uptick in the first quarter. However, internationally, seasonally, there’s a downtick in the first quarter from the fourth quarter performance. Our view is the way that we’re that we’re trying to look at this is we had benefit in the fourth quarter not from a promotional thing but from the rollout of the floor models and…
Joseph Altobello – Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division
Is that going to replace any existing skew or collection or is that going to be completely incremental?
Mark A. Sarvary
That’s a new line.
Joseph Altobello – Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division
Okay, so it’s completely incremental. And then just lastly, just on the advertising, I think you said in the fourth quarter of this year was 9.8% of sales, and I guess full year was 11.8%. What do you think that looks like in ’13 and how much of that is going to go towards the Choice line? Is that going to be disproportionate behind Choice or is it to be spread out amongst your different new offerings?
Mark A. Sarvary
The amount — the plan is to spend something a little bit less than we spent last year. But still, a very healthy amount in excess of 10.5%. And also in last year, we spent disproportionately in the first half and not so much of the second half. This year, we’ll spread it more evenly across the year. And as far as how we’re going to focus it, in general, we use advertising that applies to — the bulk of our advertising, we’ll advertise the whole line and then we’ll use some of it to introduce new products. But in general, we’ll tie them together. So it’s — we’re always going to be — we’ll communicate, obviously, we’ll advertise the Choice line but it will certainly not the only thing we advertise. The bulk of our advertising is about the brand Tempur-Pedic.
Joseph Altobello – Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division
Okay. So the spread amongst the advertising dollars will be relatively normal as you’ve seen in the past years?
Mark A. Sarvary
Exactly.
Dale E. Williams
Exactly.
Operator
Our next question comes from Jessica Schoen of Barclays.
Jessica Schoen – Barclays Capital, Research Division
You talked a little bit about new product introductions at the higher end of your pricing range and investing in R&D to drive innovation and potentially, ASP. I was wondering how your assumptions about ASP fit into your guidance for the top line in 2013?
Dale E. Williams
Well, Jessica, we would expect to — ideally, it would be nice to see some ASP benefit. Certainly in 2012, we saw some ASP reduction, but we are shifting the focus a little bit more to the higher end of the line. Simplicity was an ASP drag in 2012. The change in economics was a bit of a nasty drag in 2012. Those economics will continue, but items like Breeze and some of the other new products that we will have, that will be focused a little bit more to the higher end of the line, ideally, we’ll start to reverse that trend.
Jessica Schoen – Barclays Capital, Research Division
Okay. And then going back to the comment about the initiatives you’ve rolled out over the last year and continuing to learn about the impact of the different initiatives, as well as the commentary about decreased promotions and discounts in the quarter, what — is there anything baked into the guidance for gross margin in 2013 that we should be thinking about, about any potential further evolution of those initiatives?
Dale E. Williams
No, what I said about gross margin is we expect gross margins to be down slightly in 2013 and it really is not a function of changing economics or anything, it’s a function of the product mix. As I said earlier, some of the newer products, particularly with the brand-new technologies, start out at a little bit lower than fleet average gross margin. And ideally, as we build volume and build learning, we learn to make them less expensively, and we’re able to improve the margins on those products through lower cost. So that’s really the expectation that we’re looking at there. In our outlook on gross margins, we are not thinking that there’s going to be additional or a radical change in economics.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Peter Keith of Piper Jaffray.
Jonathan N. Berg – Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division
The is actually Jon Berg on for Peter tonight. Dale, just a couple of housekeeping questions left from us. And the first one is could you give us an update on your domestic and international door accounts?
Dale E. Williams
Sure. Let me pull that out here. Door counts, on the international side, the door count is right about 5,700. Last quarter was 5,600. So about 100 doors added there. On the domestic side, looks like door count is up about 50, so it’s right about 8,700. Now that’s the total North America. So a number that you more readily recognize, that includes Canada. So 83 for U.S., that’s the number that we generally talk about.
Jonathan N. Berg – Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division
Okay, great. And then secondly, if you look at your international sales, what were they on a constant-currency basis?
Dale E. Williams
Yes, constant-currency impacted international — it didn’t affect the total business just because of the size, relative sizes of the business. Constant currency though did affect the international negatively, about 2 points in the fourth quarter. So currency was less of an impact than it’s been all year, but that was principally because the dollars strengthened late in 2011. And so the comparison there and then it weakened a little bit here in the fourth quarter of 2012. So the year-over-year compare was much closer in the fourth quarter.
Jonathan N. Berg – Piper Jaffray Companies, Research Division
Okay, great. And then one last one if I could sneak it in, on the — and I apologize, I might have missed some of this, but I think you said you were going to be switching the way maybe from the Ask Me campaign, I was just curious on — did you mention any timing around that when that might occur this year?
Mark A. Sarvary
We are — our new campaign, the one that we — a new campaign that we would anticipate going with this for an extended period will launch in the second quarter of this year.
Operator
Our next question comes from Keith Hughes of SunTrust.
Keith B. Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division
Most of the questions have been asked but just on pillows and domestic pillows, could you give us sort of a feel of what’s happened there, what you’re going to be going in the future? I know it was down substantially year-over-year?
Mark A. Sarvary
Yes. The pillows is a bit lumpy to begin with, and there are — and it does get affected by some retailers by — in substantial quantities in one quarter and another, so you can make it move quite a lot. But the overall — pillows is something that we are not pleased with and it’s something that we will continue to focus on.
Keith B. Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division
Okay. And we have several questions on the first quarter. When did Simplicity kind of hit its peak in terms of the sale in 2012, so we can consider that comp?
Mark A. Sarvary
Second quarter, but it was substantial throughout the year. It’s not like it’s going away. It’s still a substantial contributor today.
Keith B. Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division
It hit a run rate in the second quarter?
Mark A. Sarvary
That’s what I believe. Yes, that’s what I believe. But it will be second or third. But the point is, it’s not right, you wouldn’t be right to project it like a spike. It rolled out during the second quarter primarily. And the sales, therefore, would have been augmented by the floor models. And while its sales have slowed, it is still — I just — I figured — I mean, I don’t have the exact numbers on off top, don’t treat it as a spike. It is throughout the year.
Keith B. Hughes – SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc., Research Division
Okay. And I guess, finally on Choice, we’ll see more about it next week. But in terms of support for retailers, adjustable business has always been one that the independent retailers, at least the ones that select comfort, was an independent retail. They always struggled with the whole sales process a little bit, it was a little bit different. Is that something you’re going to address with your support for retailers or is there different plan? Any sort of details on that would be helpful.
Mark A. Sarvary
Listen, seriously, that is a — clearly, we’ve given good consideration to that and we — but think it would be much better, and I’d like to address that question when we’re standing in front of the collection in Vegas next week.
Operator
Our last question comes from Joan Storms of Wedbush.
Joan L. Bogucki-Storms – Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division
I just had a quick question on just list of retailers and relationships and things there. We know a good mattress firm as a public company that they had specialty beds had increased in their stores from around the 10 count to sort of below 20s, and it seems to be sort of staying there. Can you comment on still there might be opportunities out there with other retailers that are up-and-coming or other large ones that may be playing catch up in the specialty field or how are you feeling about their addressing the specialty business?
Mark A. Sarvary
I think it’s fair to say that across-the-board, specialties is growing. And I think that what people are recognizing is that it’s important, as the retailers are, across-the-board, I think, recognizing that it’s important to make sure that as they grow the specialty business, which is one that not only is growing in aggregate, but also is one that has very good consumer response, it’s that they want to make sure that they’re maintaining their ASPs. I know that a lot of the retailers are making sure that they put a focus not just on specialty per se, but on making sure that they’re focused on premium specialty. And I — so that’s something obviously that we encourage, because we are committed to providing products that are innovative and that can justify a premium price and meet the needs — and make — deliver a happy consumer who doesn’t return the bed. So I think that’s where retailers are increasingly focusing across-the-board.
Joan L. Bogucki-Storms – Wedbush Securities Inc., Research Division
Okay. And then just briefly, it would seem a couple of articles and trades in the trades, I guess, regarding iComfort not being able to compare some of their advertising product to yours. Do you foresee any benefit from that if that is the case?
Mark A. Sarvary
We take very usually the importance in all of our commercials in making sure that things are — can be validated and are justified. And obviously, we’re very proud of the fact that Tempur-Pedic mattresses are — sleep, frankly, cooler than any of the competitive ones, and with our new Breeze products, sleep materially cooler than regular mattresses. So we just want to make sure that right messages are getting out to the consumer.
Operator
I would now like to turn the call back over to Mark Sarvary for closing remarks.
Mark A. Sarvary
Thank you very much. We look forward to talking with you all again in April when we will host the first quarter earnings conference call. And I hope I’ll see many of you in Vegas next week. So thanks a lot, everybody.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today’s conference. This concludes today’s program. You may all disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.
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