Saturday, June 15, 2019

Tips on buying mattress from Takashimaya, Robinson, Metro, Tempur


Looking to buy mattress from Takashimaya, Robinson and Metro OR shopping for a Tempur mattress?
The objective of this post is to provide you a guide how good or bad or average the current promotion is. This will give you the advantage when making decision if you should just go ahead with current promotion or wait for a better promotion from Takashimaya, Robinson, Metro or Tempur.
If you ask the sales promoter if this is one of the best promotion, 9 out of 10 will reply you "Yes".


We went to quite a few places to try on different brands of mattress such as Tempur, Sealy, Serta, King Koil, Simmons, Dunlopilio and etc.

It is a very tiring tasks to understand the different series and material each brand have, let alone to try to lay on each mattress to give it a try.

But I feel it is worth to put in the effort because:
1) You will be sleeping on your mattress at least 8 hours a day
2) One of the expensive item in term of thousands of dollar
3) You will be using it for the next 10 years


In the end, the one and only brand which we both feel comfortable sleeping on is Tempur.
For other brands, either I feel comfortable and she is not or she is comfortable and I am not.

As everyone should be aware, the price of Tempur mattress is on the high side as compare to other brands.
Our budget for a King size mattress is $4000++.
Challenging :(




For the past few months, I have been monitoring the promotion on Tempur, Takashimaya, Robinson and Metro by 'liking' their Facebook pages.

Do note that Tempur pricing is "control" (similar to Apple products).
Thus, in order to ensure the purchase is the lowest price, the promotion from Tempur & the department store need to happen at the same time.
Meaning to say even Black Friday might not get you the cheapest price if Tempur price is high at that point of time while Department store Promo is low and vice versa.


If you had started looking for mattress, you will realize that some of the mattress brand uses this marketing tactic which is you cant find the exact same mattress model in another places. All the places somehow carrying "exclusive model". This is to prevent you from comparing prices across diff places.
Tempur do not use this marketing tactic. All shops are carrying the same model.
You can even put a small deposit to LOCK in the price. If the price drop, you can relock in at a lower price. If the price increase, you paid for the balance of your LOCK price. If you decided not to purchase, they will refund you full amount in term of voucher (Please check with the individual shop for their refund policy).
Sounds too good to be true? I have the same feeling too, thus I got the salesperson to write all this in black&white (See my invoice below) before I proceed to make the deposit.

Official Tempur Store Promotion
- Tempur have warehouse sales.

Don't get too excited yet because the mattress sold in their warehouse sales are mostly display sets and do not come with any warranty. The promo % can be up to 70% off their retail price. Brand new mattress are given only 10% off.

BEST = RARE deal
- Highest ever seen so far is 35% off mattress retail price during Good Friday 2019 (Without freebies like mattress protector and 2 x pillows). Do bear in mind that each Tempur pillow cost $200+ onward.
- Highest ever seen so far is 25% off Pillows & Accessories during Good Friday, aside from the tier discount of 1 for 10% off, 2 for 20% off and 3 for 30% off Pillows & Accessories


Price of Tempur Original 21 (Orange label) during Good Friday 2019

Do continue to read on and you will know why Tempur Store promotion are not attractive enough compare to Metro, Taka and Robinson.


Metro Promotion
BEST = RARE deal
- Giving $1,000 Metro voucher (For next purchase) + Dyson AM07 for min $5,000 + 10% UOB Metro$ credit card (Jun 2019)
- Giving $300 Metro voucher (For next purchase) +  Luggage for min $3,000 + 10% UOB Metro$ credit card (Jun 2019)


- Giving $800 Metro voucher (For next purchase) + Samsung Galaxy S10 128GB (First 30 customer only) + additional 10% off for min $8,000 + 5% UOB Metro$ credit card (May 2019)
- Giving $500 Metro voucher (For next purchase) + Dyson DP04 + additional 10% off for min $5,000 + 5% UOB Metro$ credit card (May 2019)
- Giving $300 Metro voucher (For next purchase) + Delsey 71cm luggage + additional 10% off for min $3,000 + 5% UOB Metro$ credit card (May 2019)
The sequence is Product price - 10% Member discount = Nett Price (The Gifts and Voucher min spend is based on Nett Price)


USUAL = AVERAGE deal
- Giving $500 Metro voucher (For next purchase) + Dyson DP04 for min $5,000 + 5% UOB Metro$ credit card
- Giving $300 Metro voucher (For next purchase) + Delsey 71cm luggage for min $3,000 + 5% UOB Metro$ credit card


Takashimaya Promotion
BEST = RARE deal
- Taka Card Day with additional 10% off promotion price + $500 instant cash rebate for min $5000 + 6% voucher rebate for DBS Taka AMEX/5% voucher rebate for DBS Taka Visa + $6 top up to your Cashcard with min $250 for DBS Taka AMEX/Visa credit card holder (May 2019)
- Taka Card Day with additional 10% off promotion price + $260 instant cash rebate for min $2600 + 6% voucher rebate for DBS Taka AMEX/5% voucher rebate for DBS Taka Visa + $6 top up to your Cashcard with min $250 for DBS Taka AMEX/Visa credit card holder (May 2019)



USUAL = AVERAGE deal
- Taka Double Points Day (12% voucher rebate for DBS Taka AMEX/10% voucher rebate for DBS Taka Visa) + $6 top up to your Cashcard with min $250 for DBS Taka AMEX/Visa credit card holder (Apr 2019)

- Giving $450 voucher for min $5,000 and above + 6% voucher rebate for DBS Taka AMEX/5% voucher rebate for DBS Taka Visa + $6 top up to your Cashcard with min $250 for DBS Taka AMEX/Visa credit card holder (Apr 2019)


Robinson Promotion
BEST = RARE deal
- Giving $500 voucher for min $5,000 and above + Apple XR 128GB iphone + additional 13% off promotion price + 5/10% rebate for OCBC Robinson (Black Friday Nov 2018)
- Giving $200 voucher for min $2,500 and above + additional 13% off promotion price + 5/10% rebate for OCBC Robinson (Black Friday Nov 2018)



USUAL = AVERAGE deal
- Giving $500 voucher (For next purchase) + 10% off promotion for min $5,000 and above + 5/10% rebate for OCBC Robinson credit card holder (May 2019)
- Giving $200 voucher (For next purchase) + 5% off promotion for min $3,000 and above + 5/10% rebate for OCBC Robinson credit card holder (Mar 2019)



Tips
1) Please wear shorts/pant for lady if the agenda is to source for mattress
2) Start sourcing 6 - 9 months before your key collection date.
     - By doing so, you will be able to lock in one of the lowest price (with lowest Price Match) by putting deposit when there is price promotion for your mattress.
     - You can also spread your installment so that your wallet will not be too stress with all your other big purchases.
3) Apply all the credit cards such as DBS Taka AMEX, OCBC Robinson, UOB Metro in advance so that you maximize the rebate amount if there is flash sale in one of the store.



HAPPY to share that by using the above methods, I managed to purchase my Tempur King Size mattress down from $6,299 to $4,500, keeping within my budget :D
Ps: This $4,500 exclude the additional 6% rebate for using DBS TAKA AMEX card for payment.
$6,299 (Before)

$4,500 (After)


Related post:
1) Home renovation regrets that costs you thousands of dollars

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

SOLD: Sasseur REIT $18,268 (Profit)


Sold my 90,000 shares of Sasseur REIT on 10 Jun at $0.795
Total profit, including dividend, of $18,267.63 (31.6%) in 4 months.
This is my BIGGEST profit ever!!!!!!!
The next biggest profit was actually CapitaMall Trust of $9,497.26 (Link)


Reasons for selling it:
1) PB 0.9 at this moment.
Their NAV increased 11.2% to $0.8897 compare to IPO (Mar 2018).
Since this is a pure China property shares, so normally I will discount 15% off the NAV to have a safe margin. Thus result in PB at 1.05x.
2) Stick to the initial buy plan - SHORT TERM.
As we are coming to the end of bull run and this is a pure China stock, thus, not going to keep long term. Better to lock in profit than to lose money.
3) A heavy wall of Sell Q at $0.80 based on Market Depth

4) Sasseur REIT report their financial result 1 month later than majority of the REIT
Example: Majority of the REIT report their Q1 result in the month of Apr. However, Sasseur REIT report their Q1 result in the month of May. This mean that I am getting my dividend 1 month later. I do not like this kind of feeling :(
5) Sasseur REIT will decrease their dividend policy from 100% to 90% from 1 Jan 2020.
6) The income support from Sponsor will end by 31 Dec 2019.
Point 4 + 5 will cause the share price to drop.
   

No doubts this is still a good paying dividend stock and they will be able to beat their dividend forecast mentioned in their IPO for the next 2 quarters, BUT I would not enter at this current price.

There is no LOUSY property, just LOUSY price..



Related post:
1) Added: Sasseur REIT
2) Sasseur Reit - Scored Grade A for their FY18 result
3) SOLD: CapitaMall Trust (CMT) - Killed my golden goose