5 ms·

$3000 on a mattress? WTF? How is that even possible for such a highly commoditized good?

floatrock 8y ago
Freakonomics podcast did an episode on it: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ That's also exactly why Casper and a half dozen other upstarts have come out with the memory-foam mailed-to-you-in-a-vacuum-tube online mattress sales.
- mrbill 8y ago
  My current mattress is a $900 kingsize Casper. It replaced a 10-year-old Tempurpedic that cost around $4K. The Casper is a better mattress in EVERY WAY so far (had it since 2015).
- fwip 8y ago
  The conclusion of the podcast was "If you spend $800 you're probably safe, below that it's hard to know if it's good or awful. Above $1500 is too much."
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Considering Marriott/Hilton/IHG requires their hotels to use a 10 year warrantied mattress that only costs $250-$300 each, I'd say even $800 is too high. Even though that's wholesale price, doubling should be enough to get a single unit price. People would be better off investing in some HIIT cardio excercise if they're looking for a good night's sleep. And eating less / more nutritious food.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      Exercising and eating right aren't 100% fungible with money. That's not even close to the blocking factor for most people.
    - s17n 8y ago
      The extra $300 is what you pay for going with a reputable brand, because unlike Marriott, you don't have the time to figure out which off-brand mattresses are crap and which aren't.
      - ZainRiz 8y ago
        Book a room at the Marriott, go in, rip the sheets off the bed, check the manufacturer on the mattress tag, go buy your mattress from them. (And enjoy the rest of your night in the hotel)
      - lotsofpulp 8y ago
        They're not off brand, they're Temper-Sealy or Simmons.
        s17n 8y ago
        In that case, your assertion that "doubling should be sufficient to get single unit price" was wrong, cause you aren't going to get a queen from either of those companies for $500.
shoo 8y ago
I do agree. Mattress sellers love the value based sales pitch: how much would you pay for 1 hour extra sleep per night? Maybe paying $10/hour for extra sleep for one year is a bargain in some contexts, then you have a payback period of < 1 year, even for a ridiculously overpriced mattress.
- im3w1l 8y ago
  The difference between a $200 mattress and the best in the world is way less than 1h per night.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    Not to mention that I have taken some pretty rockin' naps in hammocks of various sizes, the cheapest of which was $4.99, and packed down into a twist of netting smaller than my fist. But to be fair, the two appropriately-spaced trees required for that one were not included. The mattress is by no means the only way to get a complete and restful night of sleep, and past a certain materials threshold, you can't get longer or better quality sleep with any amount of upgrades to your mattress. The marginal cost is likely better spent by buying light bulbs that phase out blue light in your evenings, or by taking melatonin supplements, or with a therapy device for sleep apnea, or blackout curtains, or any number of other supposedly sleep-improving products. At a certain cost point, you might as well climb into a spa-grade float tank, or dangle from your back-piercings, or sleep in a bounce castle. I think that there is probably a bigger difference in sleep quality between a $300 mattress and a $500 mattress than between the $500 mattress and a $3000 mattress. Once the specific concerns that typically interrupt sleep are addressed, the returns diminish fast. There is no way I am losing an hour of sleep every night just because my mattress isn't good enough.
    - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
      I think that there is probably a bigger difference in sleep quality between a $300 mattress and a $500 mattress than between the $500 mattress and a $3000 mattress. That seems awfully likely to me, too. I paid around $650 for a full-sized Sealy pillowtop something-or-other, apparently aimed at the hotel market, from an online mattress store some years ago, and it's been fine -- at least as comfortable as the ($800 in the early 1990s) Stearns & Foster it replaced. It's possible the Sealy won't last as long as the S&F did -- at least back then, the latter had a reputation for top-notch build quality -- but I have a lot of trouble envisioning any mattress in that size class being worth over $1000, let alone $3000.
munificent 8y ago
Because it's worth spending money on any product that your spends a third of its life on and which can directly affect your health.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  I have the same philosophy about office chairs.
  - mrbill 8y ago
    Mattresses (Casper), office chairs (Steelcase LEAP), keyboards (something with Cherry MX Brown switches). I spend the majority of my life using these bits so I buy quality.
    - namibj 8y ago
      Do you have any arguments to convince an employer to buy Cherry MX Brown (style) keyboards, instead of <15$ flimsy, flat membrane ones?
      - Spivak 8y ago
        I feel like it's much less effort to just bring your own. If you're into mechanical keyboards I'm willing to bet you have an old one lying around. Especially since the preference for keys is so personal.
        namibj 8y ago
        Yeah, I wish, though the only nice full-size keyboard I have laying around is a Sidewinder X4, which is out of production and about half as tactile as the Chinese-made MX brown clones in the AnnePro. The value proposition for me doesn't really exist enough to spend out-of-pocket though. Mostly due to not reaping the benefits from increased efficiency.
      - paulie_a 8y ago
nkantar 8y ago
The mattress world—like just about every other, I imagine—is crazy: https://www.gimletmedia.com/surprisingly-awesome/12-mattresses#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/surprisingly-awesome/12-mattress...
seanp2k2 8y ago
You can get IKEA mattresses for a couple hundred bucks and they’re OK, but having upgraded to a really nice cal king latex foam mattress a few years ago, it’s now hard to sleep anywhere else ( https://www.flobeds.com https://www.flobeds.com for those curious — arrived at this after tons of research, easy to move since it comes apart into pieces that fit into contractor trash bags and ships in vacuum sealed bags — no box spring either )
- listenallyall 8y ago
  I love my IKEA Hesstun. 2 separate sets of coils (I prefer springs to memory foam), a comparable design from the major brands was about twice the price. IKEA offers a transparent profile view (i.e. the inside of the mattress) for every mattress they sell, and you can lie on every one for hours without a single salesperson bothering you. 365-day exchange policy, longer than any of the stores I visited was offering (IKEA allows exchanges, but not refunds on mattresses). People knock IKEA but I do not believe my mattress is inferior in build quality to an assembly-line mattress from Sealy, Simmons, etc. I know my mattress has low ratings online -- this is meaningless, all the review sites are just commissioned salespeople for the online brands (Casper, Purple, etc), so of course those sites discourage you from buying from IKEA.
meotai 8y ago
Not just the mattress; the bed furniture counts towards the $3,000 too. So $2k for the tempurpedic & you can hit $3k easily.
alasdair_ 8y ago
>$3000 on a mattress? WTF? How is that even possible for such a highly commoditized good? I paid close to $3000 for a sleep number matress with adjustable firmness for each side. Still use it every day fifteen years later and think it was well worth the money.
- mkbkn 8y ago
  In India, my family spent Rs. 500 (about $8) for a custom-made mattress, that's filled with high-quality cotton tightly stuffed into it. No foam whatsoever. 30 years later, it's still rocking. Almost everyone here in India uses custom-made mattresses. Foam-based products are of recent launches and not many people use that. Only younger generations.

Freakonomics podcast did an episode on it: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ That's also exactly why Casper and a half dozen other upstarts have come out with the memory-foam mailed-to-you-in-a-vacuum-tube online mattress sales.

mrbill 8y ago
My current mattress is a $900 kingsize Casper. It replaced a 10-year-old Tempurpedic that cost around $4K. The Casper is a better mattress in EVERY WAY so far (had it since 2015).
fwip 8y ago
The conclusion of the podcast was "If you spend $800 you're probably safe, below that it's hard to know if it's good or awful. Above $1500 is too much."
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Considering Marriott/Hilton/IHG requires their hotels to use a 10 year warrantied mattress that only costs $250-$300 each, I'd say even $800 is too high. Even though that's wholesale price, doubling should be enough to get a single unit price. People would be better off investing in some HIIT cardio excercise if they're looking for a good night's sleep. And eating less / more nutritious food.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    Exercising and eating right aren't 100% fungible with money. That's not even close to the blocking factor for most people.
  - s17n 8y ago
    The extra $300 is what you pay for going with a reputable brand, because unlike Marriott, you don't have the time to figure out which off-brand mattresses are crap and which aren't.
    - ZainRiz 8y ago
      Book a room at the Marriott, go in, rip the sheets off the bed, check the manufacturer on the mattress tag, go buy your mattress from them. (And enjoy the rest of your night in the hotel)
    - lotsofpulp 8y ago
      They're not off brand, they're Temper-Sealy or Simmons.
      - s17n 8y ago
        In that case, your assertion that "doubling should be sufficient to get single unit price" was wrong, cause you aren't going to get a queen from either of those companies for $500.

shoo 8y ago

I do agree. Mattress sellers love the value based sales pitch: how much would you pay for 1 hour extra sleep per night? Maybe paying $10/hour for extra sleep for one year is a bargain in some contexts, then you have a payback period of < 1 year, even for a ridiculously overpriced mattress.

im3w1l 8y ago
The difference between a $200 mattress and the best in the world is way less than 1h per night.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Not to mention that I have taken some pretty rockin' naps in hammocks of various sizes, the cheapest of which was $4.99, and packed down into a twist of netting smaller than my fist. But to be fair, the two appropriately-spaced trees required for that one were not included. The mattress is by no means the only way to get a complete and restful night of sleep, and past a certain materials threshold, you can't get longer or better quality sleep with any amount of upgrades to your mattress. The marginal cost is likely better spent by buying light bulbs that phase out blue light in your evenings, or by taking melatonin supplements, or with a therapy device for sleep apnea, or blackout curtains, or any number of other supposedly sleep-improving products. At a certain cost point, you might as well climb into a spa-grade float tank, or dangle from your back-piercings, or sleep in a bounce castle. I think that there is probably a bigger difference in sleep quality between a $300 mattress and a $500 mattress than between the $500 mattress and a $3000 mattress. Once the specific concerns that typically interrupt sleep are addressed, the returns diminish fast. There is no way I am losing an hour of sleep every night just because my mattress isn't good enough.
  - chipotle_coyote 8y ago
    I think that there is probably a bigger difference in sleep quality between a $300 mattress and a $500 mattress than between the $500 mattress and a $3000 mattress. That seems awfully likely to me, too. I paid around $650 for a full-sized Sealy pillowtop something-or-other, apparently aimed at the hotel market, from an online mattress store some years ago, and it's been fine -- at least as comfortable as the ($800 in the early 1990s) Stearns & Foster it replaced. It's possible the Sealy won't last as long as the S&F did -- at least back then, the latter had a reputation for top-notch build quality -- but I have a lot of trouble envisioning any mattress in that size class being worth over $1000, let alone $3000.

munificent 8y ago

Because it's worth spending money on any product that your spends a third of its life on and which can directly affect your health.

rootusrootus 8y ago
I have the same philosophy about office chairs.
- mrbill 8y ago
  Mattresses (Casper), office chairs (Steelcase LEAP), keyboards (something with Cherry MX Brown switches). I spend the majority of my life using these bits so I buy quality.
  - namibj 8y ago
    Do you have any arguments to convince an employer to buy Cherry MX Brown (style) keyboards, instead of <15$ flimsy, flat membrane ones?
    - Spivak 8y ago
      I feel like it's much less effort to just bring your own. If you're into mechanical keyboards I'm willing to bet you have an old one lying around. Especially since the preference for keys is so personal.
      - namibj 8y ago
        Yeah, I wish, though the only nice full-size keyboard I have laying around is a Sidewinder X4, which is out of production and about half as tactile as the Chinese-made MX brown clones in the AnnePro. The value proposition for me doesn't really exist enough to spend out-of-pocket though. Mostly due to not reaping the benefits from increased efficiency.
    - paulie_a 8y ago

nkantar 8y ago

The mattress world—like just about every other, I imagine—is crazy: https://www.gimletmedia.com/surprisingly-awesome/12-mattresses#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/surprisingly-awesome/12-mattress...

seanp2k2 8y ago

You can get IKEA mattresses for a couple hundred bucks and they’re OK, but having upgraded to a really nice cal king latex foam mattress a few years ago, it’s now hard to sleep anywhere else ( https://www.flobeds.com https://www.flobeds.com for those curious — arrived at this after tons of research, easy to move since it comes apart into pieces that fit into contractor trash bags and ships in vacuum sealed bags — no box spring either )

listenallyall 8y ago
I love my IKEA Hesstun. 2 separate sets of coils (I prefer springs to memory foam), a comparable design from the major brands was about twice the price. IKEA offers a transparent profile view (i.e. the inside of the mattress) for every mattress they sell, and you can lie on every one for hours without a single salesperson bothering you. 365-day exchange policy, longer than any of the stores I visited was offering (IKEA allows exchanges, but not refunds on mattresses). People knock IKEA but I do not believe my mattress is inferior in build quality to an assembly-line mattress from Sealy, Simmons, etc. I know my mattress has low ratings online -- this is meaningless, all the review sites are just commissioned salespeople for the online brands (Casper, Purple, etc), so of course those sites discourage you from buying from IKEA.

meotai 8y ago

Not just the mattress; the bed furniture counts towards the $3,000 too. So $2k for the tempurpedic & you can hit $3k easily.

alasdair_ 8y ago

>$3000 on a mattress? WTF? How is that even possible for such a highly commoditized good? I paid close to $3000 for a sleep number matress with adjustable firmness for each side. Still use it every day fifteen years later and think it was well worth the money.

mkbkn 8y ago
In India, my family spent Rs. 500 (about $8) for a custom-made mattress, that's filled with high-quality cotton tightly stuffed into it. No foam whatsoever. 30 years later, it's still rocking. Almost everyone here in India uses custom-made mattresses. Foam-based products are of recent launches and not many people use that. Only younger generations.