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I'm guessing market dominance from years of targeted advertising on podcasts as well as buying/bullying mattress reviewer websites to make sure they stay as the

I'm guessing market dominance from years of targeted advertising on podcasts as well as buying/bullying mattress reviewer websites to make sure they stay as the highest rated. HN from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321807 "Casper went to war with popular mattress review site, then financed its takeover"

tempsy 7y ago
so even people who are cash strapped are willing to overpay for a commodity item if they perceive it to be the best in a certain price range...? i guess purchasing behavior is very different for things you buy very infrequently like a mattress? looking at Costco and a highly rated foam comparable to Casper is $500...
- blackearl 7y ago
  It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress. You might buy 1 per decade, people forget what the experience or price was like. I spent a lot of time researching then gave up and went to a "mattress outlet" laid on a few, then got one for around $400. I sleep fine, probably better than I ever have. There's also so much info on springs, foam, latex, rubber, on and on. It's overwhelming. Casper has good marketing and make it easy, and since it's so hard to compare, they just need to be close to other prices. They don't need to go full walmart
  - tempsy 7y ago
    $1100+tax is more than double what you'd pay at Ikea, Amazon, Costco, etc. I thought the promise of all these direct-to-consumer products was to pass savings onto the consumer because they are vertically integrated and cut out scammy middle men. Seems like all that's happened is they just keep fat margins for themselves.
    - Paperweight 7y ago
      Started-up with principles. Got big. Reverted to the beancounter corporate mean. Now charging what the market will bear. Opportunity now open for new startup with principles. Rinse and repeat.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      There are plenty of 12 inch memory foam mattresses on Amazon that are in the $300-$400 range for a Queen size, including shipping. I'm happy with the "Zinus" brand.
      - jcampbell1 7y ago
        In the past 5 years I have owned a Casper at $850, a tuft and needle for $750, and something by Ashley for $350. I think I like the Ashley slightly better but they are virtually indistinguishable. I second the recommendation to go cheap.
        AJ007 7y ago
        I've had a lot of negative things to say about Amazon for the past couple of years, but yeah, you shouldn't be paying much more than $300 for a mattress. Everything on top of that is your customer acquisition cost, which should be in your bank account, not Google/Facebook's. In my experience you can just optimize the firmness to your liking with a pad. If suddenly its too firm or too soft, you can switch it out and not have to replace a whole mattress. Relatives visited and wet the bed? Throw it out and get a new one, your only out a few hundred dollars instead of $1000+. For couples who want their mattress different ways, that is another market.
        gnat 7y ago
        Could you provide a link to an example of the kind of "pad" you're talking about? We are mattress-shopping now, so this is a timely discussion :)
      - Johnny555 7y ago
  - rconti 7y ago
    Shopped for a mattress with my wife. Tried pretty much everything in the store. her favorite was a firm no-frills no topper low end "brand" name mattress (one of the big 3). Was nice to get something delivered for $600ish in a california king. I was more-or-less prepared to spend whatever it took to get something we both liked. That was easy.
  - awalton 7y ago
    > It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress. I don't understand this at all. You can Google and have all the prices right at hand, so comparison shopping by number isn't hard. You can go to a mattress store and lay on a handful of mattresses and figure out pretty quickly what you like - is the pillow top or foam too soft? Do the coils poke too hard? Too firm? Too heavy for you to move when you need to do the sheets? - You admitted to doing this yourself. I could never see myself buying a mattress from a company like Casper personally. Returning something like a mattress because you don't like it has got to be a level of hassle that I can't even begin to imagine being worth it, vs just making sure you bought one that you're comfortable with in the first place.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      > so comparison shopping by number isn't hard Yes, it is. The major mattress stores each have their own custom SKUs to defeat comparison. > You can go to a mattress store and lay on a handful of mattresses and figure out pretty quickly what you like To some extent, but there's a wear-in period on a new mattress. It takes my body a few days to a few weeks to get used to any new mattress; trying to figure out how that's going to go from a few minutes in a store isn't super effective.
    - brogrammernot 7y ago
      It’s such an infrequent purchase that you don’t have a baseline for what is a good price or not. It’s not like when you’re buying food and you always buy bananas for $1 and you stop to grab a few items at somewhere new & bananas are $2 so you don’t buy them cause you have a baseline. It’s the same exact thing you seen in automotive sales, how do you tell if something is a good price? Well looking at the car compared to other cars in that area may help but what about one model vs another and so forth. So go lay on a mattress or test drive a vehicle, all that does is tell you if you absolutely hate the item in question not if you actually like it so you add a wide range of prices on very similar items with unlimited reviews or information on them it’s incredibly overwhelming. Caspar & others (Tuft & Needle) did a great job with the market by appealing to those concerns. 100 night free trial (T&N) and if you don’t like it, we’ll arrange to pick it up/drop it off at a homeless shelter or similar. Casper did something similar. Once a decade or half decade larger purchases without a baseline is incredibly stressful for most consumers.
  - xenospn 7y ago
    About 5 years ago I bought a $400 mattress on Amazon. Came in shrink wrap and has been in my bed since then. It has been perfect in every way. I don't understand why anyone would spend more than twice that amount.
- untog 7y ago
  I think a lot of it is whether you consider the price (whatever it is) to be reasonable. I am willing to spend $1000 on something I spend literally half my life on top of.
  - tempsy 7y ago
    foam mattresses at Costco, Amazon, Ikea, etc. are under $500, so this is more than double for something that is not clearly 2x better than comparable products if this was objectively proven to be the absolute best foam mattress on the market, I would generally agree that paying top dollar for the best is fine for something you spend a lot of time using, but there's nothing out there that suggests this is any better than anything else on the market. It appears as if it's mostly just good marketing.
    - anon9001 7y ago
      I had to buy a mattress last year and did a pretty deep dive into the world of mattresses. What I learned is that there's no meaningful research on what's "best", and sleep experts say that it's 100% personal preference (and marketing). So I bought the cheapest thing on amazon with the best reviews in the size that I needed, which was maybe 25% of the price of Casper or Leesa (and those are about half the price of a traditional mattress). It's absolutely fine. If anything, I sleep better knowing that if I destroy it or have to move, I can just throw it out and buy another one. One note: if you read enough reviews, you'll notice that some budget foam mattresses can have a smell to them. I assume this is the main thing that "premium" foam mattresses have actually addressed, but obviously it's not advertised as "we have the least smelly product!". It's really as simple as finding a well reviewed hunk of foam, or at least it was for me, as mine arrived odor-free.
- evandev 7y ago
  From what I have heard, Costco buys Casper mattresses in bulk and are able to charge basically whatever they want. It does make sense that Casper itself needs higher profit margins than Costco due to the differences in business.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - frgotmylogin 7y ago
    Do they have them out to try in the store?
    - prklmn 7y ago
      Not from what I’ve seen. There is a sample you can push your hand into, but certainly it’s not big enough to properly try out.
- matwood 7y ago
  I’ve gotten my last two king foam mattresses from Walmart.com. Comfortable and $500 or less. I don’t know how places like Casper keep selling mattresses.
  - mathgeek 7y ago
    For the same reason that you can spend from tens to thousands of dollars on many kitchen appliances, clothes, etc.: branding, appearance, and perceived (although sometimes real) correlation between price and quality. There are additional factors as such a list is bound to be non-exhaustive, but I feel that covers a number of main factors.

tempsy 7y ago

so even people who are cash strapped are willing to overpay for a commodity item if they perceive it to be the best in a certain price range...? i guess purchasing behavior is very different for things you buy very infrequently like a mattress? looking at Costco and a highly rated foam comparable to Casper is $500...

blackearl 7y ago
It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress. You might buy 1 per decade, people forget what the experience or price was like. I spent a lot of time researching then gave up and went to a "mattress outlet" laid on a few, then got one for around $400. I sleep fine, probably better than I ever have. There's also so much info on springs, foam, latex, rubber, on and on. It's overwhelming. Casper has good marketing and make it easy, and since it's so hard to compare, they just need to be close to other prices. They don't need to go full walmart
- tempsy 7y ago
  $1100+tax is more than double what you'd pay at Ikea, Amazon, Costco, etc. I thought the promise of all these direct-to-consumer products was to pass savings onto the consumer because they are vertically integrated and cut out scammy middle men. Seems like all that's happened is they just keep fat margins for themselves.
  - Paperweight 7y ago
    Started-up with principles. Got big. Reverted to the beancounter corporate mean. Now charging what the market will bear. Opportunity now open for new startup with principles. Rinse and repeat.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    There are plenty of 12 inch memory foam mattresses on Amazon that are in the $300-$400 range for a Queen size, including shipping. I'm happy with the "Zinus" brand.
    - jcampbell1 7y ago
      In the past 5 years I have owned a Casper at $850, a tuft and needle for $750, and something by Ashley for $350. I think I like the Ashley slightly better but they are virtually indistinguishable. I second the recommendation to go cheap.
      - AJ007 7y ago
        I've had a lot of negative things to say about Amazon for the past couple of years, but yeah, you shouldn't be paying much more than $300 for a mattress. Everything on top of that is your customer acquisition cost, which should be in your bank account, not Google/Facebook's. In my experience you can just optimize the firmness to your liking with a pad. If suddenly its too firm or too soft, you can switch it out and not have to replace a whole mattress. Relatives visited and wet the bed? Throw it out and get a new one, your only out a few hundred dollars instead of $1000+. For couples who want their mattress different ways, that is another market.
        gnat 7y ago
        Could you provide a link to an example of the kind of "pad" you're talking about? We are mattress-shopping now, so this is a timely discussion :)
    - Johnny555 7y ago
- rconti 7y ago
  Shopped for a mattress with my wife. Tried pretty much everything in the store. her favorite was a firm no-frills no topper low end "brand" name mattress (one of the big 3). Was nice to get something delivered for $600ish in a california king. I was more-or-less prepared to spend whatever it took to get something we both liked. That was easy.
- awalton 7y ago
  > It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress. I don't understand this at all. You can Google and have all the prices right at hand, so comparison shopping by number isn't hard. You can go to a mattress store and lay on a handful of mattresses and figure out pretty quickly what you like - is the pillow top or foam too soft? Do the coils poke too hard? Too firm? Too heavy for you to move when you need to do the sheets? - You admitted to doing this yourself. I could never see myself buying a mattress from a company like Casper personally. Returning something like a mattress because you don't like it has got to be a level of hassle that I can't even begin to imagine being worth it, vs just making sure you bought one that you're comfortable with in the first place.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    > so comparison shopping by number isn't hard Yes, it is. The major mattress stores each have their own custom SKUs to defeat comparison. > You can go to a mattress store and lay on a handful of mattresses and figure out pretty quickly what you like To some extent, but there's a wear-in period on a new mattress. It takes my body a few days to a few weeks to get used to any new mattress; trying to figure out how that's going to go from a few minutes in a store isn't super effective.
  - brogrammernot 7y ago
    It’s such an infrequent purchase that you don’t have a baseline for what is a good price or not. It’s not like when you’re buying food and you always buy bananas for $1 and you stop to grab a few items at somewhere new & bananas are $2 so you don’t buy them cause you have a baseline. It’s the same exact thing you seen in automotive sales, how do you tell if something is a good price? Well looking at the car compared to other cars in that area may help but what about one model vs another and so forth. So go lay on a mattress or test drive a vehicle, all that does is tell you if you absolutely hate the item in question not if you actually like it so you add a wide range of prices on very similar items with unlimited reviews or information on them it’s incredibly overwhelming. Caspar & others (Tuft & Needle) did a great job with the market by appealing to those concerns. 100 night free trial (T&N) and if you don’t like it, we’ll arrange to pick it up/drop it off at a homeless shelter or similar. Casper did something similar. Once a decade or half decade larger purchases without a baseline is incredibly stressful for most consumers.
- xenospn 7y ago
  About 5 years ago I bought a $400 mattress on Amazon. Came in shrink wrap and has been in my bed since then. It has been perfect in every way. I don't understand why anyone would spend more than twice that amount.
untog 7y ago
I think a lot of it is whether you consider the price (whatever it is) to be reasonable. I am willing to spend $1000 on something I spend literally half my life on top of.
- tempsy 7y ago
  foam mattresses at Costco, Amazon, Ikea, etc. are under $500, so this is more than double for something that is not clearly 2x better than comparable products if this was objectively proven to be the absolute best foam mattress on the market, I would generally agree that paying top dollar for the best is fine for something you spend a lot of time using, but there's nothing out there that suggests this is any better than anything else on the market. It appears as if it's mostly just good marketing.
  - anon9001 7y ago
    I had to buy a mattress last year and did a pretty deep dive into the world of mattresses. What I learned is that there's no meaningful research on what's "best", and sleep experts say that it's 100% personal preference (and marketing). So I bought the cheapest thing on amazon with the best reviews in the size that I needed, which was maybe 25% of the price of Casper or Leesa (and those are about half the price of a traditional mattress). It's absolutely fine. If anything, I sleep better knowing that if I destroy it or have to move, I can just throw it out and buy another one. One note: if you read enough reviews, you'll notice that some budget foam mattresses can have a smell to them. I assume this is the main thing that "premium" foam mattresses have actually addressed, but obviously it's not advertised as "we have the least smelly product!". It's really as simple as finding a well reviewed hunk of foam, or at least it was for me, as mine arrived odor-free.
evandev 7y ago
From what I have heard, Costco buys Casper mattresses in bulk and are able to charge basically whatever they want. It does make sense that Casper itself needs higher profit margins than Costco due to the differences in business.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- frgotmylogin 7y ago
  Do they have them out to try in the store?
  - prklmn 7y ago
    Not from what I’ve seen. There is a sample you can push your hand into, but certainly it’s not big enough to properly try out.
matwood 7y ago
I’ve gotten my last two king foam mattresses from Walmart.com. Comfortable and $500 or less. I don’t know how places like Casper keep selling mattresses.
- mathgeek 7y ago
  For the same reason that you can spend from tens to thousands of dollars on many kitchen appliances, clothes, etc.: branding, appearance, and perceived (although sometimes real) correlation between price and quality. There are additional factors as such a list is bound to be non-exhaustive, but I feel that covers a number of main factors.