Mattress Forum

"Budgy, can you comment on how and when this happened?"

In my opinion the major companies are actually in a heap of trouble and I think it is primarily because this has happened.  Industry content warning, rest of this post will be more about business.  The value of the major S brand companies is in a major downward spiral recently.  This is partially due to the recession.  But in reality this is a cop out, Simmons was the first company to go to non-flip mattresses...initially it was done only on their 'high end' mattresses.  Of course in reality this was marketed as a new special technology and was done to reduce motion transfer and magically you never had to flip your mattress anymore, although if it really cost any more money to build a mattress this way why on Earth would it eventually trickle down to even the most basic mattresses they made? Pretty obvious really.  Of course other major companies quickly followed suit because this feature was being sold against their products and didn't want to lose sales to this.  We in the industry were also told that the 'stress tests' that they ran on the product actually showed the newer non-flip mattresses stood up better.  We know now after a few years of selling this stuff that this is obviously not the case.  This is one of many things that has been done over the last 30 years to keep the prices in check. 

Believe me when I say that quality cutting actually started longer ago than you may think.  I want to give you some unique perspective.  I personally think from my end that todays average consumer may not actually think a good mattress is truly worth what they cost today.  I am gonna use Simmons as another example.  Back in the 70's they were still using cotton shells for the pocket coils, the mattress came on a proper coil 'boxspring' instead of a coil base, they were upholstered mostly with cotton and wool batting, had good quality cotton damask covers, they were fully reversible and they all last 15 years on average.  Heres the thing....back THEN a good quality beautyrest like this actually cost somewhere around $1000.00.  A 'good' Beautyrest today still only cost $1000.00 (give or take a couple hundred) after 30+ years of inflation.  Spending $1000 on a mattress back then is like spending $3000~$4000 on a high end sleep set today.  These companies have gotten so large that in order to keep the factories running full tilt they need to churn out a lot of mattresses.  So in reality they have all been racing to the bottom (of price) for decades.  And in the process they have set up a completely unrealistic expectation for customers to think they can get a top of the line queen bed for a thousand bucks.  Problem is a top of the line bed from the same manufacturers today @ $1000.00 is just not made even remotely the same way.  Now that these companies have already completely devalued their own product it is actually way too late for them to go back to the way they used to build them and charge what they use to charge.  Don't expect it to change for the better, expect it to stay the same until these companies run themselves into the ground. 

We have been told that mattresses being replaced quicker and quicker is great for us in the sales aspect, we started our company based on the philosophy that in reality if someone buys a $1000 bed from me and it lasts 5 years they will never buy from me again, I really don't care if its good for the industry, I care what is good for myself and good for my customers.  I want them to spend the same basic money lets say instead of buying a $1000 bed and it last 5 years, its my goal for them to spend 2~5 thousand on a queen, have it last 15~25 years, have the best sleep of their lives and recommend all their friends to come see me as well.  To me this is a win-win, and the manufacturers don't really seem to understand this basic concept anymore.  Or they have a delusional view of how good their product is if they honestly think these people will buy from me again. 

  i really don't wanna shift the blame where it doesn't truly belong, but consumers did keep on buying them right?  Its kinda like using your wallet to speak for you and say 'yeah I want a big thick pillowtop bed that looks like its worth 2 grand instead of a bed thats actually worth 2 grand'.  And of course we have uneducated sales people (or misleading ones depending on how much they really know) that tell people these beds will still easily last 10 plus years.  The other ironic thing with it all....especially with the really thick beds, there has to be a point where the innerspring itself would make virtually no difference in how you sleep because you could have 6" or more foam inbetween the sleeper and the spring system, at which point its basically like sleeping on an all poly foam mattress.