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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The whole mattress industry is a scam. Actual manufacturing cost is $75-$300. Mattresses are even cheaper on Alibaba. Vacuum-packing memory foam shrinks mattresses for shipping, and now they can be imported easily.

If you really want to annoy the US mattress industry, set up a review site and review sub-$100 mattresses off Alibaba.

(Personally, I have an air bed which cost about $200.)

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There is a brand on Amazon (Zinus) that sells reasonable quality foam mattresses with low markups. I bought their Queen [0] for $289, and have been happy with it. I'm assuming that Amazon will also eventually introduce an Amazon Basics version and suck up all the profit...

[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Zinus-Memory-Green-Mattress-Queen/dp/...

Secondino Zinus. Idk if it'll last 20 years but for that price I only need it to last 5.

Bought one of those recently, most comfortable mattress I've ever had, and the cost was amazing. No idea why one would pay $3000 for a Temper-Pedic. Even if this mattress only lasted a few years I could buy 10 of them and still come out ahead.

not joking: i bought 2, and use one as the 'box spring'. it's pretty amazing sleeping on 24" of queen memory foam for less than half the cost of a single shitty mattress 10 years ago.

I believe the point of the box spring is:

1) Providing rigidity for use on a sparse frame

2) Providing airflow so the underside of the mattress does not stay damp (from sweat etc)

Don't know how much of an issue this still is, but as far as I know it's not just a spacer.

I bought a California king from Zinus, they sent me two of them, and didn’t want the second one back. I paid less than 300, and now my parents have a free mattress too. One gripe was the lack of warnings on the box. I accidentally punctured the plastic trying to drag the package into my bedroom and one puncture was like a deploy mechanism that left me trapped in a door way as the mattress slowly inflated on me. We laughed about it, but I’m a large man, I can only imagine how a small person or child would have dealt with that situation.

There is a Netflix produced horror movie right there

Similar thing happened to an ikea spring mattress I bought for my guest rooms. Cut open the plastic and it pretty violently sprung open and whacked me in the face.

Anything good you know on Amazon for traditional spring mattresses? Foam murders my back.

It's the heat retention of foam that kills me.

I use a spring mattress that has a layer of foam on top (see other comment). There are no heat problems, as long as you don't add a mattress cover. If you want to keep things extra cool regardless of mattress, try breathable satin sheets.

A few years ago when first moving to Seattle I bought a Queen spring mattress which has a thin memory foam pillowtop layer (effectively equivalent to a mattress pad). Less than $300. I've found it to be much better than the pure foam or pure spring beds I've experienced in hotels. I haven't had any overheating problems, except for when I briefly tried adding a plasticky bed bug prevention mattress cover which would have heated up any bed.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LQ1RQU/

Thanks! I'll check it out - my $100 Ikea queen being near half a decade old and none too comfy even when new, it's pretty far past time I replaced it with something. This'll be a good place to start looking!

It is. I bought mine for 200-300$ on Amazon a while ago (lots of good reviews) and it was the best bed I’ve slept on. I laugh at people who spend thousands of dollars in their mattress and repeat out loud the marketing speech “you spend a third of your life on it”

I wish I could do the same. Here in Japan I had to settle for a pricey inner spring. Damn islands.

Yeah, and the whole web app industry is a scam, actual bandwidth cost is like a penny. And servers are even cheaper in Russia.

(Personally, I run my website on a shared php host for about $1)

Snarkiness aside, it's surprising to see comments like this here.

Your comparison is unfair, given that new web apps are being created/updated (but also abandoned) constantly, and this requires work. Mattresses have been invented long ago, and can be mostly produced by robots. Mattresses should be a commodity, and be priced accordingly.

This is like the pot calling the kettle black.

I believe it is also like someone being snarky.

Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough.

A web page only needs to be coded once.

> Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough.

But that is work in the sense of energy, if robots are being used for production.

EDIT: Changed phrasing, to not distract from the actual argument.

If there is a comparison that is unfair, it's the one you just made between physical and mental work.

The people benefiting from this scam are not the ones doing the actual physical work.

I could say the same thing about webapps and mental work.

Not surprising at all, because it's the main cause of aggressive and shady sales tactics. Which is exactly what happens when a company has too much money for sales and marketing. If someone created a business of selling X so profitable that 99% of sales is reinvested in sales and marketing you would have people selling X knocking your door 24/7 because sales would be the only way to scale up such business. However such profitable businesses are typically possible only because of false believes planted into the target audience. In this case, the parent comment debunks the false believe that paying $500-1000 for an average China-made mattress is a great deal.

The evidence for the mattress industry being mostly a marketing scam is very old. There are a lot of brands but a very small number of manufacturers of the parts - there was only one for springs when this article was written seventeen years ago. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/shopping/2000/11/going_to...

Personally I question visco-elastic foam. Sure, it's cheap and may be ok for a lot of people, but I personally sleep better on an standard spring bed.

Foam mattresses don't breathe, they stink (some mattress I've seen are 1+ yr old and continue to stink) and aren't firm enough for me.

Do any online retailers sell standard beds? Or am I a dinosaur?

I sleep on firm mattresses and was able to find a "firm" rated cooling gel memory foam mattress. There are levels ~$300 where they have at least one layers of breathable egg crate foam.

Maybe things have improved in the past 10 years, but honestly any foam to me isn't comfortable - the bed needs to be firm enough to let my body breathe on it's own.

I ordered a spring mattress off the internet 7-8 years ago. I want to say overstock, but who knows. It wasn't a very good mattress--too thin. Even so it was giant when it was delivered. It's hard to see how a nice queen spring mattress could be sold online. Any company trying to sell that would have to figure out warehousing and last mile delivery.

I think one of the newer “bed in a box” companies do, either Leesa or Casper. They sell the usual rolled up foam mattress as well as a spring version, though I don’t know how they ship the spring mattress.

My brother has a foam mattress in his guest room. He found it on Craigslist (it was someone's unused guest bed), used it himself for several years, then replaced it with a larger spring mattress.

I can't stand sleeping on the foam mattress for more than a night or two. When I wake up it's like I've sunk into the foam and have been immobilized for hours. People are supposed to be able to move when they sleep.

He's since gotten an air bed for the other room, and I choose that one when I go to visit.

Memory foam seems like terrible idea to me unless you are immobilized for some untelated reason.

But I absolutely love latex foam. You can move easily during sleep and every position is comfortable. It lasts forever.

Standard bed / boxsprings need specialized delivery. So the local display room & warehouse model works better.

The online mattress companies are all built around compressing and using UPS to ship.

There's loads of spring mattresses on Amazon for cheap.

What's with all this talk about fancy imported mattresses from China? You can often just get a local foam wholesaler to cut you off a chunk of foam. Stick on a mattress protector if you really want to put on the Ritz.

I have a chunk of 2 pound, 4" polyurethane that I have been sleeping on for something like 20 years...

It's also the slimy showroom tactics.

Just like TV's, you want to go see one in person. You'll find the big brands are playing model number games so you can't compare the same one between different stores.

Yep, I saw the signature sleep foam mattresses on amazon for about 300$. Compared to the ones in store that were all 5-20 times the cost, I just decided to try it cause even if there is a 10% chance it's good, it's worth a shot.

2 years later and I have no complaints.

One of the best mattresses I've ever had was a 100usd one I got of Amazon.

Have you ever had something manufactured and or purchased a product in bulk on Alibaba?

I'm just starting this now and would love to hear personal experiences and tips.

I think OP means Aliexpress where you can order single items.

Oh i bet all these online mattress companies are getting their mattresses from Alibaba. Buy each for $80 and sell them for $500 to $800.

There is more options on alibaba.com... and many can be ordered in quantity of 1.

Bought 2x single mattresses from Aldi (AUD500 = US$390 total), to replace our old king mattress, and put a king overlay on top. So good having total isolation from any of your partner's tossing-and-turning.

Only problem is the combination is 15cm shorter than a real king mattress, so it's odd on the base. But meh.

When friends and family stay in my spare room, they love the mattress and ask where I got it from. £100, and I used it myself for a few years before it became the spare.

Blows their mind.

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