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Comment by pwinnski | Hacker News Reader

Mattresses are crazy-overpriced and near-monopolistic, though. Not quite to Luxottica levels, but close. At least before companies like Purple and Casper and so on came along.

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I don’t think spring mattresses aren’t as overpriced as you might expect. You can look at the pure cost of springs, foam, fabric/covering, etc... It turns out that buying these things individually, for a minimal queen size mattress made of springs (~1000, pocket coiled) with a foam top (2” latex or synthetic), foam support on the bottom, and not too much edge support (other than tighter springs on the edge) will start to approach $750 or so. Ikea makes cheaper beds but they skimp on the coils and use the cheapest possible foams, but that’s often okay too.

Add $100 for labor and you arrive at a mattress that that is about $900. That’s about the floor for a mattress most people would be happy with.

The 100% foam mattresses are much cheaper (less labor, cheaper materials) and many people are happy with those, but not all.

Yeah I heard that all years before. My SO is significantly smaller and lighter than me and when we moved together here in Germany we went to one of those "always sale"-shops that are all over. The guy talked to us for almost an hour. We tested mattresses and bought one we thought might be good for ~1000€. 2 years later(!), it already felt like it was getting worse, she was rolling on me, we had back pains and a year later we really needed a new one.

Fortunately a mattress seller became famous at the time in Germany for breaking the monopoly here and getting all the hate from the lobby. You know what he did? He sold the same mattresses everybody else sold but significantly cheaper. The margin was just ridiculous.

After being "banned" and not being supplied shortly after he started, he came up with his own mattress. 100€. Just foam. We had it for ~5years now and I never slept so good before. The mattress have been tested as the best mattress on the market for many years here in Germany so it wasn't just us.

I know the US market is different because people seem to value ridiculous sizes and design over health and usability but this is what actually helps this scammy market to rise to those ridiculous prices.

The problem with foam mattresses is that they can contain nasty "fire retardant" chemicals and are a recycling nightmare.

What's the brand from the guy with the good 100 EUR mattresses?

A market where there's attempts to overcharge is not a monopoly. Cheap mattresses aren't a new thing. (I've also never set foot into one of those mattress chains)

Casper pay $400 for a mattress as per article (info from S1): “ This appears to be Casper’s business,” tweeted number-crunching Atlantic columnist Derek Thompson. “Buy mattress at $400...”

Yeah, because Casper mattresses are a solid block of foam. Way cheaper than spring mattresses, all you need is to source foam sheets, cut them, and roll them for shipment. No springs, no fabric, no filler, no construction.

Have you ever seen a Casper mattress?? Everything you say is provably false. Casper mattresses have a few layers of different types of foam, all packaged together in a nice fabric outer layer. If you've ever seen one, they are clearly a non-trivial construction.

It's most definitely not as simple as "cut them, and roll them for shipment."

So you glue the layers and wrap it in a sheet, big deal. Still way less labor and materials than wiring together 300-500 springs and encasing them with layers of pillow filler.

Or go to IKEA and get a Sultan mattress for $250 any day or $110 when on sale. Oh and they ship, too.

IKEA’s shipping is not cheap though.

Huh. I got a mattress last year, went to a regular furniture store, got a regular spring mattress, paid under $300. No going out of business sale, no haggling, and I delivered it myself with a rental truck for less than I would have paid to get it in a week.

Mattresses are an awful business but even worse cliche.

My old school mattress was like $700 and is fine. I’m a huge fan of IKEA, and have bought everything from furniture to a kitchen from them. But their mattresses are garbage.

They're fine if you only need it for a year. I found their $200 Morgedal mattress very comfortable and I slept very well on it, but about two years after buying it started to get super saggy and worn.

Cheap foam is why (what can you expect for $200?!). My parents got a 100% foam queen-size mattress more than 30 years ago, and it's still in very good shape with full-time use. They flip and rotate it every month or so, which probably helps a lot (most mattresses today aren't supposed to be flipped). I think it cost about $1000 in 1989 (about $1800 today).

IKEA has cheap mattresses and expensive mattresses, their expensive mattresses are quite good, but, you know, expensive.

In general, I find IKEA stuff to either cheap or expensive, and you generally get what you pay for. I have a loveseat, armchair, and coffee table from them -- the loveseat has lasted for about a decade and (aside from a few cat claw marks) is as good as new) despite costing in the realm of $1000USD, the armchair was cheap and the bolts on it need frequent tightening, and the coffee table is $30USD of paper yet inexplicably has also lasted almost a decade.

A lot of furniture from IKEA is just way too damn stiff/upright to possibly be comfortable unless you are a contortionist. I don't buy anything there without sitting on it first.

Source for your comment that Ikea uses "cheapest possible foams"?

Idk, they've been available for a while but Purple and Casper just brought heavy marketing to the picture.

Purple and Casper are both only five years old yet I bought a Casper-like queen sized mattress in 2011 from overstock.com for like $300.

Purple and Casper are both crazy-overpriced too.

Serta Simmons, Tempur-Sealy & Sleep Number still control a shocking amount of the market

But how do they control it? Is it just that they make a good product at a market-clearing price, or do they abuse the system somehow? In my mid-sized American city there are not just one but two local mattress makers that I could buy from if I felt like I needed to, and I did once but I don't feel like the choice was either denied to or forced upon me.

A lot of it, if I'm correctly remembering an article I read several years ago, is that several of the most popular brands are actually the same company, and that company also quietly owns several of the most popular chain stores. So you go into a store you think is in competition with the store across the street, and look at mattresses from manufacturers you think are competing against each other, and it's all one company owning both stores and both mattress brands.

It's not as universal as Luxottica, as I said, but it's pretty widespread.

And if I recall rightly, the manufacturers made different products for each vendor, making it very difficult to say, "I like mattress X from company Y, let's see who has the best price on it."

This led to a lot of people having favorite hacks. E.g., a friend bought his mattress from a hotel company. His theory was he was probably paying a little more, but the incentives were better, so he trusted the hotelier more.

There a lot of "if I recall correctly" answers but no one is listing any company names.

Who is this Mattress Powerhouse? From whence they came?

I'll tell you what. You tell me the things you've Googled for, and how the results fall short in terms of finding things that explain the mattress market structure. And then I'll correct whatever issue leads you to not finding the stuff that's out there. Deal?

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