Over the years, buying a mattress has become an increasingly complex process. A typical visit to an expo fair, furniture mall, or big box store often presents customers with over 40 different brand retailers, each touting their products as the best in the market. These retailers often include some of the most well-known brands, many offering enticing discounts of up to 50% or more. However, the truth about mattress price and quality is often more complicated than these offers suggest.
Many consumers may assume that higher-priced mattresses automatically mean better quality, but that's not always the case. On the flip side, deep discounts may lead people to believe they're getting a steal, when in reality, the initial price might have been inflated.
The Cost of Your $4000 Mattress is only $400
The reality is that 99% of all mattresses are now a commodity. The technology in a spring or foam mattress has not changed much in the last 50 years. The pocketed spring was commercialized in the 1920's and memory foam in the 1950's. Retailers and manufacturers have just amplified their hype machine.
New brands claiming to sell mid to high end mattresses keep popping out faster than mushrooms from dead logs. They pretty up the mattresses by making them thicker, covering them with "nice" looking fabrics and fancy labels, rehashing old technologies into new ones by giving them fancy sounding names justified by the addition of a couple of bells and whistles.
Strip these niceties and the manufacturing costs drop by 20-40%. A nice bed sheet and these expensive embellishments get covered up. An 18 inch mattress is not better than a 8 to 12 inch mattress period. A bed sheet might be more important after all that is what your body comes in contact with.
The typical markup of mattresses at these fairs and Furniture Malls are 7-20 times that of manufacturing cost. The high margin is used to cover expensive showrooms, exposition rentals, obscene advertising costs, large inventories, warehousing and commissions of high powered salesmen with a gift of the gap.
The commission of the salesman that is selling you the mattress costs more than the mattress itself.
Another trick used by almost ALL retailers including major ones are model numbers. They promise you the best price guaranteed and a money back guarantee if you find the same model cheaper elsewhere. They then tell the specific brand manufacturer to assign a unique model number to the mattresses displayed in their store or to add an external feature to make the mattress look different.
Same mattress, different looks, different model number, different retailers, different prices and same trusting customer.
Mattress showrooms and warehouses tend to be large. This is inevitable. This translates to expensive rents and products that then require higher margins.
What you buy in the competitor's showroom may not be what you get. Most customers test the product they buy in the showroom for less than 30 minutes. The human body cannot remember any specific feeling in such a short time. Furthermore the feeling is enhanced by the psycho babble of a hardcore salesman.
In the end it is the customer who gets to pay much more than he should.
Unfounded Claims Of Research And Development
Many big time brands claim that creating a high-quality mattress requires significant research and development to identify the right materials and construction methods. They claim this process can be expensive and time-consuming, and the cost is ultimately reflected in the price of the mattress. This totally untrue. The "mattress truth" is that they just use their same mattress design and tweak it a little. The main research is done by their material suppliers.
Inflated By Marketing And Branding Costs
Mattress companies invest a significant amount of money in marketing and branding to make their products stand out from competitors. This includes advertising campaigns, celebrity endorsements, and other branding initiatives, which all come with a cost that is passed on to the consumer.
Best Value Guaranteed by Inkagu.com
We guarantee our mattresses to be the best value. Our markup is minimal without compromising the quality materials. This is the real "mattress truth about price and quality".
Go to any big box type store with multiple brands and hundreds of mattresses or any similarly reputable retailer and compare similarly spec'ed products. Nothing comes close. Major retailers demand margins close to 50% of retail price including contributions to advertising funds with manufacturers having to provide additional promoters. Selling prices are close to 3-8 times of actual manufacturing cost.
Our products are mostly less than half the price of our closest competitors with similar specifications. Mainstream branded competitors are four times higher at least.
How do we do it? Keep Mattress quality up but prices down
- We have no chain of showrooms to maintain.
- Our manufacturing is mostly automated.
- No expensive salesmen to upkeep. We sell online mostly.
- We have lower returns because of our high quality.
- Our mattress are compressed. This reduces transport cost from factory to your home by 4 times. Warehousing cost is reduced 3 times.
Recommended Links
- Learn more about Inkagu mattresses.
- Inkagu Mattress Collection.
- Top 10 Things That Can Stain Your Mattress.
- Top 10 Best Mattress Features For Better Sleep.
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