If I had a dollar for every time someone that I meet in a social environment asks for mattress buying advice, I would need a much larger wallet. I retired almost ten years ago and the phone calls thankfully diminished, but I made the mistake of telling someone in my local off-leash dog run who I am. Now, at least once a week, I get the usual question.
If I had five dollars for every mattress advice website, I could afford a hand made alligator wallet for the singles. Virtually all mattress buying advice available on the internet is either self-serving or even contrary to fact. I have posted a few articles about buying mattresses on this blog, but they just brush the surface. To make it more confusing you can add-in the proliferation of foams with good and bad memories like Tempurpedic and all it’s clones along with bags of air like Sleep Number crowding out the technology proven to work for more than a century to make your shopping more risky.
If you buy a rug or a bathtub and it fails prematurely, you are out money, If you put your money in a saggy or smelly mattress, you endanger your well being. I will make a better effort to share what I know to help you make better educated choices. Bookmark the OldBedGuy.com and check in at your convenience.
I will be very happy to answer your bed related questions via e-mail at oldbedguy@gmail.com The most useful questions will also be answered with your identity protected on this blog.
Marshall Coyle
Hey Old Bed Guy,
What do you think of Tempurpedic acquiring Sealy How will it affect the industry? How will it affect consumers?
This might brighten your day. Even has a Coyle joke: http://rhymeswithorange.com/comics/october-6-2012/
Poor Sealy. They once upon a time had the best mass produced mattress in the country. It was very similar to the Charles P. Rogers mattress of the last half of the twentieth century. Then along came, and I kid you not, Governor Mitt Romney and Bain capital. Bain took them private. Bain made millions and Sealy had to cheapen the line for Bain to make the kind of profits they needed. They didn’t fire many employees at first. They even acquired Stearns and Foster, for its time, a quality leader and cheapened their product to just be a fancy Posturepedic made on the same assembly line and with no more S&F craftspeople. Bain sold them for a profit to another corporate destroyer. Tempurpedic, possibly the best marketer to ever hit the American market relentlessly gobbled up market share making enormous profits on every overpriced block of foam. If it costs more, it must be better, is a mantra that has made many mattress makers wealthy. Tempur is the poster child and have a far better alternate product than the Sleep Number product. Time moved on and Serta found a new version of the all foam mattress that is far superior to the Tempur polyfoam. Serta started to buy and sell foam impregnated with gel. It may or may not make the mattress cooler to sleep on, but it rings the cash registers and has cut deeply into Tempur’s business. Tempur was loaded with cash, and now is loaded with Sealy and its marketing juggernaut. Sounds like a good combo for the investors and neutral for the customers. Bad for Serta.