Would You Buy A Mattress Before Trying It Out In A Store First?

( j&a + g&o)

A good mattress can be hard to find — or soft, depending on the level of support you’re partial to. And because the perfect mattress isn’t just essential to a good night’s sleep but is also usually a bit of an investment, shoppers have long been bouncing, tossing and turning on, napping and otherwise trying out mattresses in showrooms before buying them. But is that all about to change?

Quartz thinks so, pointing to the mattress industry as the perfect place for a young upstart to come in and start offering lower-cost mattresses to compete with the established bed kingpins. After all, no one used to buy glasses online — you had to go in, try them on and see if you liked how they look.

But now there are companies like Warby Parker that are doing gangbusters business simply because they’re easy to use and often much cheaper than traditional in-store offerings.

Following in that vein is a new start-up called Tuft & Needle, dubbed the “Warby Parker of mattresses” in an industry article about the company. It offers free returns after a 30-day trial, its mattresses are cheaper and with the No. 1 mattress on Amazon, it sold more than $1 million last year.

Companies like this might be poised to elbow out the competitors’ high mark-ups, but then again, many shoppers need a good wiggle before they decide to buy. How about you?

Mattress stores are about to go the way of the dodo [Quartz]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist