Mattress Store Tries Novel Approach: Leaving Customers Alone

This one’s great. I’ll take it! ( j&a + g&o)

Mattress shopping can be a stressful, high-pressure experience, with difficulty in comparing different models. One store in the Midwest wants to solve that problem by eliminating sales staff from the process. Entirely. No, they aren’t going to sell mattresses online: they plan an unattended store where shoppers can browse in complete peace.

This sounds wacky, but also makes more sense than our current processes for buying mattresses. Sure, you can order a mattress online, but it’s not possible to try it out before your purchase. The store, called HASSLEss Mattress, would have a mattress showroom, security surveillance, and a computer so customers can order their favorites.

The problem with the current model is that people are hesitant to try out a mattress with a salesperson hovering over them. …No, we don’t mean “try out” a mattress like that, but something as simple as lying down and rolling over a few times makes you feel silly. “People are not particularly comfortable just flopping down,” a retail consultant told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Would they feel more comfortable in a room dedicated to flopping on mattresses, where only the security guard is watching?

Mattress chain would leave customers alone [Journal-Sentinel](Thanks, Kate!)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist