191–200 of 269 posts
This made me think of the article a while back about the mattress blogger who got sued. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
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This is a problem with memory foam mattresses in general, they trap too much heat. It's not too bad if you live in a cold climate, but I live in a hot climate and during the summers it got to be too much. Gel memory foam is the nice compromise. You get the memory foam but with a gel topper. It's noticeably cooler and a bit firmer than typical memory foam. We got one and have since moved the regular memory foam into t…
Mind sharing which brand? Texas here.
I got this one[0] from WalMart because I think once you get above $500 for a mattress you see a cliff of diminishing returns in quality. I’m quite happy with it.
0: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Modern-Sleep-Cool-Gel-Memory-Foam...
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Vacuum. Thick plastic wrap and then hook up a vacuum pump to the interior and watch the atmosphere do the heavy work for you. Then you can roll up the package.
ingenious! Here I was looking at steamroller rentals.
I figure they do it that way because it is much faster than just letting the vacuum do the work which for a production facility is a must. But when you have a small budget and more time then using the vacuum directly is the best way to go.
There is an interesting branch of manufacturing related to this trick:
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I think that's fair enough though. If the product ships with a different plug attached then it makes sense to have a slightly different number. With most tech brands (Dell monitors spring to mind) that variation is consistent across their lineup and across the slightly different models they put out each year.
Not sure if this is common with the higher end TV's, but with the more budget brands sold in supermarkets, it's not uncommon to find an otherwise identical model in multiple stores, but with slightly dithering model numbers, or in some cases, complete rebrand (box and badge).
Alternatively, sometimes it is about preventing arbitrage. Nobody wants customers to be able to pay $300 at one place and take it back for $400 in store credit somewhere else.
The margins in this industry and its structure are almost an economic paradox. The dynamic is basically (1) markups are very high (2) manufacturing is a solved problem and (3) there is lots of competition. This should resolve to a very competitive market with costs trending to marginal manufacturing cost. Instead, you have high prices for consumers and competition for the tremendous sales margins driving a marketing…
Slightly off-topic, but if you genuinely think that there's no such thing as high-end wine, I feel a little sorry for you. Surely you can tell the difference between the Budweiser/Calsberg-type beer and beer from an independent brewery? If so, then surely you can imagine the same might be true of wine? I get that the fact that some bottles cost thousands may offend some people's sensibilities, but this hardly covers…
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Another small observation - the properties you described (asymmetric information, obfuscation, and a necessary purchase) apply to many parts of the healthcare market. I wonder whether it means that this market is dominated by lemons.
"Lemons" is not so much of the problem in healthcare because of the (over)prevalence of litigation as a remedy for failures. I can't sue anybody for a year's salary if I don't like my mattress (I don't). Instead the market is dominated with inflated prices and mostly harmless procedures and tests. Sometimes the information isn't asymmetric, it's just difficult or sometimes just not a habit to try to find the best pri…
So, no US healthcare is very much dominated by Lemons.
PS: Modern medicine delivers most of it's benefit from fairly inexpensive treatments.
The journalist spoke to all these founders and to marketing people, but didn't ask a fairly obvious question: What makes the mattress market so much weirder than for other products? Let's compare mattresses to big-screen TVs, which are also $1000+, infrequently purchased, bulky items: - The article says, "If consumers recognize a brand, it creates a situation where mattress stores are slashing prices to compete with…
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> At some point im going to be forced to build the damn thing myself if the market is going to refuse to sell anything sensible. Why wait? If all you want is a simple platform, you couldn’t beat the price of buying and cutting some wood yourself.
Im lazy, don't actually know what I'm doing, and the whole thing seems like a lot of trouble to setup (don't have a decent way to move the wood, or convenient/immediate access to tooling, etc). I'll beat the price at the cost of time and effort (and probably some favors), and I'm not sure carpentry interests me enough for the learning to have much value. So its a last resort, if I can find nothing decent, and decentl…
A. Put a listing on Craigslist asking someone to build you a simple platform. Say that you'll pay for the materials, and get them to quote a price for the labor. Maybe ask them to deliver it, as well.
2. Find a local maker space. They likely have the tools you'd need. You can rent a pickup truck from a local U-Haul or Home Depot usually. Cutting wood is pretty much the easiest thing you could learn to do in an afternoon. Find out the dimensions of your desired mattress, and for a platform bed, you'll be pretty okay if you play it safe and make your platform 4 inches wider & longer than your mattress (2in on each side of the mattress). Pick up some plywood to go over the frame if you don't want to cut 20 slats--you could, say, make a frame out of just 8 boards, and then screw plywood to the top of it. For the legs, you don't need anything other than, say, a 4" high simple wooden furniture leg[0] to bolt to the platform itself. Then you just bolt/screw it all together.
D. If you really don't want to spend an afternoon of your life cutting some wood, buy a decent boxspring with a wooden frame, then go to Home Depot and pick up 5 or 6 4x4 plain wooden furniture legs[0]. Simply drill a hole for each leg into each of the corners of the boxspring, and add the extra 1 or 2 legs in the middle of the boxspring for centered support (1 if your bed is queen or smaller; 2 if it's a king). Screw the furniture legs into the included tee nut that you hammer into the drilled hole. It won't make much of a mess, and you can have it done in 1 hour. Drilling 5-6 holes is about the only thing simpler than spending an afternoon cutting wood & bolting it together. I did exactly this for my boys' beds, and they even had a blast helping.
[0]: https://www.homedepot.com/p/American-Pro-Decor-4-in-x-4-in-U...
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I’m pretty sure the answer is simple: TVs are hard to make, mattresses are very simple. Foam latex, it’s pretty much the simplest product you can fit in a box, and damage is probably not a concern as the product itself is what we use to protect most other products!
Sure, TVs are much harder to make than mattresses. I agree completely. But that doesn't explain why mattresses are so expensive and why we have 500 mattress manufacturers and obfuscated models and prices. In fact, your line of reasoning would lead to the opposite conclusion: Mattresses should be cheap, a commodity product dominated by 2 or 3 manufacturers who eke out a few percent margin, selling at a standard price.…
As for why mattresses are so expensive, I think a lot of it is "because they can." I think there is also materials and such. A bed with two people in it might hold over 400 pounds for 8 hours a night 7 days a week for years. If a tv had to do that it might be more expensive too.
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Sure, TVs are much harder to make than mattresses. I agree completely. But that doesn't explain why mattresses are so expensive and why we have 500 mattress manufacturers and obfuscated models and prices. In fact, your line of reasoning would lead to the opposite conclusion: Mattresses should be cheap, a commodity product dominated by 2 or 3 manufacturers who eke out a few percent margin, selling at a standard price.…
I thought your question was why are there a ton of mattress companies but only a (relatively) few tv companies. As for why mattresses are so expensive, I think a lot of it is "because they can." I think there is also materials and such. A bed with two people in it might hold over 400 pounds for 8 hours a night 7 days a week for years. If a tv had to do that it might be more expensive too.
I lean toward the 'because they can' argument, which means, what the market will bear.