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Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

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221–230 of 277 posts

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#221
post #53

Being someone that considers himself literate in the mattress industry, as my wife runs a humble mattress storage and distribution firm I totally agree that the prices I could see visiting on the US are way over the top. If I lived there, well, making/selling mattresses must be a profitable business from the retail pricing I could see. Mind you I was on Silicon Valley which I imagine must be very pricy. The website i…

Being not from the mattress industry, a cheap simple mattress is exactly what I've been looking for (coming from someone who has been sleeping on an air mattress for 5mo). Paying any more than this for a mattress, even if a $1000 mattress is really good, seems outrageous to me (but everyone has different priorities)

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#222
I've got two suggestions. First, the foam materials; what are they? The last mattress I bought was through amazon and, having researched for a few hours, I came to know some of the basic traits foam mattresses can have (talalay latex, dunlop latex, polyurethane, high density, low density, and ways of mixing those different types within one mattress). Most online buyers will do some research, they need straight up information. You can mention quality and care over and over agian, but if you don't have some believable reason to back it up people can be put off by it. For example tempurepedic's marketing commercials and pamphlets usually mention some kind of micro-bubble foam. Which is bs, but people see that and somehow forget to look for another opinion. It's better if you give me the information than if I have to go out and find the facts or psuedo-facts from somewhere else.

Second, your website shows your "team". It also says you manufacture them yourself; not in those words, but that's the gist of it. There is no way those 6 people meet the demands of manufacturing and all the other things involved in running a product company. Nowhere does it say that the team is the whole company, but mentioning "we" so often puts a spin on the only staff you can see or hear mention of. It makes the reader think we're a small company and we do everything ourselves...and here's our pictures. Show some care for the whole company and everyone involved. I personally think very highly of companies who do that.

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#223
post #199
post #195

As other commenters have stated, the website is really well done. My only problem, is that it seems as if the Tuft & Needle team mislead (lied) to me about when the bed was manufactured. I placed an order on 10/14/2013. On 10/18, I got an email stating that "The first stitch is in" and "we've begun crafting your bed." Nothing about this seemed unreasonable. When I got the bed, though, I noticed the tag says "Date of…

I assure you we make them to order and that bed was crafted just for you. To give some more transparency, we do not have enough warehouse space to store product longer than a week anyway. The only thing i can think of is that we had pre-printed law labels and used those on your bed. If you email me your order number I'll personally check this for you and tell you the exact date and time when each component was made.…

I'll take your word for it. It really is a nice bed. As soon as I saw the date on the tag, though, I assumed you guys were trying to make it look JIT when it wasn't.

Thanks for responding to the comment.

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#224
post #157

I'm not in the market for a new mattress just yet, but probably will be when I (eventually) move back to Australia since shipping my current mattress just seems crazy. Do you guys ship overseas? If not, would introducing international distributors force you to introduce middlemen that significantly drive up the price or leave marketing out of your hands? Is there another way or will it just be US-only for the foresee…

We don't ship overseas yet. We have to do some more growing first but it's something we'd like to provide. The primary issue we see with expanding is that we want to provide excellent service and if we were to just ship it and have no presence there then we may not be able to execute on that. We may need to actually have a presence in the country to follow through on the experience we're building in the USA.

I sure hope you'd be able to ship outside the US soon.

Here in Singapore, the markup on foam mattress is pretty ridiculous as well. I would love to be able to purchase a mattress at the prices that you're offering.

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#225
What are the technical details of your foam construction? There are varying grades and several relevant ratings for foam mattress materials - on your specs page these are not listed.

I would be specifically interested in the relevant grades/ratings for your support core, and the same in the comfort layer.

The type of information I am interested in is that which is outlined in the relevant foam sections listed on the following pages: http://www.themattressunderground.com/mattresses/comfort-lay... http://www.themattressunderground.com/mattresses/support-cor...

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#228
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past 3-4 years I've bought two products that were a LOT more complicated than they have any right to be. One was a flashlight (who the hell knew flashlights could have firmware?), the other was my mattress. To this day, I'm not sure what the hell I'm sleeping on.

Do you have a link to a description of that firmwared flashlight?

They're probably talking about the "hexbright" (usb-rechargable, arduino-programmable, so you can implement UI experiments like "shake it to make it brighter" - it's also a really bright light.) Will it impact the market for boring "dead-battery storage" D-cell lights? Of course not. But if you've ever wanted to say "even my flashlight is open source..."

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#229
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback, and I understand your concerns. I'll address them below. >> Even if mattress retailers are making a fortune on margins, well you guys also have margins too. And a retail price of $299..to..$499-king tells me that your mattresses are very low end. We of course have built-in margins on our products, and we try to keep it as fair as possible while supporting our operational overhead. But to writ…

> Our foam should last 5-7 years before there is any deformity/compression 5-7 years doesn't seem like a particularly long time in the context of the life of a mattress. My (limited) understanding has always been that mattresses are the sort of thing many people hold onto for decades. In that context "it'll be good for five years" doesn't sound reassuring. If you're positioning your product on price, you could make t…

Mattresses may be marketed for a long life span but they rarely last that long. I've had a queen size $3k mattress that lasted 8 years. Bought a $1.5k replacement that lasted 1.25 years before it had noticeable body impressions. Mattressfirm replaced it in warranty. A $2k mattress at 4 years is $1.38 per day. You won't notice a mattress is destroying your back until it's too late.

Re: Tell HN: How we bootstrapped to the #1 rated mattress on Amazon.com

#230
My dad has had trouble sleeping the past few years, and I attribute part of it due to comfort. Your mattress seems promising. However, (although it may be affordable for other) $400 queen-size is a heavy investment for us, so I would like to clear up some concerns first:

1. What do you think is main thing (comfort-wise) that distinguishes your product from the $200 queen-size foam mattress on amazon? What sort of feedbacks have you received in this regard?

2. You have a 30-days return policy. From my understanding, returning something like a mattress is extremely inconvenient. What are others' experience in returning your item?

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