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

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

#261

Post by jfoster »

daehee wrote: post #79
mpermar wrote: 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…

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…

Every time you do something a new way, there will be people in the industry who claim that what you're selling is no good because of X. (where X = something your product is missing, or does but shouldn't do, or some other supposed flaw)

If you believe them, it can be puzzling because you already know that customers have actually been more concerned with other things. Just keep going and don't pay too much attention to anyone except your customers and potential customers.

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

#262

Post by FlyingAvatar »

bobbydavid wrote: post #248
alsocasey wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's what he meant, that it's really low. For comparison a Tempurpedic is 5.3 lbs. per civic foot for it's top layer, nearer 8 for the structural bottom layer.

In his post above, he says temperpedic is 1.8 lb. so which is it, 8 or 1.8?

The low-end Tempur Queen mattress from this page:

http://www.brookstone.com/tempur-pedic-tempur-simplicity-mat...

47 lbs / 22.22 cu. ft = 2.1 lbs

The weight listed is probably the shipping weight with packaging, so the actual weight of the foam is less. Seems like 8 lbs would be extremely dense.

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

#264

Post by ddmf »

aniro wrote: post #203
daehee wrote: 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…

You may not want to miss the larger point to take away from this.. ">> 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.".. "You get what you pay for" is an adage you will have to take into account when considering perceptions of your product by potential customers. Whether correct…

Perceived Value is something that is under perceived.

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

#265

Post by aagha »

johmas wrote: post #251
aagha wrote: post #249

What was your measurement of Customer Sat? The rating on Amazon.com?

Net Promoter Score is how we measure Customer Satisfaction. Amazon is good but not as much breadth as we'd like from our customer base.

What was the size of your N for a given month?

Net Promoter can be highly flawed due to the following:

- It's a composite index and so the margin of error (MoE) for your promoters and seperately for detractors combine to create a NPS MoE which, unless your N was sizable, could be quite large

- Due to the previous point, it's hard to trend NPS; if your MoE is +/- 10 points in two seperate periods of time, unless you had a HUGE swing in your NPS score (which is another problem w/ small N's when calculating NPS) its hard to tell if your NPS score (really) went up or down

- I've seen many cases where the NPS score has "gone up" period over period, but the number of promoters actually decreased; did you look at the data deep enough to make sure that didn't happen?

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

#266

Post by coreymgilmore »

johmas wrote: post #187
coreymgilmore wrote: post #100

who makes your mattresses?

We make them and fulfill them and we source our supplies such as fabrics and foams from other factories in the US.

Thanks for the response John,

Please take a look at our website and give us a call. We sell water based, environmentally friendly, high performance adhesives for the mattress industry. We are leaders in this market and we can definitely help you. Please see the link below.

Thanks! http://www.simalfa.com/ SIMALFA 973-423-9266

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

#267

Post by fkhatibloo »

mpermar wrote: post #258
johmas wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infographic is based on actual numbers we have of leading mattress company's products so there is nothing false about those numbers. We don't view thickness as a dependency of being called a mattress but that is certainly subjective. Our 10" version is being released soon so maybe that may (or may not) earn some more credibility with people from the mattress industry, such as yourself and your wife. We were compl…

> The infographic is based on actual numbers we have of leading mattress company's products so there is nothing false about those numbers. Well, those numbers are quite distant from what I know from working with several factories, not in the US but I cannot imagine the difference to be very high in production costs. There is quite a vast difference from the cost of making a cheap mattress and an expensive one. We buy…

With due respect to your own industry experience (which does admittedly give me pause as to your objectivity)...

It seems to me that a 5" mattress with superior technology could easily replace a 10" mattress of traditional manufacture. It wouldn't be the first time, either - who would have thought 10 years ago that the running shoe market would successfully be inundated with a bunch of "barefoot shoes?"

However, it might NOT be so easy to convince consumers that a 5" and 10" mattress are comparable, because for decades, that industry has been slapping layer upon layer of foam and pillow tops onto its mattresses to make the mattress LOOK good and justify increasingly higher margins.

I just ordered a mattress from Tuft & Needle because I want to give it a try myself. But I suspect that, if T&N want to be successful, they'll need to find analogies like the running shoe version (which is, admittedly flawed in that barefoot trainers aren't much cheaper than standard shoes) to explain how they can produce a 5" mattress that is as comfortable as a traditionally sized one.

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

#268

Post by fkhatibloo »

saurik wrote: post #217
johmas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our foam is a polyurethane foam like most other foam and memory foam mattresses. We use 3 different mixtures of foam in our bed, all of which have been offgas tested and meets the strict standards of the CertiPUR certification. We definitely wouldn't sell something that we wouldn't want to sleep on ourselves but I can understand your concern with sleeping on something that isn't 100% natural. If you're concerned abou…

Why did you not go with latex?

Possibly speaking out of turn here, but latex allergies are not insignificant. It would take a big bite out of their potential market.

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

#269

Post by QuantumGood »

mpermar wrote: post #233
QuantumGood wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't "a decent amount of memory foam on the top" greatly reduce the breathability of the spring that you say is so important?

No. Mattresses breath mainly from the bed frame area. On humid areas for example a foam-only mattress is a not a good choice if you have a bed frame with no ventilation at all, like a storage bed frame for example as you will have to air the mattress way more frequently if you really want it to last.

So a breathable frame is more important than the spring mattress?
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