Padded profit margins is what we’ve come to expect from the mattress industry. So, when it was time for you to buy a mattress, what discount did you negotiate?
Mattress manufacturers use anti-competitive practices to drive the cost of mattresses up. One of the ways they safeguard thick profit margins – we’re talking up to 300% – is making sure customers cannot compare mattresses between different stores. Slightly different mattresses (with different branding) will be sold to each store, making it impossible to make like-for-like comparisons and find a better deal.
The practice is so fervent that it differs between countries. Choice tried to find the same Sealy mattress in Australia and New Zealand, but the different naming conventions means we couldn’t. It’s an area we’re thinking of investigating.
So tell us, how much money did you save? And at what point was a retailer prepared to lose a sale instead of further discounting the price?
There have been many articles (USA) over the years that the different mattress naming and product IDs are retailer protection. The retailers all beat the best price on the same product in stock, blah blah. But the same mattress is sold with slightly varying product numbers so you can rarely find the exact same number in any two competing shops. Differences can be only the numbers, or the colour of the ticking, or upholstery. Am I wrong on our area of the world? or as you suggest, the practice is universal.
Then to the topic of discounts, which is a different topic to the actual price paid for the same product (regardless of product number). As with power, “I” will give you a 50% discount on $0.50 kwh pricing, but only a 12% discount on $0.25 pricing. Are “you” buying the price or the discount?
The changes can be as small as the outer fabric and slight variations in the comfort layer. But the far majority of the mattress will have the same spring system, same core and edging. But because the same mattress will look different between the stores, and because there’s no way to see inside them, retailers can get away with charging what they want.
Ideally margins shouldn’t be so inflated. I suspect the only way to knock the pricing down is by seeking aggressive discounts. Long-time professionals in the industry say people who pay sticker price are mad and should ask for a discount of at least 20%.
When I bought my mattress three years ago, I could only knock 20% off the price.
But we are looking into the new category of foam/latex mattresses that are delivered in a box. Most of them cost around the $1000 mark, such as those from Koala and Ecosa.
It took me a couple of days of hard looking but I negotiated a 30% discount. I couldn’t bring down the price in the store on the first visit but by going to different stores and coming prepared when I went back they were much more ready to agree to a discount.
I bought one of those Koala mattresses online and got $100 off - paid $800 (I think, roughly anyway), they delivered for free (took about four days to Tasmania) and I can tell you I have never slept better in my life. I’ve spent thousands on fancy mattresses and then discovered these. What a monumental difference. I would never buy a different type again.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think to ask! That was 8 years ago. I am very anxious to read your findings. For me, just let me (us) know what do you need to know to purchase a good mattress minus all the fluffy wording. Thanks very much, Carole R Moss-Bennett
I recently bought a mattress (4 weeks ago). We desperately needed to replace our old (>10yrs) latex mattress as it had sunk on one side and lost edge support on that side also so basically if you were sleeping on that side you had a wonderful feeling of sliding down hill .
My husband “knows” people and also knowing the markup on mattresses, he insisted we see his friend who imports Magniflex italian memory foam mattresses. We bought our mattress direct from him (we went to the warehouse in Alexandria) at about 25% of retail price. The mattress is excellent but I am finding it a little too firm (its categorised as medium)! This is the cost of getting a “bargain” I guess.
So in an attempt to make it more comfy for me i’m going to try a feather/down mattress topper… i’ll report back!
We managed to secure a 47% discount easily when we bought a Sealy Aspire mattress from Harvey Norman. Our upcoming review requires us to buy two of the same mattress:
We visited a Snooze outlet first and was offered – right away – a discount greater than 30%:
Sealy Aspire Swan queen size with a RRP$1999 was discounted to $1299 (35% off)
Sealy Enhance Murray queen size with a RRP$2549 was discounted to $1699 (33% off)
We visited a second Snooze store and was offered a further 10% discount ($1450) for the more expensive Sealy Enhance Murray.
Finally we visited Harvey Norman and were offered:
Aspire Vogue Deluxe queen size with a RRP of $3200 was discounted to $1699 (47% off)
Enhance Royal Silk queen size with a RRP of $4200 was discounted to $2199 (48% off)
AN EVEN GREATER discount of 52% was offered once we mentioned we wanted to buy two Enhance Royal Silk mattresses, but the $4000 total exceeded our budget.
Note: It was only after, when we were making payment, that we revealed the mattresses were being purchased by Choice.
We constantly see ads from bed stores and department stores advertising huge discounts on their products, which means you would be mad to pay full price. My quibble is, as you point out, that each store sells different brands and it is virtually impossible to compare quality, you are relying on the honesty of the sales person who is probably getting commission so how objective are they? Recently at Harvey Norman we were quoted $12,000 for a top of the range Queen mattress, but immediately the salesman offered a 50% discount! He tried to justify the price by comparing the amount of time you spend in bed versus the amount of time you spend in a car which you pay so much more for! By that qualification, I should be paying a fortune for my specs which are on my face 16 hours a day!
It begins! We have one Queen inner spring mattress alongside one of the new mattresses from Koala, a queen too still boxed. Expecting another five to arrive boxed soon.
@TonyIbrahim this is amazing news, can I found out where these are being tested and come and have a little afternoon map with the heat in the office today?
Hello, I bought a mattress from Myer made by Dunllipillow sleepmaker. It was $10,000 reduced to $5800. They told me in store it is guaranteed for 20 years. When that was said I thought yes pay the big amount and you can’t lose.
No you can, within 11 months the bed didn’t meet the broom stick test. It sunk where we laid. After photos and having to show them legislation about my rights and demanding that I will now be paying for pick up while they repaired the mattress it came back not as comfortable
Now 12 months later my latex $10,000 so called 20 year guarantee is bad again. My back is killing me each morning. So here I go again. I want my money back. In New Farm there is a beds superior to these at $3000, so my advice is go around and find the little boys, not the big boys. My sealy beds downstairs are bowed as well. Hopeless So go and find a written guarantee from local makers
I recently bought a queen sized Sealy mattress and found we could not compare prices as each store had different codes for the mattresses. We eventually got 40% discount by starting to walk out of the store. Harvey Norman were the lowest price we could get.
We were lucky a number of years ago when we needed to replace a mattress one of my clients worked for a manufacturer and said to choose one of the brands they sold and let her know which one my son wanted and she should get a good price for us,she was able to compare the different names to get the equivalent mattress and the price was about 1/3 of retail
Thanks @arc02, I was just after any insights you had on the purchasing process of getting a new mattress. For example, did you manage to negotiate a discount. This helps inform our articles, but also, feel free to ignore the request if you’re not comfortable sharing those details.
Regarding the question about sizes, I do not believe there is an official industry standard (although most manufacturers conform to the same sizes). I note from their website that Koala mattresses are slightly larger (1cm) than other manufacturers, so this could be contributing to the problem. Thanks for letting us know, I’ve passed on this info to our product testing team.
Another investigation on the mattress industry reveals that consumers are paying through the nose, and you should not settle for retail when it comes to mattress prices.
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