This year (2016) is the Silver Anniversary of memory foam mattresses. It was 25 years ago that Fagerdala World Foam put the Swedish Tempur Mattress on the market in Sweden. The popularity of this led the company to start selling memory foam mattresses in the United States, and Tempur-Pedic was established in Lexington, Kentucky. Since then, memory foam has changed the way mattresses are made. Memory foam mattresses quickly surpassed waterbed sales. It took longer to match innerspring...
Protecting Your Mattress and Yourself So you are buying or have just bought a new mattress. The sales person at the store, customer service rep on the phone, or the website selling the mattress recommends buying a mattress protector, too. "Why," you ask, "do I need a mattress protector?" Good question. Why or why not? We don't like the idea. For one thing, it's one more thing to buy. For another thing, we may remember the uncomfortable plastic sheets our parents put on mattresses when we...
Better Mattresses and Mattress Selection through Pressure Mapping Pressure mapping is not exactly new to the bedding industry. It has been used to test mattresses at least since 2012, when Scott Braddam used it to evaluate mattresses on Beds.org, for example in his review of the Select Comfort Sleep Number Classic Series. By 2013, Kingsdown was using it in matching a customer with the right mattress. Pressure map sequence for Select Comfort Sleep Number Classic Series What is...
The Smart Bed Revolution Two co-workers wait in line to get their breakfasts at Benny's Bagel & Coffee Bar before going up to their 11th floor office. Joe says, "You look mighty fresh today, Mike. Must have had a good night's sleep." "I did," says Mike. "I've been sleeping better since we bought that new bed a month ago. Even better now than when we first got it." "What kind of bed is it?" "It's one of those new smart beds." "Smart bed? You've got to be kidding! Beds aren't smart....
Mr. Sandman: Silica and Sleep A popular song recorded in 1954ยน begins with, "Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream." An old nursery rhyme says, "The Sandman's coming in his train of cars / With moonbeam windows and with wheels of stars." Both of these verses are about the mythical Sandman of folklore in Northern Europe. The imaginary Sandman caused people to sleep, then sprinkled magical sand on them to bring good dreams. The "sand" in the stories refers to grainy particles most people have in and...
What Chemicals Are in My Bedding? The public, not only in America, but in Europe and the rest of the world, has become keenly aware of the use of chemicals in commonly used items. One major industrial firm1 used the slogan, "Better Living Through Chemistry" until dropping it in response to public concerns over the effects of many chemical compounds on health and the environment. It has become fashionable to deride or hold in suspicion anything labeled "chemical" or "synthetic." But this...
Boxable Adjustable Beds For a decade, the momentum of mattress-in-a-box e-commerce has been building. From only a very few companies selling mattresses online which are compressed, rolled up into boxes, and shipped via UPS or FedEx, it has expanded to several new firms specializing in this product line. Now most major manufacturers and retailers are entering this market segment. Mattresses are being followed by adjustable beds. Leggett & Platt had already been delivering adjustable...
Marketing Mattresses Online What is Amazon best known for? Online shopping. Amazon began with selling books over the Internet and delivering them through the Post Office, UPS and FedEx. Now they sell almost anything, including beds, mattresses, pillows and sheets. More than just an online store, now Amazon is a marketplace, with manufacturers and distributors posting their products on Amazon. Likewise, eBay has expanded from an Internet auction site to a marketplace. In addition, eBay...
The Giants Strike Back: Established manufacturers challenge the upstarts For the last few years there has been a proliferation of start-up companies selling mattresses only online and shipping them directly to the customer in a cardboard box. Just a few of the newcomers are Yogabed, Casper Sleep, Tuft & Needle, Lull and Leesa. The mattress-in-a-box trend actually started in 2006 with BedInABox, which began selling mattresses online, compressing and rolling them, and shipping them in...
See-Saw Support I remember when as a child I played with other children on a tilting board, variously called a "see-saw" or "teeter-totter." Pushing with our feet, we would alternately go up and down. Easy enough to do when we were both close to the same weight. This was where we learned the principle of the balance scale. When one end goes down, the other goes up. and it's the heavier end that goes down. That's the way it was on the see-saw. With an average first grader and a fifth...
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