Saturday, November 22, 2008

Mattresses are for lie-rs.

Two weeks ago I went mattress shopping with a friend. It is important to note that there are no mattress stores in our town. I guess the urban planners of Chevy Chase figure a Mattress Discounters would look out of place sandwiched between Dior and Barney's. A few towns down on a main shopping strip of a road, we hit mattress purchaser heaven. I swear, there must have been at least seven mattress stores within a single mile of road. Mattress Discounters, Mattress Warehouse, Mattress Warehouse Outlet, Sleepy's, Serta, etc. etc. etc. As with all stores that sell very specialized, once-in-awhile-purchase type items (others include furniture stores, carpet stores, and stores that sell blinds for your windows), I wonder how mattress stores make enough money to stay open. I did some research and learned that the average life of a mattress is 10-15 years. So, assuming people only buy mattresses every 10-15 years, how much business do stores like this really get? How do they pay their rent? Especially because the average cost of mattresses seems to be $800-$3000 (the highest we layed on was $6000). We went into three or four stores in all before she found one she liked. We were the only customers in each of them. I'm also pretty sure most of the mattress salesmen thought we were lesbians. Hmmm...

(p.s. Tempurpedic mattresses are awful. I absolutely hated them and don't get what all the hype is about. Sorry, Swedes.)

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