Why there are so many online mattress-in-a-box companies
The journalist spoke to all these founders and to marketing people, but didn&#x27;t ask a fairly obvious question: What makes the mattress market so much weirder than for other products? Let&#x27;s compare mattresses to big-screen TVs, which are also $1000+, infrequently purchased, bulky items:<p>- The article says, &quot;If consumers recognize a brand, it creates a situation where mattress stores are slashing prices to compete with each other.&quot; But how is that different for Samsung or LG TVs?<p>- &quot;The number of mattress manufacturers is close to 500,&quot; meaning in the US I presume. Why are there only 19 TV manufacturers that market in the U.S., and probably not many more in the whole world?<p>- Why do mattress manufacturers obfuscate the model numbers so that &quot;every one of the stores gets a slightly different mattress&quot; making it impossible for consumers to compare? TVs aren&#x27;t like that. LG&#x27;s current lineup seems to be 11 different models for 65-inch TVs and 3 models for 60-inch TVs. It&#x27;s perfectly easy to compare LG&#x27;s prices online vs Best Buy vs other stores.<p>So why are the mattress and TV markets so different? To take a stab at answering my own question, I think it&#x27;s because mattresses are still mostly made locally in the US since they can&#x27;t be shipped great distances (like from China), so they don&#x27;t benefit from huge economies of scale and cheap labor. And many of those 500 manufacturers probably serve a niche geographical area, so they actually have less competition than TVs manufacturers. Hence they can get away with 300% markup whereas TVs manufacturers operate on tiny margins. Therefore TVs need to compete on features and price, but mattress manufacturers have traditionally used high-pressure tactics and obfuscation to make sales. Anyone have a better explanation?