The broad categories of mattress retailers
Specialty retailers and sleep shops
These range from very small local outlets to larger businesses with a larger presence in an area. There is a wide range of excellent choices in this group.
Furniture stores
Like all the different groups, they too have a wide range with some of these being closer to the specialty retailers and some closer to a “department store” approach to selling mattresses. There are some excellent choices in this group as well.
Department stores
Most of these sell mattresses that are very expensive and are heavily discounted to lower prices through a series of rotating sales and can sometimes provide good value if these sale prices are cut in half again through their “discount” outlets. While most of these are well known to sell overpriced mattresses, they remain a choice for those who connect them with “quality” whether there is a basis for this or not. There are however a few of these that can provide some surprising value if you know what to look for.
Chain stores
These are the most common places to buy a mattress and while they are certainly some that are very well known either nationally or regionally, there are many common practices among them and some knowledge of their practices and what is available through them can make a big difference in the value you find here.
Disrupting trends in the mattress industry
In many ways, there has been a “mattress underground” for many years made up of manufacturers and retail outlets that push back against the trends of the sleep industry as is has evolved. This underground is made up of countless retailers and smaller manufacturers that are committed to informing consumers about what makes a good mattress, making it, and selling it at a reasonable price. These are places where the knowledge and service alone are worth the price of the mattress and yet it is an “add on” that comes for free. The goal of the more formal Mattress Underground” is to reconnect the thousands of these outlets and manufacturers with consumers and to create a generic “brand”, often called an “off brands” by the more dominant parts of the industry, that is recognized as being superior to most of the more recognizable “name brands” that are the source of so many of the problems in mattress manufacturing today. This website and “The Mattress Underground” itself is a way of re-connecting consumers with the retailer and manufacturing segments of a pre-existing mattress underground to offset the more dominant larger manufacturers and retailers that have come to control the sleeping industry.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for those who are shopping for a mattress is the wide variety of sources that have better value than the more traditional sources for buying a mattress. No matter how well someone may have narrowed down the qualities of a mattress that is the most suitable for their own circumstances, the question of where to buy it and which one offers greater value is always difficult. Besides the wide variety of mattresses themselves, there are many differences in the choices of mattresses, policies, restrictions, and most importantly knowledge and service between the many different types of outlets. In general though, like manufacturers, there are four different categories of choices and each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. Some of them have far more of one than the other. In the Mattress Industry section of this website, we will be exploring the many places where you can buy a mattress which in many cases, particularly for those who may not have the time or inclination to do all of the research themselves, can be as important as the mattress is itself.
These choices narrow down to the following broad categories, each with their own “typical” strengths. Regardless of which “category” a particular outlet may fall into, the three core values, Knowledge, Service, and Value, of The Mattress Underground are shared by retailers in all four categories and whether any particular one is part of the solution or part of the “problem” has everything to do with how they choose the mattresses they sell, the reasons why they are in business, and the service and value they provide to their customers.