If mattress retailers believed that sleep was a value essential to human life, they would more consistently try to convince you that investing in your sleep is rational and to your self interest. They would not insist on the disingenuous method of selling products by the size of the ‘discount’ being offered. This is particularly true when the 'original' price is often a made up number, and the 'sale' price is a more realistic market price. If mattress stores believed in the power of restorative sleep, and the fundamentally positive impact that sleep has on our overall health and wellbeing, we would focus more on the opportunity cost of not investing in ones sleep.
If a mattress store consistently promoted the idea that investing in your sleep was of tremendous value to you, they would appeal to these values directly and when possible, attempt to convince people to increase the investment they are willing to make into their sleep. In order to do this, we must appeal to the best in people, their intellect and self interest. Such a mattress retailer would need to identify some basic standards that guide both the choices that they offer in their stores and serve as a general means of pairing people with an appropriate mattress.
Such a retailer would need to offer reasons to clients for spending their hard-earned money; not gimmicks, slogans and other irrational criteria such as what their mother in-law found comfortable, the colour of the mattress, or appeals to the authority of ‘brand name’ devoid of substance. Such a retailer would have to practice integrity and transparency. A basic precondition of these values is that the retailer requires knowledge. Knowledge of what high quality sleep is, and the basic factors that influence this quality of sleep that can be related to their mattress as well as, pillows, bed linens, etc. We would need knowledge of what is at stake, knowledge of the cost of what poor quality sleep does to us in the short and long run.
Due to the enormous complexity of dealing with people and their preferences, we believe the best that a human mind can do is to identify what works in principle. To do this we need to identify both the positive (what works), and the negative also needs to establish a contrast and explanation of why some options are objectively worse (in context of budget and needs). At The Mattress & Sleep Company we have identified the most common factors that disrupt sleep. We have reduced these factors by identifying critical performance metrics an improper mattress simply does not fulfill.
The first part of this process is prepared well in advance of clients coming to our stores. It is accomplished in the selection process of the products we allow onto our showroom floors. With some rational standards in mind, we in effect have a ‘filter’ that eliminates the majority of typical products from ending up in our showrooms. This filter intentionally limits the products that we offer. We believe this allows the most effective solutions at their respective price points to fulfill the high standards we have identified.
We, just like our clients, are also consumers. We do not spend our money frivolously, we do not follow ‘industry trends’, we do not look to others for direction.
Imagine a circle of 12 different retailers, all looking to their competition for direction. What standards or criteria are guiding the buying decisions of such retailers? This is the principle of 'do what everyone else is doing’. This is wholly circular reasoning without a foundation. It does not represent a path forward, but rather it is an endless loop of retailers and manufacturers producing sleep products that the consumer is ultimately not happy with.
The Mattress & Sleep Company uses our extensive experience and rational approach to the best of our ability. The result is a curated selection of high quality solutions to address common sleep problems.
We try to the best of our ability to sell and promote these products by appealing to rational standards in our clients, the value of sleep, and ultimately the value of our client’s lives. In future blog posts I will explore some of these broad criteria that we use to select the products that we offer.