How much would you pay to sleep well? For someone who sleeps like a log on a 10-year-old, $400 mattress, the answer is probably: not much. For people who don’t sleep well, or don’t get enough sleep, the answer can be: almost anything. Many people who are busy, under stress, and don’t sleep well conveniently have disposable income that they can use to try to buy a better night’s sleep with a high end mattress. Leading the charge is the $50,000 Vividus mattress by Swedish firm Hastens. As the CNN article notes, the super-high-end bedding is not designed to make a ton of money, but to make the mere $10-20,000 mattresses appear more psychologically palatable.
This market is a great example of allowing customers to self-select into super and super-super premium categories.
One problem for purchases that include a fair amount of status consciousness is that you don’t actually see the product– it’s hidden under your fine bedding. One of these designers should figure out a way to provide even more “comfort” in a bed with a distinctive shape, so that everyone who sees it knows immediately that the discriminating sleeper has made a fine (and expensive) choice.