ONE hot morning
in late June, I was lying
flat on my back on a bed in lower SoHo, my eyelids
struggling to stay aloft, when Henry Burney, a gentle guy with a borscht belt
sense of humor, leaned over and asked, So, would you rather sleep with an
Italian or Mr. Ed?
Mr.
Burney is the
All spring and
summer, Hastens has been running an ad in magazines like Elle Decor: a photograph
of the blue-and-white-checked Vividus bed topped with
a puffy white down comforter, one corner pulled back invitingly, with a pair of
sharp-toed stiletto shoes on the floor beside it. The come-on reads: Who
would spend $59,750 on a bed?
Who indeed? And
what is the calculus economic or
otherwise that brings a mattress to
that particular figure? Or to $24,000, in Magniflexs
case? Or $50,000, which is the sticker price of a bed being made by Hollandia, an Israeli company that opened a showroom in the
What did
that guy say when he was asked why he climbed
Because its there! she exclaimed.
I would be very interested in how many they sell at that price. I would
suggest the price is more of a positioning tool, though it is true that there
are a lot of rich folks. Those making over $250,000 a year are the
fastest-growing households by income in the country. We know that from our
survey. (Ms. Danzigers company, Unity
Marketing, tracks the luxury market in an annual survey of the spending habits
and behaviors of affluent Americans.)
Like nature, the
luxury market abhors a vacuum. But certain luxury items are selling better
these days than others, Ms. Danziger said. Driven,
still, by inexorably aging baby boomers, all 78 million or so of them, the
luxury market is most active right now, she said, with things that can be
described as experiential and restorative, like a huge new spa
bathroom or an exotic vacation. Further, some boomers are suffering the
aftereffects of those exotic vacations
some may even have mounted Everest themselves. Their rotator cuffs are torn, their knees and hips are shot. They are, in fact, more
achy and tired than ever
and are sleeping less, as a raft of sleep studies will attest.
They
dont want to put their money on a new handbag anymore, Ms. Danziger continued. They arent buying that Kelly bag. A mattress really
does deliver an experience to the consumer. And as you get older, sleep doesnt come like it used to.
After the craze
over Ambien, the boomers last deep love, was
derailed by a flurry of bad press about its potentially bizarre side effects,
including sleep-eating and sleep-driving (a state that Representative Patrick
J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, may have experienced late one night in
Washington last year), the mattress industry is cheerfully hurling itself into
the breach, marketing mattresses to cure every ill, claiming even to put the
brakes on time itself.
The narrator of a Hastens promotional video states, in a charming Swedish
accent, that its beds, which start at $4,375, will give you fewer wrinkles and
can slow aging.
(Hollandia turns out to be a maker of adjustable sleep
systems, priced from about $15,000 to $50,000, that look and feel like
nothing so much as high-end hospital beds. With their German motors and 12
massage programs, they seem to acknowledge that a body ravaged by time can be
only soothed, not remade. Its marketers also claim its beds cure snoring.)
Tempur-Pedic, the foam-mattress maker
whose beds range from $1,200 to $7,299 (chump change on planet Hastens),
sponsored a study recently that claimed, straight-faced, that Americans would rather
sleep than exercise as part of their wellness regimen, that three out
of four Americans say a good nights sleep makes them feel younger and that
a good pillow is a better sleep accessory nine times better than a sleep partner. More
than a third of them spend as much money on their mattresses as they do on
their sofas or their televisions, and 17 percent as much as on their vacations.
At the low end of
the luxury mattress market, at least, things have been heating up. Six years
ago, barely 2 percent of the mattresses sold cost more than $2,000, according
to the International Sleep Products Association, a trade group for the
industry, which had $6.7 billion in sales last year. By 2006 about 5 percent of
purchases had crossed the $2,000 line. (The median price of a queen-size
mattress was $650 last year, according to a survey by Furniture Today, a trade
magazine.)
I think
its about time that Americans place the value on sleep that they place on
other aspects of their life, said Rick Anderson, president of Tempur-Pedic North America, adding, as every good mattress
executive is wont to do, that after all, we spend a third of our lives in
bed.
Mr.
Andersons company has just rolled out a television campaign with dreamy little spots of
tropical islands, misty fjords and glistening jungles that positions Tempur-Pedic
as a wellness brand and its mattresses as nighttime renewal
aids.
If you asked
someone 10 years ago what their mattress is for, Mr. Anderson said,
theyd say its where I sleep. Now they expect it to relieve their
stress, to relieve their aches and pains, to provide comfort. Its emotional, its physical and its a status thing,
too. You know what they say: sleep is the new black. Sleep is in style. Gone are the
days, Mr. Anderson suggested, when captains of industry bragged about sleeping
just three hours a night. The power nap, he said, is gaining currency.
As proof, Mr.
Anderson pointed to nap centers like the two that MetroNaps
and Yelo operate in
Ty Wenger, editor of Trader
Monthly, a lifestyle magazine for a select segment of the self-made superrich,
like hedge fund managers, agreed with this paradigm shift: a good nights
sleep isnt a sign of weakness, but something to
boast about.
My readers
are almost like athletes in the way they perceive themselves and pamper
themselves, Mr. Wenger said. A good nights sleep can mean
millions for them the next day. How they prepare themselves for their job is
the difference between brilliant and wealthy and going completely belly up.
They arent hedonist playboys like those 80s
guys. They work out like crazy; they eat the finest food. Its
all about honing their instrument.
Will they spend
tens of thousands on mattresses?
Absolutely,
he said. The high end exists because there is somebody who wants to spend
that kind of money. Its like a consumer dare.
Casa Poggesi has been offering the $24,000 Magniflex
Gold for a month and a half, and as of yesterday afternoon, Mr. Burney said, no
New Yorker had bought one. He added that on average, Magniflex
mattresses go for $1,200 to $3,000. But the Gold gets people in the
door.
Mr. Burney said
his company had sold 53 Gold mattresses to individuals in
I know, none
of it means anything to anyone, said Mr. Burney, who explained that in
plainer terms the Magniflex mattress is foam with
holes drilled through it. So it breathes, as opposed to, say, a Tempur-Pedic mattress, he said, which has ridges so the air
flows around the foam, but not through it. People complain that the Tempur-Pedic is too warm, he asserted.
If you
consider the average person sweats about a pint each night, he said,
pausing to let his words sink in.
WARREN SHOULBERG,
the editor of Home Furnishings News, a trade publication for the furniture
industry, reckons that a mattress purchase is the most
blind purchase anybody ever makes.
You only buy
it once every 10 or 20 years, he said, so you are woefully unprepared
and uneducated. You are confronted with this police lineup of white boxes that
all look remarkably similar. The one thats $500 doesnt
look all that different from the one thats $5,000, or, now, $50,000, the
way a Hyundai looks different from a Ferrari. The attributes that distinguish
this product you cant see.
So you do
the obligatory five-minute lie-down, but youre incredibly self-conscious.
Whatever very personal way that you sleep, you cant do it on the floor of
Sleepys. Its not a product you can shop smart for, and thats
allowed the mattress companies to be all over the place. They kind of went
crazy, and youve got to hand it to them.
Now, there
are a lot of affluent people who will pay a lot of money for a good nights
sleep. Or the perception of a good nights sleep.
I think the mattress guys are the smartest people in the whole home furnishings
business. They have managed to attach an emotional element to your mattress.
Its not just layers of foam and padding.
The Hastens
store, in a classic SoHoian cast-iron building on
Horsehair is
hollow tubes, she said proudly. Natures
air-conditioner. If you consider that you sweat one liter a night, and
all that stays in the bed, unless the bed can breathe.
Here we go again.
If the foam
mattresses promise, as Mr. Burney said, better living through chemistry,
Hastens, with its horse-and-fjord imagery, is the antifoam the free-range bed. Its show pony, the Vividus, lives behind a velvet rope. With permission, I
clambered aboard, and Ms. Schleenvoigt pushed down on
my shoulder.
You want to
feel that the bed accepts you, she said. You have to open yourself to
a new experience.
This,
she said, answering the $60,000 question, is something without compromises.
It takes 160 man-hours to make this bed. The horsehair is hand-selected, for
example, and longer and straighter than what we use in the other beds. It has a
deep feel, a bottomless feel.
Not only that,
she said, it comes with a brass plate engraved with your name.
I spent an hour
here, rolling from bed to bed. It is true that the Vividus
is very, very comfortable, but all the mattresses there are beyond anything you can imagine, which
is as it should be, considering that most of them cost more than a car. They
even need maintenance like a car, specifically a massage and a flip every month
for a year. We call you and remind you, Ms. Schleenvoigt
said.
I flopped down
next to Beth Fussell, who was splayed out on the
Excelsior mattress ($15,500), her clogged feet hanging over the edge.
Ms. Fussell, 41, works at an architectural firm around the
corner. She said she and her husband, who is also an architect, have been
visiting this bed once a month for a year, and they plan to buy it in 18
months.
What do you
need in the city? she said. You dont
need a car. We sold our car last year. I think you need a good bed. Its so stressful here.
We were
subletting an apartment and sleeping on a futon. I like the idea of something
that lasts. The feeling of this bed is almost primal. You feel safe on this
bed. You cant forget this bed.
It took two years
of research and bed-testing for Suzanne Durand, 57, and her husband, Everett Ferri, 62, to circle in on their Hastens, the $22,950
2000T, which they bought in December. (Lina let
us take a nap one Sunday, Ms. Durand said. She turned up the
air-conditioning, turned down the lights and gave us a comforter.).
Her husband has
had rotator cuff issues, she has sore hips and they had been buying mattresses
every four or five years, they said. I was still waking up as stiff as a
board, Ms. Durand said. The way I rationalized the cost was that this
was something that was going to last us for the rest of our lives. And I think
that you wake up and feel better is worth it. And I do feel better.
Mr. Ferri said he did ask Ms. Schleenvoigt
if she would take their 05 BMW X3 in trade.
The 2000T is the
companys best seller, said Erik Svensson,
Hastens sales manager in the
THERE is
something about a hospital bed that works, said Sharon Kaplan, 59, who bought a
$23,000 Hollandia with her husband, Arthur, 62, a few
months ago. Or dueling hospital beds, which is what a Hollandia
looks and works like: two single adjustable beds that sit side by side but
operate independently.
The Kaplans, real estate developers who live in
I asked Mr.
Kaplan how he rationalized the cost.
You
dont, he said. Its not possible.
And then he tried to, a bit: I used to sleep on a $6,000 mattress. Now I
sleep on one that cost $23,000. I sit on a sofa that costs as much, and Im
only on that for about 20 minutes a day.
On a recent
Monday, David Ashe, who is marketing Hollandias
beds in the
Let me get
you on a bed, he said soothingly, leading me to a red velvet number in the
showroom window. He drove the remote, elevating both my feet and my head, and
Maria Rohe, another marketing manager, tucked a
sarcophagus-shaped blanket around me. It had a pocket to slip the feet into and
two pockets up top, for the hands. It was wicked comfy.
Do you like
the way that feels? Mr. Ashe asked. All our fabrics are coated with
aloe vera.
The obligatory
cross section was hauled out, a stunning array of layers and mystery
substances. The curly stuff was coconut fibers; the pink and cream-colored
stuff, drilled with holes like a Magniflex, was a foam. A natural foam,
Mr. Ashe hastened to say.
Whats in it?
A bunch of stuff
Ms. Rohe broke in: A proprietary blend of
material.
And then, like
Mr. Burney, Mr. Ashe began tearing into Tempur-Pedic.
Take Memory Foam, he began. Its synthetic, its dense,
it doesnt breathe, its hot, you end up
lying in a pool of your own perspiration.
The
sweat again.
How much did Mr. Ashe reckon the average person dropped in a bed each night?
Was it, and I quoted Ms. Schleenvoigt, a liter?
Thats
disgusting, he said. Im not sleeping with you.
Id say a cup, max.
Fine. Now where was the $50,000
bed? Wed discussed it on the phone
its mohair cover, its built-in iPod jacks and
television. I was ready.
Its not
here, Mr. Ashe said. Its in
This is
whats known as the old switch-eroo.
Mr. Ashe said, in
a mollifying tone, You know, I can get you a great
nights sleep on a $17,000 bed.