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Comment by russellbeattie | Hacker News Reader

My favorite conspiracy theory (which I totally believe) is that mattress stores are mostly for money laundering. No market can possibly support as many stores as there are, and every time I go by one, they're empty. It's probably because I don't understand the economics of the industry, but wow are there a lot of mattress stores. I know we all need to sleep, but spending $2,000 once every 10 years can't be a reliable source of income. Plus people will sleep on anything rather than lay out that sort of cash.

I personally, at 47, have never bought a new bed except a Ikea, from which I've bought several, all for much less than $2k.

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>My favorite conspiracy theory (which I totally believe) is that mattress stores are mostly for money laundering. No market can possibly support as many stores as there are, and every time I go by one, they're empty.

Here's more fuel for that fire.

If you look at Sears in the last 10 years, the number of shoppers seemed to dwindle and getting smaller and smaller. Except for a spots in each store, there wouldn't be many shoppers at all. So the economics don't make sense...and then bam they're going bankrupt.

Now look at rug stores; there are a few of them where I live (Toronto, Canada) and every single one, without fail, has very few customers and has a sale on. Usually it's "inventory clearance" or "going out of business" or whatever. But they just continue to sit there.

There are a lot of industries and niches in industries where the economics do not make sense on the surface but I suspect there's some perverse set of incentives that make it possible. Maybe some weird tax loophole, or some kind of government loan or grant, or some weird combination of laws (or lack of laws and regulation) that make it possible.

Embrace the weirdness?

Get a nice mattress.

I'd been sleeping on whatever crap was cheapest for most of my life. Never bad enough to complain about but was never truly comfortable either.

Sounds expensive at first, but totally worth it for the amount of time you'll spend on it. I went to a few mattress stores and found just the one I want. So comfortable now.

I had put it off for years because I didn't want to be harassed by salesmen but actually the whole process ended up being very painless.

A good mattress will change your life.

Bed or mattress? I’ve been happy with IKEA mattresses, but I’ve found the random importers’ softwood beds advertised in the classified ads to be better than Ikea’s particle board. And a lot easier to assemble.

I got my wood frame thing and mattress from ikea. The mattress is perfectly fine but the wood gets dented/chipped very easily.

I had good experience with custom foam mattresses made by a local store. They let you customize it in many ways. And the price is less than half of usual chain stores.

That's possible though I know some people who own a mattress store and I'd be astounded if they were into money laundering.

Tangentially, someone once told me that vending machine companies are havens for money laundering. It's a plausible source for tons of cash, which makes it ideal for getting illegally obtained cash into the legal banking system. No idea how true it is, but that's how it was explained to me.

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