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Comment by Marsymars | Hacker News Reader

> Mattresses were a notoriously opaque and user-hostile market. A decade ago I was working at a startup aimed at helping people make better purchasing decisions, and that was one of the top categories people mentioned struggling with.

I've found that one of the most time-efficient heuristics for getting a quality product for these product categories is simply "buy whatever Costco is selling".

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And Costco can leverage that by selling mattresses for $50 more than you'd spend somewhere else. Ikea does the same thing. I'm a stupid vaper and trying to piece together a kit based off reviews by the kinds of people who vape is incredibly tedious. There's value in not having to guess.

Costco is often cheaper than other retailers and on sale can be much cheaper. I grabbed a Casper king for 680$, way under the Casper list price even with coupons.

I didn’t like it and I returned it without issue.

> And Costco can leverage that by selling mattresses for $50 more than you'd spend somewhere else

Costco explicitly commits to never making more than 12% on anything they sell. It’s a major part of their brand and part of the reason people trust them.

Where is this commitment? I am not able to find it and I am reasonably certain that Costco has a much larger margin than 12% on many of their products.

If anything, that sounds like an average, which doesn't tell you anything as they could be screwing you on mattresses while losing money on hot dogs and rotisserie chickens to even it out to a 12% gross margin.

It’s mentioned quite often in their financial filings but I don’t have an example handy and I don’t feel like digging through a 10K right now. However, here is an Esquire article that mentions it:

“Costco has stated that the highest margin they will take on a non-Costco brand is 13 percent and they strive to keep it closer to 10 percent.”

https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/drinks/a35749/costco-the-...

I'm with the other comments: where do they say they cap at 12%? Costco brings a lot of value to the consumer, IMO, but I feel like that's deliberately shooting themselves in the foot.

And why the arbitrary 12%? Why not 15 or 21?

Ever go to a mattress store? Never seen a $3000 mattress before but that was the cheapest model they had. It has to be a front right? This place is a minor chain in town.

Throw on some cheaper looking clothes and try again.

Ikea is NOT selling mattresses at $50 above what other places charge. Compare materials, coil count, thickness, etc. -- plus return policy. Ikea mattresses are a huge bargain compared to similar mattresses from any major brand such as Sealy, Serta, etc. Can't speak to the online mattress sellers.

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