inside costco
The mattress Pat is sitting
on shows the interior of
Sleep Innovations’ Costco-exclusive NovaForm gel
foam mattress. To her right
is a cutaway of a Sleep
Science memory foam
mattress, available only
on Costco.com.
Bedded bliss
IRIDIO PHOTOGRAPHY
Costco’s mattress team springs to action
BuyingSmart
Consumer reporter Pat
Volchok gives a behind-the-scenes look at Costco
products and services. Send
your questions about this
article to:buyingsmart
@ costco.com.
THE MERE THOUGHT of buying a new mattress
gets my sheets in a bunch. Questions swirl: Do we
actually need a new mattress? Which mattress information is accurate and which is fluff? How much
will this set us back? What’s the story with the “;;
;;; ;;;;;; ;;;;; ;;;;;;; ;; ;;;” hang tag?
Lofty goals
Seeking answers, I hunt down Costco’s mattress experts: furniture buyers Nino Garcia and
Kristin Ashton.
“It’s a smoke-and-mirrors industry, with some
mattress manufacturers touting certain features
but perhaps not telling the whole story,” reports
Nino. “This is why we spend much time watching
trends, weeding hype from fact, homing in on the
best and ferociously carving out exceptional deals
for members.”
My first question is, “When is it time to say
adieu to the old mattress?”
Kristin tells me, “If you regularly wake up stiff,
tired and sore even after rotating your mattress,
76 ;e Costco Connection JULY 2012
sleep better away from home or notice visible sags
or lumps, it’s probably time for a new mattress.”
Also consider a new mattress if you are over
40 and your mattress is five to seven years old, as
your body becomes more sensitive to pressure
points and needs added support. And the older a
mattress, the greater the number of dust mites that
might be sharing it with you.
As for the most popular mattresses, the traditional innerspring bed is still favored, but memory
foam mattresses are on the rise.
Connecting to your innerspring
Nino reports, “Most innerspring mattresses
look relatively similar on the outside, but compo-
nents and quality can vary greatly.”
This is why Costco continues to work collab-
oratively with Sealy, one of the largest bedding
manufacturers in North America and Costco’s
innerspring mattress supplier since shortly after the
first Costco opened in 1983.
