direct mattress makers in northern Virginia?

[phoenix]

Hi lfranks,

I’ll be visiting some of the suggested retail sites in the DC metro area in the coming week, and will try to share my impressions in the forum afterwards.

That would be great … thank you. A few others have done the same and this would be very helpful to many others.

I do like to reward a firm that goes to the trouble and expense of maintaining a “bricks-and-mortar” presence with my business if I can, especially if I take up their time to demo products and test mattress options. I only wish their price differential, as compared to online and mail-order outlets, could be a little less disparate. In your guide to buying, you stress the importance of “try before you buy,” but if online distribution drives all the quality local retail outlets out of business, we’ll be stuck with nothing but the schlocky national chains, and how then will we ever be able to really test any high-quality mattress options, unless we happen to live near one of the handful of custom manufacturers? I’ll pay a reasonable premium for service and a meaningful warranty, especially for a quality product; of course, the trick is in figuring out what is “reasonable.”

I completely agree with your sentiments here and I also believe that a local choice provides a “value premium” compared to an online purchase. I tend to use a difference of about 20% or so as a guideline for what I would consider to be “equivalent value” all other things being equal but of course each person may have their own ideas and a different “risk tolerance” and have a different “value equation”.

There are also many local options (both retailers and manufacturers) that provide great local value and compete very well and even thrive with online competition so it’s not likely to ever happen that online merchants will ever drive these out of business. IMO … online outlets that provide good quality, service and value keep local merchants competitive and help them to do more of what they do best. It’'s also true the other way around because local merchants and manufacturers can also provide options service and guidance that are not possible with online choices. They are just different channels and each can have great “value”. It’s also true that there are many local options that don’t provide the kind of value that they could and the same is true of many online merchants as well. They are all part of a larger market and each has advantages and disadvantages that will appeal to different groups of people (there is more in this thread).

As you mention … the key is being able to define “reasonable” and for each person to know how to define their own “personal value equation”. This involves consumers that are more educated, know which retailers and manufacturers to ignore, and which ones to focus on along with manufacturers and retailers that offer exceptional quality, value and service that is available in every area of the country no matter how they may choose to sell their mattresses. There is an important place for both options and one will never replace the other IMO.

More than anything … they both keep each other “honest” and truly competitive

Phoenix