Has anyone notice that Tuft and Needle has changed recently?
In some respects, you can classify their business model as “little guys with a decent mattress looking to expose the mattress industry for crooks.” The trouble is, I feel that their recent ads now show that they themselves are not beneath misinformation to sell a product and in doing so, they themselves have become greedy.
I present to you my evidence. On the Tuft and Needle website:
you will find three tabs. One will say “The Truth” and this is their “education” portion of the page. There you will find a video where they outline much of their sales pitch and then follow it up with more reinforcement of the same ideas as you scroll down the page.
A lynchpin of their pitch is that they knock on materials currently used in beds and proceed to explain how they all are inferior in one way or another. They then set the stage to elevate their own proprietary foam as superior to all those other materials. Some noteworthy quotes taken directly from the video and website follow and I will look at them one by one:
- “Latex has no give. The more you push on it, the more it pushed back. It was high tech in the 80’s, they just never stopped using it.” -Tuft and Needle Website
-In contrast, The Mattress Underground teaches: “Perhaps latex’s greatest advantage is that it has the ability to be soft and conforming when it is initially compressed and then become firmer more quickly than other materials when it is compressed more deeply. This means that even a relatively soft latex (28 ILD and higher) can be used as a mattress core where its upper softness can help to form a pressure relieving cradle while its deeper firmness can still provide excellent support (the ability to prevent heavier parts of you from sinking down too far) and keep your spine aligned. This also gives it the ability to adjust itself to different sleeping positions, body weights, and body profiles as you change position in your sleep. Because of these advantages, many consider it to be an ideal material.”-The Mattress Underground, Support cores, Latex
- “The problem with latex is pressure relief. Because the more you push on it, the more it pushes back. This causes painful pressure points. Latex is an outdated material that mattress companies just never stopped using.”-Tuft and Needle Website
-In contrast, The Mattress Underground says “A second advantage is in its (latex’s) point elasticity. This means that it is not only very elastic (will return to its original shape) but that it can be compressed in a very small area without affecting or compressing the area beside it. This gives it the ability to instantly form a pressure relieving cradle that takes on the exact shape of the body. This means that in its softer ILD’s it has a pressure relieving ability that is superior to most other materials and very similar to that of memory foam”-The Mattress Underground, Latex support cores.
- “Take memory foam. One you sink in, you’re stuck and once you’re stuck, you start getting hot..” -Tuft and Needle website
- Regarding memory foam, it is fairer to say that: “Finally it is attractive to those who like sleeping “in” their mattress rather than “on” their mattress as it forms a deeper pressure relieving cradle than other foams or materials. While memory foam has real strengths in the area of pressure relief and movement isolation, it also has some drawbacks because of its very different qualities and structure. It tends to sleep hot for those who are sensitive to this and even the newer generation more breathable memory foams are not as breathable or open celled as other types of foam”- The Mattress Underground, mattress comfort layers-memory foam
- “Innersprings are mostly empty space, so you’re getting mostly empty support.”-Tuft and Needle Website
-This is an unnecessary dismissal of spring mattresses, when in contrast “Innerspring mattresses remain the most popular type of mattress. They are generally less expensive to manufacture than a high quality HR or latex foam and they have been developed over time to provide a wide range of characteristics which provide different benefits for different needs.”-The Mattress Underground. mattress support cores, innerspring.
So! Now let’s see what they have to say about their own Bed:
“Our key innovation is T&N Adaptive™ Foam. It offers a gradient of support, so the more pressure you apply, the more it adapts to support you.”-Tuft and Needle Website
You’ll recall that this exact quality, the “ability to support or get firmer with deeper compression” was repackaged as a bad thing when describing latex, saying “The problem with latex is, the more you push, the more it pushes back.”
To conclude, I am perceiving that Tuft and Needle has changed from the “little guy with a good product standing up to big business” to a company whose bed promises to “save” you from the lies of a larger industry while they themselves misinform and mislead you at almost every turn.