I’ve looked at dozens of memory foams over the years. In fact, before we cleaned it out I once had a whole closet that was nothing but memory foam samples. And after looking at memory foams of all sorts of densities, I always came back to that the “good stuff” had densities of at least 4 lb.
After 10 years or so of sampling memory foams, this kind of became an article of faith. If a memory foam wasn’t at least 4 lb density, I wasn’t interested in even sampling it. And this really used to put out suppliers that wanted me to carry their less expensive memory foams. But I wouldn’t budge – I only wanted to sell memory foams that I would personally use, and I just wouldn’t sleep on anything less than 4 lb memory foam. And if you look at old articles of mine that some people have published on the web, you’ll see this sentiment – if the memory foam wasn’t at least 4 lb density, I told people to avoid it.
I was so convinced of this credo – 4 lb memory foam or bust – that I wouldn’t look at mattresses that had anything less that 4 lb memory foam as part of their mattress.
So when I began to carry our new mattress, I really only decided to look at it and test it because the specs showed it had 4 lb memory foam. This, of course, didn’t mean we would want to carry it. But it got the mattresses’ foot in the door, so to speak, and then we decided to test it. And we really liked it. So we did a test with customers, and they really liked it to. In fact, people loved this new Memory Foam Mattress more than any other mattress we had every carried (and we had been one of the first online stores to carry the leading brand back in 1998). The return rate on this mattress was lower than any other mattress, and the customers reviews were just terrific. So we decided to roll out the new mattress and customer response was great. The only problem we had was that people liked it so much we couldn’t keep it in stock.
So imagine my surprise, when after selling the mattress for 6 months we learned through a fluke that the specs on the mattress had been incorrectly translated from metric units to the US measures by our Spanish supplier. The whole thing was just an incredible series of unintentional errors, but bottom line – the specs were all wrong, and the memory foam used in our mattress is for the most part 3.2 lb density. And people loved it.
You could have knocked us all over with a feather – not only because of the improbable mistakes that added up to these errors in the specs, but also that this 3.2 density foam felt and worked so good. I have to admit, if I had known the correct specs from the start, we wouldn’t have even tested the mattress since I had such a bias against anything less than 4 lb density foam. And what a mistake that would have been – we would have passed on the best mattress we have ever had – one that has gotten even better customer response than the much more expensive leading brand we sold for years – just because of my stubborn, and mistaken, mindset.
Once we learned about the error in the specs on the mattress, we did want to make sure that this 3.2 lb memory foam would hold up for our customers. One thing going for it was that it already had a track record – it had been sold in Europe for over 5 years with less than .1% of 1% returns for any abnormality in the foam. But I wanted to be doubly sure, so we had them do a durability test where they had a 330 roller make 30,000 passes over the mattress. What were the results? They were really impressive – the testing company concluded
“The results are excellent. A mattress is considered to be durable if it doesn’t lose more than a 20% of firmness and no more than 0.787 inches of height (after the 30,000 passes of the roller). As you can see, the total loss of firmness after 30,000 cycles is 5.42%, and the total loss of height after those 30,000 cycles is 0.14 inches. Honestly, these results are really optimal and, as long as AIDIMA (the testing company) has told us, hard to beat.”
What does this all mean? First, I guess it was a lucky fluke that the manufacturer mistranslated the density figures our I never would have looked at this mattress. Secondly, it taught me again that even when I thought I was right, it was a mistake to be so inflexible in my thinking to reject any memory foam based solely on the numbers. While this might have been the correct conclusion a few years ago, foam technology has advanced and I’ve seen now that even a 3.2 lb density foam can really worked well to reduce pressure points, give a great night’s sleep, and be really durable. I should say I do remain skeptical about other memory foams that lower than 4 lb density – I think a lot of them out there on the market are older formulations and really don’t have this comfort or durability. But the latest generation of memory foam that is used in our Memory Foam Mattress really does the job and the mattress continues to earn rave reviews.
So don’t let the density numbers blind you like they did me. Density is really just a number – it doesn’t tell you how a memory foam will feel or how comfortable it will be to sleep on. In fact it can be misleading. I’ve heard from many customers that they find the higher density memory foams (5 lb and up like those used by the leading brand) to feel stiff, and hard to move around on. And I’ve had many customers who have tried our 4 lb memory foam toppers who liked them better than that of the leading brand. To a degree it is a matter of personal taste, but I can tell you from our latest experience with our Memory Foam Mattress that you may miss out on a really comfortable mattress if you give the density of the memory foam too much weight. The real issue is how the memory foam feels and performs to lessen pressure points – how comfortable is it to sleep on, and whether it will last. I know it is easier to shop by density, but if you do you might miss out on a really terrific mattresses – like I almost did.