I had a customer recently reach out to me, asking me lots of detailed questions about building their own mattress and the materials I offered on my website which give customers the ability to create their own organic mattress. We discussed foam density and ILD, the advantage of organic cotton vs. regular cotton, memory foam and it's construction. It was a great conversation and one I have often. It's enjoyable.

A few days later the same customer emailed me with a link to a mattress site online comparing the kit to the mattress they were selling, and asked me to match their prices and policies. 

There is a big, fundamental difference between what I offer and what they offer: I am not offering a mattress with the Build A Nest kits. I am offering advice and components to make your own mattress. I am offering an experience, and full control over what is in your mattress. When you sleep on a mattress you made, you have the satisfaction of knowing you know exactly what is in it. 

The customer mentioned a few things they liked about the other company. One thing the online mattress retailer was offering was a full return privilege. Now, let's think about that for a second: Are they throwing away the foam content in their latex mattress if you return it? Of course not. They allow returns because they can take the foam out and reuse it. Another thing they asked was for free shipping. Folks, I have yet to see a charity running a mattress business. No one is doing this for free, and that means if there is free shipping, they are making a nice profit and you are actually paying for it. If it's cheaper, likely it means the materials are not what they purport. 

With the Build A Nest kits you have complete control. Recently, I talked a customer into buying a piece of foam closer to their home and and the cover from me because they wanted to use a piece of polyurethane memory foam as their base foam instead of latex. Again, the beauty of making your own mattress is you don't have to make it an organic or natural mattress if you don't want to, you can make anything you please.

A quick search of organic or natural mattresses on the internet will reveal many retailers across the country. There are a lot of claims, many of them not necessarily factual or backed up by science or third party testing. Recently, I read on the leading memory foam company's website that their foams emit no toxic off-gassing. When I wrote them from my personal email address asking them for third party verification of their claim, they stated they did not divulge trade secrets. I wrote back and said I didn't ask for a trade secret, I asked for proof of their claim. I received nothing back. That was 2 months ago, and I am still waiting. It's amazing to me how a company, a publicly held, publicly traded company, the largest and most well known memory foam company, can make a claim like that and it's a false claim, completely unsubstantiated. 

The Build A Nest kit is not a mattress; it's a way for consumers to know exactly what is in their sleeping environment and to have complete control over what they bring into their home. It's a way for YOU to make your mattress with whatever materials you want, whether it is memory foam, latex foam, buckwheat hulls, millet hulls, cotton, wool, kapok...you decide.