These two brands of specialty mattresses are probably the hottest new mattress products of the last few years. The meteoric rise of Tempurpedic, the company that made visco elastic foam or as it is better known “memory foam” famous. A former horse breeder from Lexington Kentucky obviously had the vision to see the potential of slow recovery urethane foam as a revolutionary new material in mattresses. Despite all the hype about an obscure Swedish Scientist discovering visco elastic foam, it was actually used for other industrial applications such as ear protection well before it was ever put into a mattress. The direct to the consumer marketing campaign with innovative retailers such as Brookstone leading the charge, Tempurpedic became the new cult product of the early 90’s. No mattress manufacturer has ever been able to do this. Who would have predicted this little upstart company would one day become so successful that it would buy the long time industry leader Sealy?
Tempurpedic pretty much owned the memory foam mattress market for years. They grew the category and really changed the mattress culture in so many ways. Many of the large companies as well as smaller copy cats attempted to put a dent into Tempurpedic’s dominance in the memory foam category. Until recently, most of the products with similar memory foam specifications really failed to get any real traction in this category. That is until Serta introduced IComfort. Serta has attacked Tempurpedic with some new innovations in memory foams. IComfort has incorporated the use of more open cell visco elastic foam and gel infused memory foams that attacks the one weakness and criticism of Tempurpedic, that being that Tempurpedic beds sleep hot. This is due primarily to Tempurpedic’s memory foams are more closed cell. Tempurpedic has made some strides in making their mattresses sleep cooler as well with the addition of the use of phase change material. However IComfort has carved into the market leader with their very contemporary designed covers and keen marketing. The gel infused memory foam also offers superior support characteristics in IComfort’s products as well. It is rumored that IComfort has added an additional $300 million to Serta’s annual sales, making Serta the largest brand in America by a very wide margin. Tempurpedic has lost market share and has seen annual sales decline over the last year or so.
Does all this make IComfort a superior product? I will leave that to your subjective judgment, however it cannot be denied that IComfort has established itself as a viable alternative.
