Boxing clever with a mattress

Rolls with the times and tests a memory foam mattress.

The people at Ecosa must be really good at rolling. The queen-size memory foam mattress came out of the small blue box with wheels easily, but there was no way in hell I was getting it back in there after I took it out.

I’m told millennials (the generation aged 22-38), of which I’m on the younger side at 23, are the target market for this product that ‘‘overcome[s] several common logistic and psychological barriers associated with the purchase of a new bed’’.

As a university student, I slept on some pretty bad dorm room beds, followed by a very soft (read: very well-used) bed in a furnished Wellington apartment, before buying my own.

There was a high level of admin involved in the process, but I have to say, I love my cheap Target bed and after two weeks on the fancier Ecosa, I still prefer it.

My Target bed, which I bought two years ago, cost about a grand. That included the base, mattress, and its topper. I remember thinking it was a hell of a lot to cough up.

I did try to talk my parents into letting me lift my old bed from their guest room, without success. Instead, they kindly sacrificed a Saturday to driving back and forth between showrooms and showed me how to sign up for finance.

Like most convenience-option products marketed to young people (Hello Fresh and Uber Eats), the ease gets rolled into the price tag. The Ecosa Queen mattress-in-a-box retails for $1150 and its accompanying topper, which I highly recommend for the improvement of comfiness, is $480.

Ecosa chief executive Ringo Chan paid $5000 for his first budget bed. He said removing ‘‘the high overheads associated with large retail showrooms produced a mattress which retails at around a third of the price’’.

While the Ecosa is definitely cheaper than a luxury bed set, it still costs more than double what I paid for my first bed, a very comfortable spring mattress and topper.

If price is the deciding factor in your bed-buying mission, there are definitely mattresses out there that come in under $920 (which is Ecosa’s current sale price, with 20 per cent off).

It is, however, at the cheaper end of the market if you have your heart set on memory foam and could be paired with a bargain or secondhand base.

But what does a one-size-fits-all mattress feel like? The mattress actually has an adjustable firmness setting with three options: firm, mediumfirm, or medium. It’s made of five material layers, the last a zip-off, washable cover, quite a helpful feature.

You can change how firm the mattress feels by swapping around the order of the layers. Full disclosure, I didn’t do this. I tried out the default medium the entire time, which was a little too squishy for my liking.

The mattress didn’t support my back quite as well as my old bed and I needed several days to get used to the sinking feeling of the foam. My body still feels a bit sore in the mornings and that’s probably because I’m used to sleeping on something firmer.

Plenty of people swear up and down that the Ecosa is the best thing they’ve ever slept on. I just don’t happen to one of them.

But mattress preferences are inherently personal and likely to change as you get older.

Rather than a try-before-you-buy model, Ecosa offers a three-month free trial period, after which you can return the mattress if, like me, you find it isn’t quite right.

‘‘Shopping for high-ticket items traditionally carries a high level of perceived risk for consumers,’’ said Chan.

‘‘Next to a car, beds are one of the most expensive consumer products bought by Kiwi households and yet one of the hardest to evaluate in a bricks and mortar showroom.

‘‘The majority of consumers are looking to mitigate the potential risk associated with this type of purchase.’’

He’s right that after lying on 10 different mattresses in a showroom, it’s hard to discern the difference between them, to judge how you’ll feel sleeping on the thing all night, and to remember which was which.

Any returned mattresses are picked up by Ecosa and given to the Salvation Army, which donates them to a family in need. The business model was ahead of its time in relation to Covid-19.

Ecosa is uniquely poised to deliver a product that people would traditionally only want to buy new in person, which they may not be able to do again for some weeks, if not months.

That is paying off in spades for the company. One thousand mattresses were bought during the level 3 and 4 lockdown period and it is sending out 1000 more this week.

I think if you need a new mattress now, or live in a small flat space that makes shifting furniture an ordeal, then the Ecosa could be the right choice.

Take the trial period, test it and worst-case scenario, it goes to another family who needs a bed.

If you can afford to wait and would prefer to test a variety of different options and compare price points, doing it old school may suit you better.