As the owner of a mattress company, it falls on me to make good choices as to which products I am going to present to the public. There are several factors to take into account, such as price, quality, supply chain, durability, comfort and owner satisfaction. There is one more factor to consider these days, and that is safety. 

Safety?

In my role, I have to visit mattress factories and showrooms as I consider brands and products to carry. Manufacturers are constantly sending me products to sample and consider for my stores, and my email box is cluttered daily with Chinese companies looking for retailers to carry their products. And when sampling these products or visiting these facilities, there is one simple test I conduct: the smell test.

Many moons ago, in which seems like another lifetime, I had worked for an auto wholesaler. He was shrewd, tough as nails and I had an immense respect for him as a businessman. I accompanied him to the auto auctions and here hundreds of car dealership owners and managers culled over hundreds of used cars to buy for their lots. They popped the hoods, kicked the tires and sometimes started them up and drove them around. But the guy I worked for taught me one little trick: crawl under the vehicle and see if there are any leaks. As I watched all these guys combing over the vehicles, no one got on their hands and knees and did the dirty works of looking to see if there were any leaks. That little move saved him time and time again from buying a clunker.

In some ways, the smell test is like crawling under the car. Seems like we on the West Coast are some of the only people concerned with toxic VOC's and the composition of the fire barrier material on memory foam mattresses, because I usually get weird looks or a blank stare when I ask these memory foam mattress manufacturers about the VOC of their products or what they use to make them fire retardant.

As the owner of the stores, I am the gatekeeper for the health of my customers. They put their trust in me and our employees and the Nest Bedding brand. When we put a product or brand on our floor, we have to be able to know where it came from, what it is made of, and the validity of all the claims the product makes.

All of that goes into every product we carry, which is why, after looking at every major brand such as Tempurpedic, Anatomic Global, etc, we decided that Bed In A Box.com was the only memory foam mattress that we could confidently present to the public and sell with honesty.

For example:

• Bed In A Box.com mattresses claim there are no toxic VOC's released from their foams. Seems to be everyone's claim these days, but do they back it up? With valid third party testing from a testing facility you can contact? What is the date of that VOC report and what does it say? If it smells like strong chemicals, well, strong chemicals smell like strong chemicals. Polyester smells like polyester. When you have a fabric on your mattress full of polyester, and there are polyester fibers in the mattress, they are made of plastic and that off-gasses a chemical VOC. Same with the fire barrier. Bed In A Box.com has a valid, up to date VOC report on all of the foams they use. 
• Fire barrier material. Seems these days everyone has some fancy trade name for their fire barrier material. Is it safe? Can you pronounce the ingredients? Bed In A Box is the only memory foam company I could find that features and the only to feature an  Oeko-Tex certified fire barrier, rated safe to direct baby skin contact. Most companies salespeople will just tell you what they use and tell you how it is safe, but do they submit it to a legitimate third party to validate that claim? How important is your health to you?