Sleep Innovations
One Size Does Not Fit All
Sleep Innovations is a U.S. based manufacturer of memory foam mattresses. Its foams are made and its mattresses built in the United States. The company was started in 1996. In 2008, it went through a bankruptcy and was purchased by an investment group.
Since then, it has become part of Innocor, a provider of foam and foam products. Sleep Innovations constitutes a significant part of Innocor Comfort, which produces foam items for health, safety and comfort on the job and at home. Innocor Foam Technologies makes the foam used by SI to make its mattresses, toppers and pillows. All mattresses made by Sleep Innovations are memory foam mattresses with foam cores – no innersprings here, and no microcoils so far. In 2017, Innocor was purchase by Bain Capital.
Sleep Innovations’ Market
Sleep Innovations sells its products directly on Amazon. They are also carried under the Sleep Innovations brand by Wayfair, Walmart, Target, Sears, Kohl’s, Kmart, JC Penney, and Home Depot. The Novaform brand of sleep products for Costco are also made by Sleep Innovations.
Sleep Innovations used to make the BodiPedic brand, which mostly sold on Overstock.com. However, the brand and the trademark were discontinued near the end of 2015 after the US Patent & Trademark Office upheld a complaint by Tempur-Pedic that the trademark was visually too much like theirs.
Construction
Sleep Innovation memory foam mattresses display a lot of variety in construction. They say, “One size does not fit all,” and “Every body is unique.” This is in direct contrast with most of the startup companies in the boxable bed movement, where the customer usually has only one or two options, maybe three. Sleep Innovations and Novaform mattresses range from 8” to 16½” in height, and have from two to five layers. Some have gel, some have convoluted foam, and comfort levels vary from ultra plush to medium to firm. Sleep Innovations has its Find Your Fit Tool to help customers find the right mattress.
Models
At this time (Fall 2016), Sleep Innovations lists seven models on its site: Shea (10”), Shiloh (12), Alden (14”), Taylor (12”), Skylar (12”), Sage (8”), and Marley (10”). The first three do not have gel; the last four do. Shea, Shiloh and Sage each have two layers, while the others each have three. In each of the 3-layer models, the middle layer is labeled Air Channel Foam. None of these is an exact equivalent of a Novaform model, which does keep that brand exclusive to Costco and its allies.
Boxed Beds Innovator
Sleep Innovations was selling boxed mattresses long before it became a trend. They used the technology developed by Magniflex to compress and vacuum pack mattresses and roll them to fit into a container. Sleep Innovation sold their mattresses in stores. The boxed mattress could be taken home by the customer, who didn’t have to wait for delivery.
Ten years later, BedInABox, using the same process, began selling only online in 2006, something which could not be done in 1996. Now most of Sleep Innovations’ sales are online, such as through Amazon and Wayfair, though it is still a grab-and-go item in some stores.
Longevity Issue
Although Sleep Innovations’ foams are made in the U.S.A., there seem to longevity issues, at least with Novaform mattresses. This is indicated by Sleep Like the Dead (SLTD) in their analysis of reports by over 1600 users. Sleep Innovations does not state the densities of foams in their mattress descriptions, but SLTD estimates them as close to 3 lbs/ft³. This is lighter than the lightest top foams in Tempur-Pedic mattresses, as well as the Tri-Pedic and other memory foam mattresses made by Selectabed, and TempFlow models This also contributes to the longevity issue, as well as the mattresses beginning as too firm for many users, only to later become too soft.
Cool Ratings
Customers rate mattresses by Sleep Innovation as not too hot. Most of their mattresses do use gel in at least one memory foam layer, but gel alone does not appear to be the deciding factor. Sleep Innovations’ upper-layer foams are designed for some airflow with enhanced open-cell structure. This is not as much air passing through the foam as there would be with vertical pores as in TempFlow mattresses (which use the Airflow Transfer System), Tempur-Pedic’s Breeze models, Cocoon by Sealy, and some other brands. However, in most Sleep Innovations models, what air does filter through the top layer is channeled to the border of the mattress by convoluted foam in a middle layer. This might not be as efficient as cut channels, but it does seem to work.
Overall Evaluation
The strengths of Sleep Innovations are its time in business, already being “in the gate” for the current trend, mixed market strategy, choice of models without too many, low cost, and effective cooling of memory foam mattresses. The one marked weakness is lack of longevity, which is likely due to the light density of its top layer memory foam. However, it does have a 20-year limited warranty.
