I Spent 25 Years As A Mattress Manufacturer To Become An Authority As A Mattress Review Expert- Find Out Why That Makes A Difference.

a seasoned mattress expert. unbiased recommendations. not owned by mattress companies.

Marc Anderson, the CEO and creator of The Mattress Buyer Guide, has been a mattress expert and industry veteran in the USA for over 25 years, and is a respected authority in the mattress business.

He founded Habitat Furnishings and along with business partner David Rosenberg and his company, Healthy Foundations, built one of the first juggernaut online retail mattress businesses beginning in 1998, selling natural latex mattresses.

Before that, Marc was one of Tempur-Pedic’s highest volume retail partners before developing his own brands.

Unlike other mattress review sites, Marc has in the trenches experience with the materials, methods, and cost factors associated with mattress design. He is a nationally recognized mattress expert and authority on bedding design, an upholstery components expert, and has invented, manufactured, and sold his brands of specialty mattresses online through his own companies such as Habitat Furnishings, FCO Homegoods, and more. Marc has personally tested and reviewed almost 1,000 mattresses over the years.

CREDENTIALS AND INDUSTRY BACKGROUND: THE MAKING OF AN EXPERT

Here are Marc’s credentials as a mattress review authority:

• B.S., The University Of Maryland at College Park, Physiology And Animal Science
• Components expert and industry authority: Polyurethane foams, urethane foams in a variety of densities and ILD’s, innerspring and pocket coil assemblies fabricated in the USA as well as imported, textiles and fire barrier expert, natural materials expert, including latex rubber, soy based polyols.
• 25 Years of mattress design experience: manufactured my own line of natural latex, memory foam, and pocketed coil hybrid mattresses for web sites I created or managed, like Habitat Furnishings, FCO Homegoods, and Healthy Foundations.
• Pioneered today’s mattress industry and the “bed in a box” industry from 1998-2019 while a manufacturer. Became full time mattress tester, content writer, and Senior Editor in 2020.
• Designed and manufactured custom mattresses for clients with medical conditions including scoliosis, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), Lyme Disease, terminal cancer, COVID, and other end of life conditions.
• The web’s foremost authority on memory foam and pressure and pain relieving polyurethane foam.

Note that our site may receive commissions for brands we recommend. These commissions pay for our test facility, cost of staff, content writing, and overhead. We don’t advertise and strive to provide easy to understand content.

From Retailer And Manufacturer, To Mattress Reviewer, Tester, And Industry Authority

Eventually, Marc transitioned from retail to product development and product reviews, and and grew The Mattress Buyer Guide into a valuable resource for consumers by making the mattress shopping experience easier. His approach of offering academic, technical, and transparent assessments of the most popular online mattress brands has earned him trust and recognition from hundreds of thousands of visitors to this site.

Marc has a simple mission. Scour through hundreds upon hundreds of online retailers and narrow your shopping list down to a handful of really great options. His motto: “we tested them so you don’t have to”, is the mantra of our review site. He developed a 10 point test that quickly evaluates the most important considerations you need to know when buying a mattress online.

Here’s a sample of Marc’s testing format, in this case for The Saatva Classic Innerspring Mattress:

By personally testing samples provided by each manufacturer, shipped in exactly the same manner as you would receive them, he can use his 25 years of manufacturing and mattress engineering knowledge to quickly rate each brand using specific data points. His experience as a mattress expert keeps you from making a $3,000 mattress mistake!

A Leading Mattress Industry Authority At Your Service

As a mattress expert, Marc has invented, designed and manufactured, marketed, and sold almost every conceivable kind of mattress in the industry from latex to memory foam, airbeds, hybrids, even futon mattresses. No other mattress review site has better industry experience.

Marc’s extensive knowledge of green, non-toxic, and hypoallergenic textiles, toxin and formaldehyde free foams, and safe FR (fire retardant ) fabrics in the industry makes him highly sought after as a consultant and advisor.

Unlike the creators of the larger, incredibly complicated so-called “mattress reviews” sites that exist only to mine commissions, The Mattress Buyer Guide uses trust and authority driven information based on realtime experience in the mattress design and fabrication industry to help consumers navigate their way through hundreds of brands to find a comfortable, supportive, safe, and healthy mattress to call their own.

There are no other mattress review sites that can evaluate and recommend mattresses using industry experience, and this results in thousands of people being mismatched with mattresses they should not have purchased.

Marc often warns consumers that most mattress review sites are owned by the mattress companies themselves and their questionable reviews favor only a handful of heavily marketed “unicorn” mattresses.

These sites spend millions on marketing and advertising and often the reviewers themselves are merely actors, software engineers, and copy writers- not legitimate bedding or sleep experts that have years of experience designing, building, and marketing mattress products.

Our page about biased mattress review sites provide detailed intelligence and facts that unveil the seedy schemes and deals that these so-called third party sites have created to scam mattress shoppers. Take a look at who really owns these review sites.

The Mattress Buyer Guide Takes The Mystery And Misery Out Of Mattress Shopping!

Marc’s worked in the trenches, testing and researching mattress components, handpicking the ingredients and sleep testing beds himself, and has created over 150 best selling beds for his web sites and his retail stores through the years.

Unlike the digital marketing companies that “review” mattresses alongside of appliances and home furnishings products, Marc’s journey in the bedding industry began with a small retail store in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. Here’s a picture of his very first retail location opened on August 1, 1994.

He quickly grew one store into several, and in 1998 became one of the first bedding retailers on the web. By 2009, he was the CEO of one of the three highest volume online mattress stores, long before Casper, Purple, Nectar, and other brands even existed.

In fact, along with a small handful of courageous online retailers, he helped pioneer the bed in a box concept almost 20 years ago, long before the owners of today’s popular foam mattress web sites were even out of high school. 

Marc knows every single scam in the business, especially after designing over 150 mattresses himself and pioneering the ubiquitous “bed in a box” category.

These days, it’s tempting and very easy to find and buy a $1000 mattress that looks great, feels wonderful, and delivers a rock star level of hype. But the quality of the components and the manufacturing techniques used often do not provide value and durability-and most mattress shoppers are not provided with an honest and transparent understanding of the most intimate product they will ever buy.

Unfortunately, many beds sold out there today are what industry experts like Marc call “limited lifespan commodities“, in other words, a mattress designed to last just beyond the warranty- or even worse- just beyond the trial period allowing you to return it for your money back.

“Most mattresses sold online are made using inferior components that break down quickly. The industry has become so competitive that manufacturers are forced to sacrifice quality in many cases”.

-Marc Anderson, Bedding Industry Pioneer And Expert

A few years ago, the mattress industry exploded. Dozens of startup companies crashed the conventional bedding business by creating an entirely new breed of bed, almost all of which use cutting edge ingredients and razor sharp marketing and advertising. How many mattress commercials do you see every day pitching you the world’s best bed? Hundreds of options to choose from, all with the same pitch, and what appears to be the identical mattress, or at least close.

Out Of Hundreds Of Online And Brick And Mortar Stores, Only A Small Handful Of Mattresses Meet The High Standards To Be A Trusted Dealer

More consumers who buy their mattress online choose one of our brands over almost every other retailer. The reason? Relying on a seasoned mattress designer and engineer with over 25 years of experience. Nine out of ten online retailers selling mattresses are not bedding experts at all.

In fact, thy have little or no experience making mattresses and rely on third party fabricators to design and create their brand, their logo, their web site, and many of the CEO’s of these companies, if they sat down for coffee with our CEO, would likely be ground down pretty fast.

The end result of these companies, who rely largely on venture capital to stay afloat, will eventually fold up their tents. We’ve watched them come and go. Our curated Trusted Dealer portfolio includes many companies who bench build their mattresses in small batches, or are operated by CEO’s who earned their expertise by working in the bedding industry trenches.

They build beds that will last. More importantly, if something should go wrong down the road, they’ll be there to help.

Since 2007, Reviewing And Testing Is What We Do

We are the oldest and most established mattress buyer guide site on the internet, originally established in 2007, which is one of the reasons we are widely respected in the business, in almost every category. This site receives more hits by potential mattress buyers than almost all of the conventional so-called “review sites” combined, on a day to day basis.

Why?  Because we can present an honest, unbiased, and academic approach to bedding options that put all of the sites you will find on our pages on the same level playing field. And with 25 years of mattress industry experience, you’ll find nothing but rich information on our Where To Buy page that tells you not only why you might want to choose a particular mattress, but what’s inside of them and what to look for when shopping for a bed.

You’ll be taught a lot if you read our content, and will probably have a host of questions to ask either in an online chat, or to a sales person in a retail store. Bottom line, you’ll won’t be second guessing yourself after your purchase. Here, you’ll get just the facts, no fake mattress reviews, no payoffs from mattress companies.