This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. A $400,000 mattress? It's one more thing. Armstrong and Getty. One more thing. Does it come with a woman already on it? That's ready for me? Or what? That would be overpriced. Are you kidding? Oh yeah, even then it'd be like, that's ridiculous. So I talked about this. I don't remember if it was on the one more. And illegal and immoral and perverse and sick and exploitive, but also overpriced. And hot. So I talked about this either on the show or on the One More Thing podcast a year or so ago, because I'd read this article in the New York Times, and it was an eye-grabbing headline, a $400,000 mattress. Haston's bed. I don't know how you pronounce it. I can't say it exactly like the Swedish salesman. It's a Swedish company. The Swedish salesman, because the A's got dots over it and stuff. Oh, no. This is Hastings or something, but Hastings, H-A-S-T-E-N-S. I had talked about this a year or so ago. I read this article in the New York Times, and it was kind of a fun article about a guy who was reviewing this product. He heard about it, and he laid down on the beds, and he wrote about it, and it was really interesting, and it was a, you know, I just thought it was interesting. And they've got only a couple of stores around the world and a couple in the United States. last summer when I was in New York City with my kids, we were walking down Park Avenue and I saw one of the stores and I thought, holy crap, they've got a store here. But it was closed and I thought, oh wow, I would love to have laid down on one of those beds. Well, it turns out they've got a store in Palo Alto. Of course they do. Because if you're listening in other parts of the country, maybe you don't know this, but there's a little area of California they call Silicon Valley. But like I crossed the bridge, whichever. Is that the Dumbarton or I get my bridges mixed up? But anyway, you drive across and there I am on one hacker way. There's Google. I mean, there's Facebook. There's Google. Just a couple miles up the road, there's Apple. Tesla's right over there. You know, like five of the seven most valuable companies in the world are all within a couple of blocks each other. So there are a lot of really, really rich people around. And there's some fancy shopping in that area, obviously. I had coffee with a friend there once. It was several years ago, and he's in the industry and hip to it. And he kept saying, you see that guy over there? I'm like, in the puffy vest and the shirt that everybody else is wearing? He's like, yeah, that guy sold whatever Joe-stagram to Meta for $3.4 billion. I'm like, damn, now he's working on something. Oh, you see that guy over there? Yeah, it's teeming with those people. So I wanted to go to a fancy mall on my birthday, and I went to the, the mall there where right next to where Stanford university is. And I'm walking from store to store and I see a sign for this bed. And I thought, wow, they've got one of those stores here. And it was open. And I walked in and I said, I read about your beds in the New York times. I've got to lay down on them. Well, it's, it gets interesting from the very beginning. And I would love to know more about the way they train their sales people and everything like that. they clearly did what Ferrari dealers, these bed people who sell $3 million homes, they've got to qualify their customers right off the bat to figure out if they're wasting their time or not. And he had all kinds of clever ways to try to get around to figuring if I even possibly could be a person who would buy a bed that they range from $40,000. I'm just talking a mattress. You got to get your actual bed frame is separate. That's the low end. The low end is $38,000, but with tax, it would be $40,000. That's the cheapest. And that's by far the most expensive mattress I've ever heard of in my life. We've done a lot of commercials for people who sell beds, and usually the most expensive mattress you can get, you're talking like $9,000, $10,000 for just the over-the-top, insane who buys this mattress. The cheapest one they had at the store was $40,000. It went up to $800,000 for a mattress. Unless the support structure is gold bars, what the F are we talking about here? So I have a guess. They profiled me on just having me lay down in a bed to start with because it's all about, you know, pegging the negotiations, right? I mean, in sales, it's a similar sort of way. They wouldn't want to put you in an unattainable number to start with because then you're going to be disappointed. I think that'd be my guess. There's got to be a psychology to it, I would think. Anyway, I just wouldn't in what sense. I mean, because after laying down on the $800,000 one, the $350,000 one was jabbing you in the back or what? It's all imaginary anyway. Well, see, that's the other part of it, too, is the and you know this about like wine, musical instruments, jewelry. There's all kinds of things. We all sorts of liquor. We don't have control of our brains. No human does. You do not have the ability to separate knowing what this costs from what it actually tastes like, sounds like, drives like whatever. You just can't. It's impossible. and some people get into the well it's expensive so it's got to be good thing in their brain subconsciously some people go the other direction I've known this crowd too I could get something for $5 it tastes that good some people have to go the other direction but for whatever reason you get all mixed up in your head about you know how much of this is imaginary or not which is fascinating Yes Katie Oh no I just listening and I still trying to wrap my mind It really hard to do I done it with wine where people give me wine from a glass of wine a sip of wine from a $200 bottle and. Boy, this tastes really good, but is it in my imagination? It tastes really good. Being convinced that it is that the label cool. Would I feel like a Rube if I said it tastes just like the other one? I don't know. Well, yeah, it's like. Well, no, go ahead. No, you. Oh, well, I've seen those things where they'll take like Franzia boxed wine and put it into a really nice bottle. And then all of a sudden your brain does that thing. Yeah. As my brother, the nuclear engineer would point out, the scale is not linear. The idea that a $50 bottle of wine is separated by the same amount to $100 bottle of wine as 100 to 150 to 150 to two on up to, you know, So presumably a $450 bottle of wine ought to be as much better than a $400 bottle of wine than a $150 is to a $100 to a $50. And it's not even remotely like that. Well, right. So then if you're starting to cut it down to a $200 bottle of wine is 5% better than an $80 wine, whatever that better even means there. Does the human mind have the ability to separate out the amount of money this is from the marginal taste difference? I mean, that's kind of fine with your imagination and your ability to convince yourself. It's a personality test. It's really interesting. So then getting to the betting on this whole thing. Is that $800,000 one, is it you're supported by the brains of Nobel laureates that have been preserved? I mean, I'm trying to picture what it would be. The eyebrow hair of virgins with IQs over 140 or whatever. What the hell? It's hilarious. Yeah, how do you justify that? Well, to a certain extent, it's art in the same way that, like, really expensive mechanical watches. You're paying for the fact that, you know, the handful of craftsmen on Earth that can work with their hands and make these tiny little parts make a watch that will display the moon phases and keep to the second over a year. You know, it's a two hundred thousand dollar watch. You're paying for, you know, that the artisanship of that. Not that it tells better time. The bed is similar that way to a certain extent. And that at the upper tier beds, you have nine artisans. He used that term. Nine artisans. it takes them like almost a year to make the bed. They sew all the fabric around it by hand with certain kind of double stitching thread, blah, blah, blah, blah. The main thing with the bedding itself is it's horse hair. And horse hair has some properties or some other BS. For some reason, there's a horse there. Isn't that handy? And on the upper tier beds, the artisans take the horse hair and straighten out each individual hair. Oh, for God's sake. That's BS. Caligula would be embarrassed by that so let me get to that and these beds are according to my son mentioned in rap songs stuff like that like the sort of rap song where you talk about Cristal Champagne and driving in your Lambo they mention and Trump was a frequent mention in that sort of song for a long time living like Trump so I go into the store they somehow peg me as the guy that should lay on one particular bed and then at one point he says so you read the New York Times article so you're aware with that. And he didn't say the cost. He had some fancy term for the entry point or something like that. The investment? The investment in this world or something. I said, yeah, yeah, I know what they cost. He said, the bed you're laying on. Oh, first of all, so I have to take off my shoes and my jacket, and I took my glasses because I'm the only person in the store, and there's three people kind of working on me, and they turn off the lights, and I get to lay down in the bed, and they bring me a blanket and cover me up and kind of tuck me in, and I get a pillow behind my head. and i took off my shoes and my jacket and my glasses excuse me can you cuddle up next to me please yeah spoon let's let's spoon i like to be the little half an hour yeah i'm the little spoon this whole experience was so entertaining i was there for like 45 minutes and i was happy to do it because i'd been wondering about this for a long time and it was my birthday i was just trying to entertain myself i had nothing on my schedule wow um so anyway so uh i get under they give me these like little booties to put on like really cool uh like they're like wool on the inside booties that are made of the same fabric of the bread the bed these beds are famous for being this blue and white checkered pattern that's like how you notice if you go in somebody's house and you see that that they've got one of those beds um so i got these booties on that are that and i'm laying down in the bed and then i'm getting tucked in and all that sort of stuff and I'm laying there. And he said, that bed you're in right there is 96. So $96,000 mattress and box springs, which is just impossible to wrap your head around. And you're still working the lower end. And I would say it felt better than any bed I've ever laid on, I think, unless my mind is tricking me. The thing that I mentioned to him was my bed, and I've got a really nice bed, my shoulder hurts from my motorcycle wreck all the time minor not a big deal but but it always hurts laying in bed no matter how i lay in this bed it did not hurt at all now is that my mind doing a trick on me maybe who knows maybe the the i think at this level the horse hairs have not been straightened out by hand they just stuff it full of a certain kind of horse hair machines the straightened machines involved in anything they just still curly i see oh but uh it very very very comfortable bed So there no doubt about it And I try a whole bunch of different beds because they got firm and soft and this and that and different things that different beds do And he put me in the forty eight thousand dollar bed and it still felt really, really good, but not quite as good as the ninety six thousand dollar bed. I can't wait to hear about the parting of company. But before I do a follow up, I remember when the New York Times article came out, we were talking about this. Number one, I was confused, Katie. I thought it was whore's hair. Yeah. That they had shorn the heads of sex workers for this mattress. Ew. You'd pay extra for that. Barbaric. Oh, boy. And what was the, oh, that just flitted out of my mind. Whore's hair. I started, I was picturing bald-headed hookers. And it was just so distracting to me. Oh, that's right. The maintenance of these things. Yeah. Yeah. Were you going to get into that? Yeah, the maintenance comes with the bed. So that's really nice that you throw that in with the cost. So the bed will last you basically the rest of your life. If I were 30 years old and made a lot of money, you could possibly justify that over that amount of time replacing mattresses, you get close to breaking even for a better sleep. Possibly you could. I don't know. But I'm not 30 years old. And, you know, money is a thing. So, but yeah, you have to have them flipped and massaged two or three times a year. But that's part of the deal. They'll send a team of two artisans to your house a couple times a year and they will flip and massage your bed to get it back. So that's always working at its ultimate. But you got to make her say that's what's going to happen to know she's not a cop. Is that how that works? Joe's stuck on hookers. Flipped and massaged, please. I got that once in Thailand. The greatest night of my life. So I lay down on all these different beds, and they are amazing. And so he said, would you like to lay down on the $400,000 bed? That's the one that Drake sleeps on, and it's mentioned in one of his songs. So I go lay down on that bed. I got on it. And this is just like I'm using the words from the New York Times review because I remember it. It was as if I was just floating in air, like it was air pockets holding me up. It's like if enough air pressure had me up in the air, it was as if nothing was touching my body. If I was perfectly comfortable. It's hard to describe. It was, I don't know. Well, it's like I described. It's as if you're just floating there. Like if you were weightless in space, I suppose that would feel like I'm on the spaceship. And I was just on my back. Like no points of pressure whatsoever of any kind. It was wild. try not to picture the poor shaved horses running around freezing and freezing exactly it's just their skin showing you know how cold it gets in Sweden in the winter these horses are shivering like crazy yeah exactly they're like those damn weird looking cats so the four hundred thousand dollar bed was amazingly comfortable I did not I don't know why I didn't I just couldn't make myself even lay down he said do you want to try the one next to it that's the eight hundred thousand dollar bed and i just didn't uh i said i'm not gonna buy a 400 000 mattress so there's no point in me i mean i don't want to waste your time just but i probably should have laid down it would it have to feel twice as good what if i had this is what i wonder the second i lay down do i work on the blah that'd get a little tiring honestly you're in bed um did they let you keep the booties yes nice i think probably because my feet had been in them but and put them in a bag made of the same material as the thing so i got this cool tote bag with the booties that was pretty awesome i can't believe they probably do that for every tom dick or harry that walks in off the street of course in that area not a lot of tom dick and harry's are walking off the street unless they're you know tom the ceo at tesla and every sundar mark and elon walks in off the street Exactly. I wonder how many of these beds they actually sell. I wonder how many you need to sell to stay open. Yeah. Which is a good question. I wondered about all that. The business structure, I find that super interesting. I'd love to know more about it. Like, how many literally do you have to sell a month to keep the doors open and pay your salespeople? Yeah, I think you probably sell the $800,000 one to, like, rappers and singers who know their rival singer has the $400,000 one. In L.A. you do. In this area, it's probably all tech people. Right, right, right. But in L.A., yeah, because he used to run the story in Los Angeles, and that would be like movie stars. He said, oh, yeah, the movie stars and the rappers, they all know about this brand. So I've been among the very, very successful fair amount. They tolerate me because I'm amusing. But I know if nobody knows you're the super rich guy who has the watch, the mattress, the car, then there's no satisfaction in it. Exactly, exactly. So what do you get, like a lawn sign with that checkered thing, pattern you're referring to? Or how do you let people know? So it's funny. My life is the opposite. Because I said to the guy, I said, if I ever bought one of these, I couldn't tell a single person. Because my world is the opposite. Everybody I know who knows me, family and friends would be like, what? Are you freaking nuts, you moron? They wouldn't react with, oh, cool, aren't you? It'd be like, you are a moron. Oh, the same bed as Drake sleeps on. You are an idiot. Right. Would be the reaction of everybody I personally hang out with. He said you'd think that, but he said eventually he gets a point. And he brought up a TV show. I forget it was a Netflix series where there's a dinner party among powerful. And somebody brings up, yeah, I got a bed. It's a Heston. You probably haven't heard of it. And he said, oh, I have. I have one, too. And then everybody at the table mentioned that they have a Heston bed. So like among just like you were saying among the super powerful it kind of a oh you in the club I in the club too We in the club of people who buy six mattresses see if i were them i have like a cloth and napkins in that pattern and you would just have a dinner party and you'd have those napkins and people would be like oh he has a heistin yeah and also i was talking to my kids about that could i even have enough money that i would buy a $400,000 mattress. And I don't think I could. I mean, I'm not a tax the billionaires, you should feel guilty for your luxuries sort of guy. But if there's one child on earth that doesn't have something, I couldn't justify having a $400,000 mattress. That's just insane. Yeah. Apparently, according to Forbes, they sell about 16,000 premium beds a year. The main model, the 2000T, I think it is, that's their top selling model. That's the one that varies between like 48 and 96 or something. That's what they sell mostly. How many people could possibly... What does he do with the people that come in there that he figures out quickly can't afford one of those beds? Gives them the bum's rush or tells them we're going to close in five minutes. I'll bet. I think I know what happens because I've been in this situation before because I'm often dressed like a hobo when I'm going places. Do you have an appointment? This is an appointment only store. So if you'd like to make an appointment on our website and that just gets you out of the store and then hopefully you figure out what it costs before you ever make an appointment. So if you walk in with a Jamba Juice and a radio station t-shirt, yeah, that's probably what happens. Screams at you, get out, peasant. well you can't be wasting 45 minutes on somebody who couldn't even conceivably afford your right your product there'd be no point oh i wonder how many people walk in the store per day i wasn't there for 45 minutes i was the only person there the whole time they might have locked the doors after i was in there for all i know i don't know so when judy and i weren't in london we stayed uh yeah sure enough we stayed in mayfair which is uh like super high-end expensive shopping district we're in actually a flat above a store and there are all these like Arab oil shakes with their six woman harems in their beekeeper outfits trailing after them or going into incredibly high dollar shops including perfume stores in particular but sure enough I was curious and there's the Hastings not far it's actually right at the edge of Mayfair I'll bet they do a lot of business with your oil money folks too probably what an interesting luxury brand though isn't it the this again the psychology behind it is as interesting to me as anything else the sure convincing you you're actually on a more comfortable bed along with the this makes me important uh if you know you know thing that joe was talking about with the brand so you can you know mention it kind of in a whisper to other people uh i'd love to people i'd love it if they did one of those blind tests with you know your top of the line seely posture pedic or temper pedic or whatever when you don't have in your mind that this is the bed drake sleep sleeps on or jennifer aniston there's another name they're throwing away if you didn't know that would you notice any difference there's a famous thing that came out a couple of years ago with top violin players playing million dollar strads along with like a five thousand dollar violin and not picking the strat is the best violin when they didn't know ahead of time it was a blind test so it's we're all it doesn't make you uh a stupid or weak or whatever we're just all susceptible to that it's it's almost impossible to get that out of your brain everybody but me completely neutral i'm completely neutral good for you that's very handy it's it is very handy it saved me a lot of money i uh i i walked out of there they uh wanted my email address and my phone number and everything like that and they sent me a couple of proposals on the the 96 000 bed and the 48 000 bed and they break down and all that sort of stuff proposals i propose i give you money you give me the bed i can get back to them if i want to it's more complicated than that huh i wonder if you got the mattress and not the box spring because it breaks down like the mattress was like the on the 96 000 bed that i really liked the way i felt my shoulder didn't hurt so the mattress is like 50 000 and then the box spring was like $28,000 and then there was another like $10,000 stand or something whatever adds up to $96,000 and could you live without all those other pieces? I don't know. Oh my goodness. It was a while back as I was climbing the ladder of wealth from the bottom rung to the middle lower portion that I says to myself, I says just because you can doesn't mean you should. $400,000 mattress. Like you said earlier, that's like a $50,000 pen. I mean, you're just into hilarious-ville at that point. On the other hand, if Drake swings by and needs to spend the night, you'll feel comfortable at home. You can sleep on my couch, Drake. You and your 16-year-old girlfriend. I'm on Team Kendrick Lamar. What? I'm completely out of my depth now. You don't know the Drake-Kendrick Lamar battle? and claiming Drake is into underage girls. His favorite line in one of the songs, Kendrick Lamar, we were listening to this the other day. Let me guess what key that song is. A minor. Oh! That's pretty clever. That's a good shot. Thank you for joining us for this paid commercial. Tomorrow we'll join you for Chuck Norris' Total Gym. Well, I guess that's it. 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