Endless Thread - The Great Mattress Conspiracy

Episode Date: September 20, 2018

Why are there so many Mattress Firm stores? How did they end up catty-corner across intersections and in the same shopping centers? Are the mattresses full of money? Reddit users start to dig deeper into these Mattress Firm conspiracy theories, and we team up with Business Insider's "Household Name" to conduct an investigation of our own.

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Produced by the ILAP at WBUR, Boston. So what's our game plan? Are you rolling? Yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Amory and I are living the American dream, which is to say we are standing in front of a strip mall

in Cambridge, Massachusetts, across the street from another strip mall. And in each of these strip balls, there's a mattress firm. These mattress firms are so close that you could get confused. You could like forget where you parked your car and end up at the other mattress firm. Right. Or you could put the wrong mattress firm into a GPS and then get into a lift, which is exactly what I did. Only if you're a real stooch. And I ended up.

We are here because of a Reddit thread. A thread that asked, what conspiracy theory do you one hundred, 100% buy into and why. And a response to that question that caught fire. Mattress firm is some sort of giant money laundering scheme. This is written by a Redditor who goes by the username Crazy Potatoes, which, Emery, I feel like one is succeeding at life if anyone refers to them as Crazy Potatoes. Whatever you say, Crazy Potatoes.

Heck yeah, Tatertat. Oh, no. Stop. Fine. Back to Crazy Potatoes, read a comment. They're fucking everywhere. empty. I remember seeing four mattress firms all on each corner of an intersection once? There is no way there is such a demand for mattresses. This comment sparked thousands of replies. Take, for instance, this viral YouTube video from Shane Dawson.

So why are there more mattress stores on one street than there are grocery stores or Starbucks? You know what's even better than a regular video, though? A mattress firm conspiracy theory song. Also a thing. I need a mattress. There's a, a store. I need a mattress. There's another store. Only thing better than a song, though, Ben, was our endless thread stakeout. True. We're going to attempt to talk to someone in the mattress firm. All of this is part of a collaboration with Friends of the Pod who also make a pod called Household Name, a show about companies you know and stories you don't from Business Insider,

hosted by this guy. I'm Dan Bobcough. And today, what is up with mattress firm. What is up indeed, Dan Bob Koff, my substitute dude voice for this episode. Dan and Ambray will be taking the lead on this puppy and I'll be observing and just working on my secret updog project. If you think you're going to get me to say what before I say updog, you are incredibly optimistic. Had to try. But I will say this, what shall we call this one? How about the great mattress conspiracy? Can we sleep on it? Hey-o! Oh! I'm Ben Brock Johnson and you are listening to a special episode of Endless Thread made in collaboration with Business Insider and Stitcher.

Our show features stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. Business Insiders show Household Name looks at interesting stories about companies. Today's show, featuring Dan Bobcough, and my excellent co-host, Amory Severson, is a bit of both. So, Ben, Dan Bobcough and I are going to take the story from here, and I want to circle back to how Redditors respond to the idea of a mattress-first, conspiracy, because people get really into it. Doing back of the envelope math about mattress pricing.

Posting maps of the mattress firms in their hometowns. Crazy. And it's like everyone on this thread is suddenly pitching in, trying to make sense of the years and years worth of weird experiences they've had while mattress shopping. And the more research they do, the more suspicious they say things start to look. The first five were within walking distance of each other. And then the last one was a a little bit away down the road. This is one of the redders on that thread. Username Crooksick H.D.

Hello, Cameron Thorpe. I live in like a little rural town south of Chicago. Cameron is a junior in high school, and he says he didn't buy into the conspiracy theory at first. But then one day he and a couple of his friends are in nearby Highland, Indiana, and they see one mattress firm. Then another one just down the road. Like as soon as the third one came around,

I'm like, look at that. There's another one. And then we saw the fourth one. And I'm like, I'm kind of yelling at them. I'm like, there's something happening here. Like, what is all this? They kind of join in on the hype and we're just kind of like freaking out in the car. And we start thinking if maybe if there's something actually to this conspiracy theory.

So a couple days later, we went back to the Highland. And we started at the first mattress firm. And we went on like a bar crawl of sorts to, to all the five mattress rooms within walking distance. And every single story we went into, there was no one in it. By now, it's a full-fledged teenage investigation. It was a little suspicious to the people working there, like three, 16-year-old kids looking to buy a mattress.

But we were just asking, like, questions. We were like, how much does a mattress cost? Because I wanted to get some information about, like, how these people could possibly stay open. Huh, and what did you learn? I learned that mattresses are decently expensive and that not enough people buy them to keep those stores open. There's, like, no way they could sell enough mattresses

to, you know, keep all five stores within proximity of each other open. It's not just Cameron and his friends and a bunch of people on Reddit. Business Insider wrote about this conspiracy theory and the story went nuts, like 800,000 clicks. So we figured it's time to find out if there's any true. truth to it, to the extent that we can. We're joining forces to find what's really going on with three mattress firm theories the internet is obsessed with.

Number one, over mattressification, a technical term for what's with all those stores. Number two, the sleaze factor. From the vibe of the stores themselves to the prices you pay, something just feels off about mattress firm. And number three, the parent trap. Mattress firm's new owner might be our best shot at finding. evidence of financial fraud. Okay, so theory number one, and my new favorite made-up word, over matressification.

Ben and I didn't want the teenagers to have all the fun, so we went to Cambridge, where there are those two mattress firms across the street from each other. So the mattress room we're about to go into is in between a T.J. Max and Home Goods and an Xfinity store, and also I see a McDonald's down there. Yeah. So let's just go in. and see if someone will talk to us. Are we going to pretend like we're buying a mattress? I mean, we can. I think the microphones might give us away a little bit.

So we waited until the sales guy looked like he was working on something and then walked in, like a couple of cool-ass cucumbers. I've never been in a mattress firm, have you? No. Okay. Our plan of being super low-key did not work. The sales guy wouldn't answer anything on the record, which I wasn't totally surprised, but it definitely made me more curious. We've been reporting this story for a couple of months, and we haven't been able to get a single mattress firm employee to talk to us on the record.

Even people who used to work there have been skittish. And it just makes you wonder, if there's nothing fishy going on here, why is it so hard to get an explanation? Even one given anonymously. There has to be a reason why there are so many mattress firms. I think generally speaking, it's a fair and honest retail business. There are plenty of conspiracy theories, particularly surrounding mattress firm. All right, Amory, before you get too carried away, I found an actual reasonable explanation from a guy named Seth Basham. He's an analyst at an investment firm called Wed Bush, where he spends a lot of time talking to people in the mattress industry.

So their stated premise strategy is called relative market share. And he's starting to explain something important here. All those mattress firms you've been seeing everywhere, they're all part of a totally legit business strategy. They've been growing through acquisition for close to 10 years, rolling up a lot of regional chains in the process. It's actually a pretty basic plan. Mattress firm is trying to make sure it's your number one choice

when you're buying a mattress, by being your only choice. So for years, they aggressively bought up anything they could. They bought sleep train, mattress barn, Mattress Pro, Sleepies. And every time they buy one of these stores, instead of shutting it down, they just paint over the sleepy sign or whatever it says and slap on a mattress firm logo, swap out the inventory, and voila. They've got locations everywhere. You leave your house looking for a mattress, and odds are you'll run into a mattress firm just around the corner. Or four.

Does this actually make any sense as a business strategy? Like, are they making any money from this, or are they just blowing it on all these mattress stores? Yes and no. Look, for a long time, this actually worked as a really great advertising strategy. You could think of all these stores and shopping centers and next to off ramps as kind of like billboards with doors. They amped up brand awareness and just funneled more buyers into the stores. Like even now, everybody knows mattress firm because mattress firm is everywhere. But it's got to cost a lot of money to keep the stores open, right? Not as much as you think.

You don't have to sell too many $4,000 mattresses each week, to keep the lights on and pay the staff in the store, pay a little bit for the advertising and the distribution. So they make money by selling a handful of units per day. And to do that, it only requires oftentimes one or two employees in the store. After Mattress Firm bought Sleepies in 2015, it had 3,200 locations across the country. Mattress Firm then controlled over 25% of mattress sales. For a moment, it seemed like Mattress Bliss.

Turns out, they got in a little over their heads. Their results have been what I might call a unmitigated disaster since they acquired sleepies. They overdid it. They overdid it. So there's nothing conspiratorial with the number of mattress firm stores out there. Unless. Well, there's a lawsuit that was filed by mattress firm last October. And they are suing two of their real estate executives that were also fired from the company.

Mary Hamberry says this is where we should be looking. She's one of Business Insiders retail reporters. Okay, this sounds promising. It all started last October when mattress firm sued the two guys who ran their real estate department. Their own real estate department? Like these guys worked for a mattress firm? Yeah, and they're being accused of defrauding their company out of millions of dollars. Whoa, how?

So, mattress firm was opening up a lot of locations really quickly. That was good for real estate developers and brokers, but according to the suit, it might not have been good for Mattress firm, because those two employees they're suing may have been in on a scheme to cash in on some of those real estate deals. Ah, I'm smelling a subplot of corruption and scandal. This time, Amory, I think you're on to something. Mattress firm is claiming that the two real estate executives who worked for them were in cahoots with someone outside the company, a real estate broker for the company, Collier's International. And so they're saying this guy then was giving them bribes to make sure that he stayed the broker because he knew like, you know, that he,

They were going to be opening a lot of stores. They had this strategy. And he wanted to be on the receiving end of that paycheck. Yeah, mattress firm's suit claims they were steered toward locations where they had to pay more in rent or were forced to sign onto longer leases as a result of all this. They said that it impacted about 800 stores. That's a lot of stores. Exactly.

And mattress firm haven't named the amount that they want for this, but some reporters have said that it could be up to like $40 million. It could have cost them $40 million. So then it seems like mattress firm is the victim here, but then the real estate executives filed a counter suit against matcher's firm, saying that mattress firm was aware of all these deals. How the tables have turned. Yeah. So if in fact mattress firm's leadership was aware of all this, all that they're suing these brokers over, then they could have a bigger problem on their hands. But it's hard for us on the outside to really know what's going on here.

So far, it's just a couple of lawsuits going back and forth. And if you believe mattress firm's version of events, this is really bad news for the conspiracy theory in general. Well, unfortunately, this probably would kill the idea of a conspiracy because it's, you know, it's saying that actually it's not mattress firm's fault, or perhaps it is mattresses' fault, but it's actually that they were being pushed into all these store openings and aggressive expansion by their very own team. Unless that countersuit by the real estate executives is valid. Oh boy. Okay, so over mattressification, why are there so many mattress stores? Where have we landed, Dan? Here's what we know.

Mattress firm expanded really fast. It opened stores and bought up tons of competitors so quickly that didn't have time to think about a location strategy. Sometimes they just left stores across the street from each other. It may be that someone on the inside was nefariously steering the company to expensive locations it didn't need. But we have no evidence these stores are doing anything other than selling mattresses. All right then, what's next? The sleaze factor. Oh, that's right.

Okay, we got some sleaze coming up for you after the break. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a. rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast.

There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader. recruit new talent, reach new audiences, whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, Ben, when was the last time you bought a mattress?

And where did you get it? I'm going to say it was about a year and a half ago, and I got it on this thing called the internets, and it is a king size, and it is luxurious. All right, you didn't need to brag. But by buying your mattress online, you manage to avoid what Dan Bobcough has aptly named The Slease Factor. Which is the second theory about mattress firm that we explored with Business Insiders podcast household name. It has to do with the weird vibe people claim to get when shopping at a mattress firm.

One person described it this way on Reddit. I stopped into a mattress firm a while back, and I got the impression the salesman just Googled sales tactics before I walked in. because he tried every dumb idea in the book. He tried talking me into a mattress $1,000 over my budget by offering me a deal if I buy it today for $500 over my budget. As I was leaving, he actually said to me, statistics show that if you walk out the door today, you won't be back. Um, probably not, dude. You're right about that one.

So whether there's something going on undercover at mattress firm or not, something about these stores just feels off to a lot of people. Was that a pun, Yes. I got to get it in there somewhere, Dan. We should also say that mattress firm corporate hasn't responded to our requests for comment either. By the way, did you know that they call their main office the bed quarters? Oh, no. I actually really like that. Okay, no word from the bed quarters. But Ben and I were on the case.

And we happened upon the Sasquatch of mattress shopping. I have a real live customer in there. But you don't usually see in a mattress firm. Well, I think this is what we do. We found Bruce. You were just mattress shopping, correct? Actually, just getting a mattress pad cover. Okay, cool.

Maybe a strange question, but how come you didn't buy it on the internet? Good question, I'm not sure. In some ways, I'm old enough, 72 years old, that just going local brick and mortar. has some appeal. People ask this question of like why there are so many mattress firms right now. This is like a question of the moment. Why are they everywhere? Why are there mattress firms across the street from each other?

It's a really good question and I have no clue whatsoever other than the fact that the profit margins must be able to support that kind of real estate. But you're not worried about... Our interaction with Bruce echoed some of what we heard about mattress firm on Reddit. One Reddeter from the Thread said they managed mattress store for five years. They wrote, One December, I went three weeks without a single person walking into my building. The reason the stores are profitable is the insane markup on the merchandise.

A mattress set that costs the company $200 would retail for $2,000. That's actually not that weird from a business perspective. Oh, really, business insider employee, Dan Bobcough. Like, you know, you buy stuff in stores, groceries or clothes or gadgets. All those things get marked up. So a store selling a t-shirt that costs $5 to make might actually charge you $10 so they make a little profit. Or if they're a fancy clothes brand, maybe it's $25. Seems normal enough.

Well, it works the same way for mattresses. I talk to Michael Magnuson about this. He runs a website called Goodbed.com, which is kind of like a guide for mattress buyers. They buy a product for, let's say, $500, and on average they sell that product for $1,000. Okay, but it seems like there's a big difference between spending, like $20 extra dollars on a shirt and $1,000 on a mattress, no? Yeah, Magnuson says it's actually not that different. But there are three reasons why customers like you get all upset about mattress prices

when they don't care about those markups on other products. So number one is you might not know that margins even exist for other products because mattresses are famous for this. Number two, you're much less likely to even notice or care about a price margin on a product that isn't that expensive. So the absolute dollars of margins seem lower or less of a focus. And number three, you're going to like, Emery. Magnuson calls mattresses a grudge purchase because no one gets excited about blowing a couple grand on a mattress.

You don't get like that great Instagram moment from buying the perfect mattress. So it's kind of a grudge purchase. People know they can't blow it off. They know they've got to spend a lot of money on it, but they don't want to. It's not fun. So how much is mattress firm making off of us? Well, it varies. And it varies because salespeople want to talk you into spending as much of your money on mattresses as humanly possible.

And they work on commission. So the higher the selling price, the more they get paid. And all that translates into some business practices that don't feel that great when you're in the mattress store. Like you might have heard that thing about how you're supposed to replace your mattress every five to seven years? They used to say at least 10 years. Then when I got into this, they started saying 8 to 10. now the whole messaging from the industry is five to seven. So they've like, as an industry, they've kind of gotten together and said, you know,

really you should be replacing more and more often. Oh, man, what's next? Every three years? Every year? Yeah, and then there are all those devious sales tactics. Let's take an example of one of these practices, discounting. Yeah, it seems like every mattress firm store you pass, their windows are smattered with sale signs. And that's intentional.

Let's say one day you decide. to actually buy a mattress amory. And I somehow work up the courage to do it in an actual mattress store. So a salesperson might take a mattress they want to sell for $2,000 and say it was originally priced at $4,000 just to make you feel a little better. So you walk in any day of the week and we're showing you a 50% savings, right? Of course, on holidays, we're going to mark it down even further. So that's when it starts to look like, oh my gosh, this is 70% off.

Yeah, spending $2,000 on a mattress does feel a little bit better if I convince myself that I'm saving $2,000 at the same time. Oh, no, Dan, it's working. Let's say you visit two stores on your mattress quest to do some price comparison. So one of those stores you go to is a good store, let's say. And the other one is a bad store. In the bad store, they're marking up mattress prices before slapping sale labels on them. And in the good store, they're selling mattresses at their regular retail price.

The average consumer now walks in more times than not. They look at those two products in those two stores, and they go, I'll take my chances on the one that's 50% off. Like, I'll go with that one. So the bad store sells you your mattress, and it presumably makes lots of other sales, too. So the good store ends up going out of business, even though ultimately they were selling that mattress at the same price. And so that's how the bad actors have really, like, set the mark for the industry and set the standards. Sad.

Look, my point is, all this stuff may feel shady, but that doesn't mean there's a conspiracy. Lots of salespeople do this. Not just the people who work in mattress stores. I mean, ever bought a car? And I get it. If you know the salesperson you're talking to is inflating the sticker price just to make you feel like you're getting a deal,

it's not hard to convince yourself they may be up to more shenanigans. So for theory number two, for the sleaze factor, here's where we are. We've learned that mattresses are expensive because they have big profit margins and that salespeople are incentivized to sell them for as much as possible.

That combined with the fact that most consumers don't love spending their hard earn dollars on mattresses in the first place makes the whole process just feel kind of gross. But a grudge purchase is not the same thing as money laundering. Nothing here looks like money laundering. Oh, but Dan, we've arrived at the most intriguing comment in this mattress firm conspiracy threat on Reddit. Yes. Mechatronics man, TZ writes, surprise, mattress firm is owned by Steinhuff, which is currently embroiled in a money laundering saga. We've arrived at the California King of Conspiracy. conspiracy theories.

Number three, the parent trap. It's been a tumultuous week for Steinhuff International. These are the quiet offices of the global furniture retailer in Weinberg, Johannesburg. Up until this point, the Reddit comments we've looked at have validated lots of the weird experiences people have had at mattress firm. Like how there are so many stores, how there are no people in those stores, and how weird the salespeople seem. It all feels kind of strange.

But here, for the first time, we're at a lot. about to hit a conspiracy theory with some meat on it. And the people who believe this one happen to be the police, regulators, and investigators from different countries. They're all targeting the company that now owns mattress firm, a company called Steinhauf International. It's the second biggest furniture retail company in the world, second only to IKEA. Just a week ago, Steinhoff was challenging world at furniture giants IKEA for dominance.

Now it has all gone to dust. The short version of the story is that Steinhof is the subject of a massive criminal investigation, which, we should be clear, is not a money laundering investigation, as that Redditor Mechatronicsman TZ suggested. But the long version of the Steinhof story is so much more interesting. Well, it's been a spectacular collapse. It's literally been the biggest crash in South African corporate history. I called up Business Insiders South Africa office, and they connected me to James Brent Stein. He's written a whole book about Steinhauf's dealings in South Africa, which is where the company is based.

They've been there since 1996, when the company's founder, Bruno Steinhoff, moved there from West Germany. But the guy we really care about, the name you want to remember here, is Marcus Eusta. He used to be Steinhoff's CEO. Oh, I see what you did there. Mr. Eustre was considered as well, quite an arrogant guy. And very short chap, by the way, in South Africa, we like to see. call it court monarchy syndrome. It means it's like a Jack Russell.

You're short, but you think you're the biggest dog in the kennel. And he was not shy about throwing his weight around. Until everything went haywire, and don't worry, we're getting there, Steinhoff was one of the biggest companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. They employed 50,000 people in South Africa. And it almost goes without saying, guys like Eusta were making a lot of cash. These guys, they all live in one little town called Stelombosh,

They live on these super luxurious wine estates where they make wine, and they drive Bugatti's and they drive Maybarks, and they are just stories of affairs and big yachts and all sorts of stuff. I mean, they are the elite in the country. And no one in South Africa blinked an eye. Until December 5, 2017, when totally out of the blue, Marcus Eusta resigned. Turns out of Steynhoff may have been. brushing some financial irregularities under the bed for years. South African police are now looking at alleged fraud. And it's facing probes from regulators and investigators around the world.

It's accused of years of financial fraud. I don't think that such a lot of attention was paid to what Stano was up to. Until the day used to resigned. And that triggered the biggest collapse in South Africa's corporate history. Questions have been asked about why its auditors didn't pick up on the holes in its books. While authorities investigate the company, Steinhoff itself has hired auditors to look into the apparent fraud within the company and track down who did it. There are also questions about the taxes it did or didn't pay.

We still don't know the full extent of what happened. Steinhoff's value tanked on the stock exchange. And two days later, an American short-selling group called Viceroy dropped a incredible report about some very interesting dealings at the Steinhelph group, which cast a lot of shade. And by the way, the mattress firm deal was included in that report. And that just led to a slide that we've never seen before. Here's where things get really interesting for our story. Before all of this came to light, back in August of 2016,

Steinhof did something that, on its face, can only be described as incredibly stupid. Or it at least raises a lot of questions. They bought mattress firm for $2.4 billion, more than twice what the company was worth. And that's really unusual. Well, certainly the amounts, the amount paid. I mean, that's just off the bat crazy. I mean, that's just nuts. It's what we, in the business world, traditionally call a huge mistake.

A lot of people did say, you know, this company's overvalued, why pay so much for mattress firm, what's going on you? But, you know, it still took about a year or... and a half until, I suppose, the meltdown of this entire group, before people really set up and said, okay, well, what happened here? So, Dan, why? Why would Steinhoff do that? Is there a rational explanation here anywhere? I mean, if you really want to give them the benefit of the doubt, you could try something like, maybe Steinhoff really wanted to get into the U.S. market and was willing to pay a lot to do it,

or maybe for some reason they genuinely believe that's what mattress firm was worth. But it still seems strange. And right after Steinhoff bought mattress firm, things got even worse. Mr. Euster, the CEO, we had a big falling out with one of the major suppliers of mattress firm. I think it's called Sealy, Sealy,

something like that. Tempropita, yes. There was an incredible fallout with them, and Sealy said no, and they pulled out of supplying the mattress firm company with their product. That was an incredible blow to mattress firm. The breakup of mattresses

Firm and Temperseley has been bad for both companies. It's hurt sales figures on both sides. Which is, you know, something else that's quite bizarre when you look at a company that's trying to establish itself in the States and takes over something like mattress firm at a massive premium. And then you go and you tick off the biggest supplier. I mean, it's just utterly bizarre. Temperseley is even suing mattress firm right now for selling a mattress it says sounds and looks a lot like the temporepetic. Mattress firm calls it the therapeutic. Mm-hmm.

So is the internet right, Dan? Is the Steinhauf bonanza enough to convince you that there's something shady going on here? There's money in the mattresses? The most likely answer is no. There's no mattress firm conspiracy. No grand plan. No shady things happening in back rooms. But I will say this Steinhauf stuff is not nothing.

I mean, you have investigators from around the world looking into this company. But there's no indication that mattress firm specifically has done a lot. anything wrong yet. Okay. So to some extent here, we're kind of, we're crushing some Redditors' conspiratorial dreams, right? I feel like conspiracies are always more exciting than reality. But what's really interesting to me is just how much people care. Like you have these high schoolers doing investigations. YouTubers are driving around in their cars, taking videos, trying to figure out what's going on. Redditors are posting detailed maps and comments and theories. And I think there's just some fun in speculating about a store that's so banal.

Let's face it, you don't have to fully prove a conspiracy theory for it to be fun. It's about the journey. Speaking of which, let's get back to Ben and me, froggering across a busy intersection in Cambridge between two mattress firm storefronts. So after the first one, we thought we'd try our luck at number two and see if that lonely store minder was willing to talk. So we just came from 194 El Weifeburg Parkway. We've crossed the street.

This is 229, L. Wyfebrook Parkway. And here's mattress firm number two. The sales guy in this mattress firm knew we were coming. His colleague across the street had called to give him a heads up about us. And he didn't want to talk either. Plot thickens. I like how I was like, that guy's not going to call over. I know.

Mattress firm guy across the street is not going to call Mattressman guy over here. How would you rate our success? Um, a two. Two out of three? No, out of ten. So, Ben, a person who rates his success two out of three on this mission, what do you think? Well, I learned on this mission that you have never bought a brand new mattress. You get the hand-me-downs.

So I think you, me, Dan, and our man on the ground in Cambridge, Bruce should all go mattress shopping and get you a new mattress. None of this hand-me-down crap. Of course, we should get it heavily discounted. Heavily discounted, aka the same price. Right. You know, I think when I buy a new mattress, I'm probably just going to buy it on the internet, like a good Reddeter would.

Fine. But I do rate our success high because I do feel like we debunked or at least illuminated this conspiracy theory a little bit with lots of help from our bedfellows at household name. Oh, man, your puns are stretching it like a, full-sized bottom sheet over a queen-sized mattress. But at the end of the day, maybe the message is don't necessarily attribute something to malice

when you can maybe attribute it to mismanagement. Yeah, and also the large-scale mattress business full of grudge purchases is a rough-and-tumble world. It's not all downy comforters and silky duvets. If you don't watch out, Emery, you might get smothered. And on that note, let's put this baby to bed. By the way, check out Household Name. It's the show about brands you know and stories you don't, like how TGI Fridays was one of the first singles bars in America,

or how Donald and Ivana Trump saved stuffed crust pizza. There's a new episode of Household Name every Wednesday, and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen. And huge thanks, by the way, to Business Insiders' team who worked with us on this episode, Dan Bobcoff, Sarah Wyman, Claire Rawlinson, Anna Mazzar, Rackas, Amy Padula, and Gianna Palmer. Oh, also, my dudes, it is Friday, but on Wednesday, Endless Thread was in a little show called Jeopardy.

Podcasts for 400. Endless Thread had Boston's WBUR and this website go beyond the front page of the internet to get deeper into stories. Jonathan. What is the New York Times? No. Jordan or Kyle? What is Reddit?

The guy who totally got it wrong there has redeemed himself because afterwards he started a Reddit account called Reddit Late Adopter. He better subscribe to our show too or we are coming for him. If you haven't DVR the episode of Jeopardy, you should find a way to go back and watch it. We are canon now. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Our show's a dream realized by Jessica Alpert who read this week's Reddit thread and said, Are you seeing the shit? Iris Adler is our executive producer who thinks endless thread is a money laundering scheme and says,

Change my view. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus and John Parati, who called Crazy Potatoes. Forbidden snacks. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who thinks Ben's secret up-top project is. A-SMR. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, who says that cool-ass cucumbers is... Even though you don't always hear his voice, it's important to point out that our fellow producer Josh Swartz can also say that Endless Thread is something I made.

Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our intern is Candice Lim. Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to Redditor N. Paul for this week's artwork. It is called I Had a Bad Dream. On Reddit, we are Endless underscore Thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today, hit us up there. My co-host and producer is Amory Severson.

I am senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. and I'll let myself out. Dan and Amory will be taking the lead on this puppy, and I'll be observing and just working on my secret updog project. What does that mean? I don't know what that is. Do I need to know what that is? You don't know what up dog is?

No, I don't know what up dog is. What do you mean by that? Like the opposite of downward dog? No, what are you trying to say? I don't know. What are you saying about Up Dog? What's the question? I don't understand the question.

What is it? Nobody knows what Up Dog is. What do you mean what is it? What does that mean? Oh, my God. There's a joke that everyone is getting except for me. How do you... Amory, what is the question you're trying to ask?

What's Up Dog? Oh.