Step 2- Set Your Budget

The average sale amount of all first time customers is $142.45. (As of 08/15/04) But repeat customers purchase significantly more memory foam products. It seems that memory foam customers are skeptical until they try these products first hand.

Everyone has a different budget so only you know how much you are willing to spend. But once you have decided on a budget, you will more effectively be able to choose your first memory foam product(s).

Step 3- Choose Foam Quality

After you've determined the type of memory foam product you wish to purchase, you must determine whether you wish to buy an extremely high quality memory foam product like Isotonic® or a generic memory foam brand. Some factors to consider when making this decision include how often you will use the memory foam product, whether or not the product will make direct contact with crucial areas of your body (pressure points), and whether or not you've had physical pain or soreness induced by low quality products in the past, etc. All Memory Foam Factory® products are classified using the "Good, Better, Best Classification System." This simplifies the purchasing process exponentially.

Step 4- Determine the High Quality Memory Foam Retailers

Even though there are about thirty e-commerce websites that sell memory foam products, not all of them sell high quality memory foam products. (See the "Density" section below) For example there are only a handful of companies that sell Isotonic® memory foam products because the Carpenter Corporation, the company that manufactures this product line, has recently implemented a rigorous qualification process for all its potential retailers.

This was not the case one year ago. Today, if you read various memory foam websites carefully you may notice that while they used to carry the Isotonic® memory foam brand, they no longer do. While the each website may state its own unique reason for this discontinuation in its product line, the real reason is that they failed Carpenter Company's evaluation test. As a quick rule of thumb, it's a safe bet that any company carrying the Isotonic® memory foam brand is a reputable memory foam retailer.

Step 5- Compare Competing Prices

After you've narrowed your search to the two or three reputable memory foam companies, and you know which memory foam product you wish to purchase, all that's left to do is find the lowest price. It's that simple. Ironically, the reputable memory foam companies are usually the ones that will match or beat any of their competitor's prices so this point may actually be mute.

b. Low Quality Substitutes

Over the past few months, Memory Foam Factory® customer service representatives have begun to receive phone calls from people who purchased inferior products at large discount retailers in their area. Those inferior products did NOT come from any of our facilities. The Memory Foam Factory® only sells its products through this e-commerce site. Yet unknowingly, these consumers call us because they are dissatisfied with the quality of the product they purchased from one of our competitors and seek to find the manufacturer in order to lodge a complaint. If you are one of these individuals, we support your efforts. We encourage you to call the store you purchased your product from and complain. Let them know that you know they are selling an inferior product.

Large discount superstores do not buy high-quality, American made, memory foam because it is more expensive than the material they can buy overseas, especially in China. These companies serve a different memory foam niche with their products so it is very important not to confuse the two markets. Our manufacturing process is very expensive and includes significant quality control and R&D. The Memory Foam Factory® simply can't beat the prices of the Asian imports and frankly, we don't want to because our products are high quality differentiators, not low cost imitators.

Many discount superstores feel their customers won't know the difference between a high-quality American or Swedish made foam and its low quality American, European and Asian counterparts. Well, customers do know the difference. We know they do because they actually call us by mistake, figuring that we manufacture all memory foam mattress toppers, pillows and pet beds in the United States. We do not and we are only responsible for memory foam products purchased from this website.

d. Industry Leaders

There are only two premier brand names in the memory foam industry, Isotonic® and Tempur-Pedic®. These companies manufacture the highest quality memory foam sleep systems in the industry. There are a few copycat companies with names that resemble these two companies, but their products are not of the same quality as the previously mentioned two. The Tempur-Pedic® and the Isotonic® memory foam sleep systems differ slightly in that the Tempur-Pedic® bed has a completely flat "foam like" exterior layer and the Isotonic® sleep system covers this foam layer with a more "traditional style" stitched and textured mattress covering. Many people feel that the Tempur-Pedic® sleep system is slightly softer than Isotonic's. But the difference is relatively subtle. Isotonic products are available for sale at The Memory Foam Factory®- www.memoryfoamfactory.com, and all Tempur-Pedic® products can be found at www.tempur-pedic.com.

f. Memory Foam Density

The quality of a piece of Memory Foam is determined by measuring its density. The denser the material the heavier and firmer it is to the touch. Also, the denser products usually take a lot longer to recover from a compressed state and are therefore thought to be more supportive than less dense memory foam. Because of this slower recovery, and increased support, denser foams are more expensive than materials that are less dense. Likewise, the denser the memory foam, the higher the manufacturing and fabrication costs.

The density alone will not tell you everything you need to know about the feel or comfort of the memory foam itself. In it simplest terms, density simply tells you how much the particular piece of memory foam weighs. A 4 lb. density simply means that a one foot cube of this material would weigh 4 lbs. Each memory foam brand has its own unique feel and recovery time. (See the difference between Isotonic® and Tempur-Pedic® above.) Higher density memory foam tends to have more of the unique memory feel that makes the foam more supportive. A 2.5 lb. density memory foam doesn't have enough density to give you the same feel that you get from a 4 or a 5lb. block of memory foam. And there is no substitution for name brands like Isotonic® and Tempur-Pedic®.

A Special Thanks to the memory foam customers that gave their time and effort to help make this memory foam industry report possible. You know who you are.