Here’s the question of the week. How much did you spend on your last hair dryer?
Me? OK, I’ll go first. $179 and that was three years ago. I was tempted by the Dyson model; however, $429 to $499 seemed a bit extravagant.
The four men in my house thought that was a lot. However, killing multiple $60 hair dryers every year for the past five seemed a little ridiculous. Cost averaging tells me that at this point, I’m at my break-even mark. Time will tell if the dryer continues to hold up, and so far, all indications are that it will. (I could have just jinxed it, so we’ll see.)
All of that said, I stumbled across an article recently announcing that the electronics company Panasonic was launching a new hair dryer with a hefty price tag; even more than the Dyson model that I had scoped out.
Panasonic’s high-end Nanocare Ultimate, currently only available in the Japanese market, retails for about $565. Yes, $565. That’s more than two times Panasonic’s previous luxury dryer.
Let’s dream for a minute. What could we spend $565 on as a splurge?
We could take a wine tasting class with a sommelier in Napa Valley — or another wine region — for about $450, depending on the location, and have cash left over.
We could fly round trip to Paris from New York for Thanksgiving week for $488. That’s basic economy, but you get to wander the city during an American holiday soaking in the sights.
How about a MasterClass subscription with which we can tap into classes from experts in a range of fields for a year? With our budget, we could likely gift subscriptions to a number of friends and make it a party.
How about this?
We can buy a mattress at the industry’s average unit selling price of $494.56 for a U.S.-produced mattress and have some coin left over. If we opt for an imported mattress with an average unit selling price of $90.26, we could buy six and have enough change left for a burger and a beer at our favorite pub. Those AUSP figures represent the first half of the year and come from the International Sleep Products Assn.’s second quarter report.
The AUSP for domestic mattresses has climbed 9.4% for the first half of the year from the same period in 2023. For imported mattresses, the number has dropped 16.5% for the same range.
My quick scan of Amazon pulled up mattresses in a range of prices beginning at $99. Mattress Firm is touting queen mattresses on sale right now for $169.99.
There’s a huge disconnect between the message we’re sending to consumers on the power of sleep and the prices at which we’re selling beds. We’ve trained them to believe paying less is better and that a mattress under $200 is just as good as a mattress that retails for a more reasonable price of $2,399.
That mattress at Mattress Firm costs less than my hair dryer and way less than the new Panasonic. I doubt my dryer will last eight years, yet consumers also are accustomed to believe their mattress will last way longer than the industry’s mindset of “replace in eight.”
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