Why Rich People Pay $390K for a Bed (It’s Not the Mattress) | Digital Marketing Edmonton
Premium positioning for service businesses is not about putting the word “premium” on your website or simply raising your prices. It is about giving customers clear, believable reasons why your company costs more and why choosing you may be worth it.
Hästens offers a remarkable example of how that works. The Swedish bedmaker traces its history to a master saddler in 1852, yet today it produces some of the world’s most expensive beds. One of its best-known creations, the Grand Vividus, became famous after appearing in Drake’s home and was reported at roughly $390,000 when it launched.
The interesting lesson for an electrician, roofer, HVAC contractor, painter or renovation company is not the extraordinary price tag. It is how Hästens built enough substance around the product that customers have far more to evaluate than the price alone.
At some point, almost every business owner looks at a competitor charging considerably more and asks the same question: what could they possibly be doing that justifies that price?
Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable. They are not necessarily better at the core task. They may simply have done a much better job of making their value understandable.
Then there is Hästens, a Swedish bedmaker whose Grand Vividus became famous after appearing in Drake’s Toronto home. The bed was reported at roughly $390,000 when it launched, and Architectural Digest later reported that the handmade Grand Vividus requires more than 600 hours of work. Architectural Digest’s look at the Grand Vividus
A price like that is easy to dismiss as something that only matters to the ultra-rich. Yet the more interesting question for an electrician, roofer, HVAC contractor, painter, renovation company or other service business is this:
How does a company make an ordinary category so difficult to compare on price?
Hästens has done it by stacking craftsmanship, materials, engineering, customization, longevity, scarcity and recognizable branding on top of one another. The lesson is not that your business should imitate a Swedish luxury bedmaker. It is that premium pricing becomes much easier to understand when customers can clearly see what makes your work different.
How Did a Saddle Maker Become a Luxury Bed Company?
Hästens traces its roots to 1852, when Pehr Adolf Janson became a master saddler in Sweden. The connection between saddles and beds was not as strange as it sounds today. Horsehair was used in both, and the skills involved in working with upholstery, support and natural materials could cross from one product category to another.
As horses gradually disappeared from everyday transportation, the company faced the kind of problem that many businesses eventually encounter: the market changed.
The important thing is what happened next.
Rather than treating the decline of saddlery as proof that everything the family knew was suddenly worthless, Hästens redirected its underlying capabilities toward beds.
That distinction matters.
Your Industry Is Not the Same Thing as Your Skill
Imagine an electrician whose residential new-construction work begins slowing.
It would be easy to define the problem as, “There isn’t enough new-build wiring anymore.”
But new-build wiring is not the electrician’s deepest capability. The real skill is understanding electrical systems, safely distributing power, troubleshooting problems and installing infrastructure correctly.
Those same abilities can serve panel upgrades, commercial properties, EV chargers, backup power, smart-home installations and many other markets.
The same applies to almost every service company.
A painter’s expertise is bigger than painting newly built homes.
A roofer’s expertise is bigger than replacing asphalt shingles.
A renovation contractor’s real value may be project coordination and problem solving, not simply installing kitchens.
When a market changes, the first question should not always be, “What completely different business should we start?”
A better question is:
What do we know how to do exceptionally well, and where else is that expertise valuable?
That shift can allow a company to evolve without abandoning the credibility it spent years building.
Why Can Hästens Charge So Much for a Bed?
The simple answer is that Hästens does not ask customers to believe its price is justified simply because the company says it is luxurious.
There is substance underneath the positioning.
Hästens explains that its beds use natural materials including horsehair, cotton, wool and flax. The company describes horsehair in particular as providing ventilation while working alongside the spring systems for support and flexibility. Read Hästens’ explanation of its natural materials and horsehair
That is a much stronger argument than saying, “We use premium materials.”
It tells the customer what the material is, what it does and why it matters.
Premium Businesses Give Specific Reasons for the Difference
This is where many service businesses fall short.
Visit ten contractor websites and you may find the same words repeated again and again:
Quality.
Professional.
Reliable.
Experienced.
Trusted.
Those are good things to be, but they are weak differentiators because virtually every competitor claims them.
Suppose instead an electrical contractor says:
“Every service upgrade receives a documented final inspection with photographs before the project is closed.”
Now we have something concrete.
Or a renovation contractor explains:
“We provide a written project update every Friday, even when there is nothing significant to report, so you never spend the weekend wondering where your renovation stands.”
That is specific.
Perhaps a roofing company has used the same supplier for 15 years and can explain exactly why its chosen roofing system performs well in Alberta weather.
Specifics allow customers to understand value before they have personally experienced the service.
At Inspired Method, this is one of the biggest opportunities we see in service-business marketing. Many companies are genuinely excellent at what they do, but their websites describe that excellence with the same vague language everyone else uses.
The work is differentiated.
The marketing isn’t.
How Do You Make Invisible Expertise Visible?
This is one of the hardest challenges for skilled trades.
Customers often cannot inspect your best work.
Once the drywall goes back up, the homeowner cannot see the electrical wiring. Once the shingles are installed, they may not understand what happened underneath them. Once a mechanical system is running, they may have no idea whether the installation was average or exceptional.
That means businesses have to show parts of the process customers would otherwise never see.
Document the Work Before It Disappears
Take photographs before a wall is closed.
Film the panel before the cover goes on.
Show the damaged material beside the replacement.
Explain what you found during the inspection.
Create a short walkthrough of why your team installs something a particular way.
Do not assume customers will find technical details boring. You do not need to turn every customer into an electrician or roofer, but you should give them enough information to understand what they are paying for.
Hästens does this exceptionally well because the company talks openly about its materials, spring systems and craftsmanship rather than simply presenting a finished bed and asking customers to trust the price.
That is the service-business equivalent of showing the work behind the wall.
Your expertise becomes easier to value when people can see evidence of it.
Why Does Brand Recognition Matter for Premium Pricing?
Hästens also possesses something many businesses underestimate: a visual cue that customers can recognize immediately.
The company’s blue-and-white check pattern was created by Jack Ryde in 1978. Hästens says the design was initially controversial because it looked dramatically different from the brown, green and orange tones common at the time, yet the pattern eventually became an enduring symbol of the company.
That consistency creates recognition without requiring someone to study a logo.
A customer sees the pattern and knows what it represents.
Consistency Makes Your Marketing Compound
A local business obviously does not need to create its own famous textile pattern.
It does need to stop reinventing itself every six months.
Use the same colours.
Use the same logo.
Keep uniforms consistent.
Photograph projects in a recognizable way.
Make the trucks look like they belong to the same company.
Use the same tone in your website, estimates and follow-up communication.
Over time, those repetitions begin working together.
A customer sees the truck in their neighbourhood. Later they see one of your videos. Months afterward a friend recommends your company. Then your website appears during a search.
Each interaction strengthens the others when everything looks and feels connected.
If every touchpoint looks like a different company, that accumulated recognition disappears.
Should a Premium Business Use Price to Filter Customers?
Sometimes, yes.
A price communicates more than the amount due.
It also helps determine which customers enter the conversation.
Businesses that continually fight to be the lowest bidder make themselves available to nearly everybody, including customers for whom price will always be the dominant deciding factor.
There is nothing inherently wrong with serving that market. The problem comes when a company wants premium customers while structuring its entire sales process around winning the cheapest quote.
Those two strategies conflict.
Your Price Should Match the Customer You Want
Premium pricing should not be used to manufacture fake exclusivity.
Instead, it should reflect the standard required to deliver the experience you promise.
Suppose a renovation contractor knows that proper project management, site supervision, strong subcontractors and weekly communication require additional overhead. Removing those things might make the project cheaper.
It would also create a different service.
The company has a decision to make about which service it actually wants to sell.
This is where positioning becomes practical rather than cosmetic. You cannot promise exceptional communication, quality control and supervision while pricing the job as though none of those things cost money.
Your price needs enough room for you to deliver your standard.
How Can Service Businesses Reframe Cost Over Time?
One reason an expensive purchase feels different when viewed over time is that customers stop seeing only the immediate invoice.
Hästens provides a 25-year guarantee against breakage of the springs and frame, reinforcing the idea that customers are buying something intended for long-term use rather than a short-term purchase.
Service businesses can use the same principle responsibly.
This does not mean inventing silly “only $2.73 per day” calculations simply to make a large quote look cheap.
It means helping customers understand the full financial consequence of the decision.
Talk About the Cost of Doing It Twice
Suppose one roof quote is $3,000 cheaper.
What happens if that system needs significant repairs years earlier?
Suppose an electrical contractor proposes the cheapest possible solution instead of an upgrade that accommodates the homeowner’s expected future loads.
What will it cost to redo the work later?
Suppose a renovation company costs more because it includes professional project management.
What is the value of avoiding months of delays, rework and mistakes?
Total cost matters.
Risk matters.
Longevity matters.
Convenience matters.
A good sales conversation helps customers evaluate all of them instead of pretending the invoice is the only number that counts.
What Is Your Business’s Version of Hästens Horsehair?
This may be the most useful question in the entire exercise.
What is the one real, provable thing in your company that helps explain why your work is different?
Not your slogan.
Not “customer service.”
Not the claim that you care more.
Something concrete.
Find a Difference You Can Demonstrate
It might be a proprietary inspection process.
A particularly strong warranty.
Your team’s certifications.
An unusually detailed quoting system.
A material specification.
A completion checklist.
A communication standard.
A specialized piece of equipment.
A documented process for preventing change-order surprises.
Whatever it is, three things should be true.
First, it needs to matter to the customer.
Second, it needs to be genuinely different or particularly well executed.
Third, you need to be able to prove it.
Once you identify it, stop hiding it.
Explain it on your website. Show it in your videos. Include it in estimates. Train your employees to explain why it matters.
This is where a strong website becomes more than an online brochure. It becomes a place where prospective customers can understand your process before ever talking to you.
If your expertise and systems are currently trapped inside the owner’s head, the 10 Systems Every Business Needs to Grow Checklist is a useful place to identify what needs to become documented and repeatable.
Can You Just Raise Your Prices and Become Premium?
No.
This is where the lesson can go badly wrong.
Hästens can support extraordinary prices because there are extraordinary inputs behind the product. The Grand Vividus requires hundreds of hours of craftsmanship, while the broader brand emphasizes natural materials, engineering, longevity and handwork. Architectural Digest reports that more than 600 hours go into assembling and hand-stitching each Grand Vividus mattress and base.
A company cannot simply copy the price and skip the substance.
Build the Standard Before You Charge for It
If you increase prices tomorrow, ask yourself what customers can point to that explains the increase.
Did the experience improve?
Did the warranty change?
Is the communication better?
Is the team better trained?
Have you invested in better processes or materials?
Does your expertise solve a problem cheaper competitors routinely miss?
If the answer is yes, you may already be underpricing the value you deliver.
If the answer is no, increasing the number on the invoice does not create premium positioning.
It simply creates a more expensive version of the same company.
The sequence matters:
Build the substance. Make the substance visible. Then price the business accordingly.
That is much more sustainable than putting “premium” on the website and hoping customers agree.
What Hästens Really Teaches Small Businesses
The most useful part of Hästens’ story is not the $390,000 bed.
It is the company’s ability to evolve without losing sight of what it actually knew how to do.
The original market changed, but the craft could be redirected. The company continued investing in materials, craftsmanship, recognizable design and longevity until the combination became extraordinarily difficult to compare with an ordinary mattress.
A service business can apply the same thinking at a completely different scale.
Know what you’re genuinely good at.
Find the part customers value most.
Make your invisible expertise visible.
Create recognizable consistency.
Price for the standard you actually deliver.
Explain value over time instead of reducing every decision to today’s invoice.
Most importantly, give customers real evidence before asking them to believe premium claims.
You do not need 170 years of history or hundreds of hours of hand stitching.
You need something true.
Find the thing your business does unusually well, the process you refuse to compromise, or the expertise that repeatedly produces a better result.
Then build your positioning around that.
Because the goal is not to convince everybody that your company is worth more.
It is to make the right customer understand why.