I've been bed frugal for a couple years now. I won't spend more than a few hundred to sleep on insane comfort.

A few years back I was confronted with the opportunity to get into the mattress industry and sell them online. Profit range is huge even with the massive returns commonly accepted as normal business since most offer 3 months to 1 year trial. I knew NOTHING about mattresses but realized a need for camping solutions for sleep.
So my mind began to turn, albeit slowly, but something started. I started testing air mattresses and surrounding fabrics.
To make a long story short, no stretch fabrics, just doesn't work. No part of the air mattress can be left uncovered, if that happens, air mattress failure at uncovered fabric portion of air mattress.

So before long I had asked a local seamstress to sew 6 sided, no stretch, covers that surrounds air mattresses you can buy at Walmart. Here's the key, covers are smaller than the air mattress. The following are my findings:

• no more holes
• no seam blow outs
• no stretching of plastic. This is by far the most important in sleep comfort. If the air mattress can't stretch, your body can't drop, which results in much lower probability of lower back pain.

So to the frugality of all this. Air mattress at walmart, $10. Cover, well I sew my own now and self taught. It was not easy and quite a learning curve finding the right needles, finding an industrial sewing machine, timing, the thread that works, etc. etc. I had some help with other sewers (the couple that sews boat covers by me were invaluable) but I learned how. Anyways.. back to price. $10 air mattress, you can find covers on google and also locally, or do it yourself, but that's going to be between $50 to $200 depending, and a topper. $100 is more than enough for a topper.

So, building your own air bed that gets no holes, loses no air, comfort topper, does not change shape through night, between $160 to maybe $300 tops. Compare that to a PURPLE or Sleep Number!

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This is an air mattress cover that will stop all holes, seam blow outs, and any mattress stretching