By ADAM SPECTOR

Despite the seemingly infinite number of mattress brands, Amazon has just released its own mattress, creatively named “AmazonBasics Memory Foam Mattress.”

The newly released mattresses are currently sold exclusively by Amazon. The selling point is their impressively low prices, making them some of the least expensive memory foam mattresses on the market. Costs range from $130 to $350 depending on size.

In addition to there being countless mattress brands, there is a strangely large number of mattress retailers in the United States. In one area of Austin, for example, there are a reported six Mattress firms within a square mile of one another. In High Point N.C., there are two Mattress firms within less than 250 feet of one another.

If that’s not enough for you, there’s been a rising number of online mattress retailers such as Purple, Casper and Leesa. The selling point of many of these online retailers is that they are able to sell them for lower prices than those found at stores because they are being sold directly by the manufacturer.

While many of these online mattress retailers have lower prices than better-known brands, AmazonBasics prices are even lower.

Amazon is covered on the news on a near-daily basis. Even though Amazon is billions in debt, its stock price remains high and news coverage is almost always positive. Amazon has changed their perception of an online department store to a maker of everything in the last few years. Very few appear to be worried that Amazon seems to be putting everything out of business.

Very few news and review sources seem to mention that a negative aspect of buying a mattress online is that buyers cannot simply lie down on several mattress and pick out their favorite, they have to buy one without trying it and hope for the best. There’s a return policy, but it’s still a much more binding decision than lying down on a store sample for several seconds.

To add to this, very few news organizations have attempted to explain how all of these mattress retailers stay in business. Very few people actually buy a new mattress every five years as retailers recommend. Who is buying all of these mattresses? Are there mattress connoisseurs that buy new mattresses every week? There have been many conspiracy theories, but no definitive answers as to how they stay in business.