This isn't a corporate brand with a head office in Sandton and a marketing team crafting a founder story. This is a real business built by a family in Bloemfontein who decided there was a better way to sell mattresses. Here's how it started.
Where It Began
Andries Taljaard started Mr Mattress because he saw a simple problem in the market. South Africans were paying too much for mattresses. Not because the mattresses were expensive to make — but because of the chain between manufacturer and customer.
Distributors, retailers, showrooms, advertising, commission-based salespeople — every step added cost. The customer at the end of that chain was paying for all of it. And most of the time, they had no idea.
Andries knew the manufacturing side. He knew what foam cost. He knew what a mattress was actually worth to make. And he knew that if he could go direct — factory to customer, no middleman — he could sell a better product at a price that made sense.
So that's what he did.
The Factory in Bloemfontein
The business is built around a real manufacturing facility at 47 Piet Human Street in Bloemfontein. This is where the foam is cut, the mattresses are assembled, and quality is checked before anything leaves the building.
Bloemfontein isn't a coincidence. It's home. The Free State is where Andries is from, where his family is, and where he chose to build. Running the factory from here means lower overhead than a major metro — and that saving goes directly into the product price.
Melanie's Role in Design
Andries runs the business. Melanie — his wife — shaped the design side. The covers, the aesthetics, the feel of the finished product when it arrives at your door. She understood that a mattress isn't just a foam block — it's the thing people see in their bedroom every day and the surface they sleep on every night.
That attention to design shows up in the details. Clean finish, quality fabric, a product that looks like it belongs in your room and performs the way it should.
A Family Business With Real Values
Andries and Melanie have three children. They built Mr Mattress as a family business — not a faceless brand. That matters in how we operate. We answer the phone. We talk to customers directly. We deal with problems when they come up instead of hiding behind a returns policy.
That's not marketing. That's just how a family business works when the people in it actually care about what they put their name on.
10,000+ Beds Delivered
Since launching, Mr Mattress has delivered more than 10,000 beds across South Africa. That number doesn't include walk-in sales from the Bloemfontein showroom. It's online orders alone, shipped to homes in every province — from Cape Town to Limpopo.
Those aren't customers who were sold to with aggressive marketing. They're people who found a factory-direct mattress at an honest price, took a chance on it, and came back. Or told their family. Or left a review.
The No-Middleman Promise
Nothing about the business model has changed since the beginning. We still manufacture in Bloemfontein. We still sell direct. We still deliver free nationwide. We still offer in-house financing for people who need it.
The middleman stays out. The saving stays with you.
Read More About Who We Are
Visit our About Us page to learn more about the business, the team, and the factory-direct promise. Then take a look at the range — and see what a mattress costs when no one in the middle is taking a cut.