Mattress industry caught napping as Amazon makes stealth move into its market

Amazon has quietly entered the crowded mattress-in-a-box market with two new offerings that undercut its more established competitors.

An AmazonBasics memory foam mattress made its debut in early October. A twin mattress starts at $129.99, while the thickest king mattress starts at $239.99. Earlier this week, TJI Research spotted a new, premium offering from Rivet, a millennial-focused furniture brand owned by Amazon.

Those mattresses range from $449 to $624.99, and the site currently only list reviews from people who received a free product. Like its competitors, including Casper and Tuft & Needle, the Rivet mattresses come with a 100-night free trial.

The mattresses are also significantly cheaper. Casper’s king mattress sells for $1,195 on Amazon. A king mattress from Tuft & Needle is listed for $750 on Amazon.

“Looking at what Amazon is doing. It's a terrifying prospect, given what they have done to other categories,” said Matt Sargent, senior vice president of retail at Magid, a research firm.

"They can go into a category and be aggressively priced, because at the end of the day, they are looking for that full circle engagement,” he told NBC News. “They can afford to not make the margins the others are working on."

The global mattress market was valued at $27 billion last year and is predicted to be worth $43 billion by 2024, according to a report from Zion Market Research.

Walmart, Amazon’s chief competitor, launched its Allswell mattress brand earlier this year, with mattresses selling for between $195 and $745, according to its website.

The days of lying on a bed in a mattress store are dwindling, as more people turn to online reviews to make their purchasing decisions. Amazon’s entry into the market comes as Mattress Firm, the largest brick-and-mortar mattress store, filed for bankruptcy last month.