Heads turned in Knysna when Swedish bed company Hästens opened a store in 2024 selling its luxury mattresses for millions of rand, but two years later the business is flourishing, says the owner.
An entry-level king-sized Hästens bed will set you back about R200,000, while a mid-range model costs between R2m and R6m. The Hästens Grand Vividus is described as the world’s most expensive commercially available bed, with some versions reportedly costing close to $1m. The luxury beds can be found in 46 countries; there are also stores in Joburg and Cape Town.
Since the Knysna Hästens branch opened, the bespoke beds have winged their way to homes in Sedgefield, George and Plettenberg Bay. Some households have bought more than one.
The affluent brigade of “swallows” in this area — people who migrate between overseas homes and coastal towns chasing summer — have seen these beds in Knysna and bought them for homes here and abroad.
Owner Martin Hansson says the store is thriving.
He owns a guesthouse on the Knysna Heads and the eight suites are fitted with Hästens beds. He was inspired to open the store after guests told him that they had the best sleep of their lives there.
Hansson won’t divulge how many beds have been sold, saying only that Garden Route customers are going for the mid-range of beds, rather than the entry-level ones.
You can’t very well go to bed in a Hästens with a holey T-shirt or put discount bedding on it
Hästens beds have been made in Köping, Sweden, since 1852. It’s a five-generation family business. “Before Edison invented the light bulb, before Bell made his first telephone call and before Ford put the world on wheels, my great-great-grandfather founded Hästens,” says owner and CEO Jan Ryde.
A mattress goes through five workstations before completion; some have as many as 37 layers. Only craftsmen who have spent two years as apprentices work on the beds. With every step being done by hand, it can take up to 600 hours to make a bed. Horsehair (from the tail and manes), cotton, wool, flax and wood are layered to create breathability and support.
The horsehair is boiled and washed. Then it’s washed again and put through an autoclave oven (similar to what dentists use to sterilise their instruments), in which the temperature goes up to 140ºC, making the mattress hypoallergenic.
The 2000T bed is made up of 36.7kg of pine, 118.6kg of steel and 47.8kg of natural fibres, wool, cotton and flax.
The Hästens philosophy is that the average person who lives to 75 spends 25 years sleeping, so why not sleep in the best bed?
Canadian rapper Drake boasts about the Grand Vividus in his Toronto mansion. The beds have become a status symbol in pop culture, appearing in the Netflix show Emily in Paris. The Swedish royal family sleep on Hästens beds, as do Beyoncé, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise and Maria Sharapova.
Once you buy your bed, a specialist makes follow-up visits to your home to massage and distribute the materials so that they don’t settle into a valley.
Each owner is entitled to this service for a decade, and the bed comes with a 25-year warranty; Hansson says the beds last for more than 100 years. They become heirlooms and the focus of custody fights in a divorce.
As one would expect, the shop stocks appropriate accessories in the classic blue-and-white check and other colours, in natural materials like combed cotton and silk. You can’t very well go to bed in a Hästens with a holey T-shirt or put discount bedding on it.
The New York Times Wirecutter division provides research, testing and reviews of various products. Caira Blackwell writes: “As Wirecutter’s resident sleep expert, I’ve tested nearly 100 mattresses, including a dozen of those in my own home. I’ve slept on everything from affordable beds-in-boxes to $10,000 mattresses made from materials developed for Nasa … and nothing has compared to the Hästens 2000T.”
Blackwell says that when she settled into her mattress it felt “like a thousand little hands supporting me”. She had a six-month trial of the bed and “every night was like falling in love over again”.
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