With Cypriots joining their financial stricken counterparts in Italy and Spain, one Spanish firm has created an innovate means to improve the age old habit of placing cash under the mattress. My Mattress Savings Bank, created by Paco Santos, builds traditional mattress with one key addition, a full functioning safe hidden within the bed springs.
As animosity for local banks continues to grow across Spain, consumers avoiding banks is increasingly popular. Last week alone, 350,000 small investors who each bought €6000 ($7693) in the rescued Bankia bank (Spain’s fourth largest bank) saw its share value fall close to zero, wiping out all savings by the investors. This type of development gave the inspiration to the My Mattress Savings Bank advertisement tag line, “keep your money close – and far from the banks.”
Though you might be debating the comfort factor of a safe in your bed, Santos ensures that customers sleep as comfortably as with a normal bed because the safe is tucked away at the end of the bed. While Santos will not release the number of safe-equipped mattresses he has sold, he admits that the first 20 sold out within 24 hours and that more purchase inquiries have come from as far as Chile and Mexico.
Although the My Mattress Savings Bank can’t compete with traditional banks on additional financial services and products, for a fast growing group fed up with failing financial institutions, the safe equipped mattress provides a 21st century update to the old habit of stashing cash under the bed in hard times.
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