By Miriam Valverde
Sun Sentinel.
Colleen Franken doesn’t want people to sleep on sagging mattresses. She doesn’t want them to spend thousands of dollars replacing their years-old mattresses either.
So she created Mattress Helper — a mattress support made of polyurethane foam and placed between the mattress and box spring in the region sunken over time by the weight of the sleeper’s body. It doesn’t go from one end of the bed to the other, it runs from the trunk of the body to the knees.
It has caught the attention of several national retailers, including the biggest of them all: Walmart.
Franken, of Weston, sells her Mattress Helper on the websites of retailers Walmart, Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond and a few other top retailers. They range from $49.99 to $59.99, based on size.
“They want you to do well online first before they take you to stores,” Franken said of her product’s online presence.
Big-box retailers have taken her product because it has wide appeal, she says.
Everyone has a mattress and too many have back problems because they’re sleeping on one that has run its course, the 61-year-old entrepreneur said.
Franken dubbed her patent-pending design Mattress Helper because “for me it was like a Hamburger Helper, you beef up your mattress.”
