Case study · Community program
An unnamed, word-of-mouth pilot became a branded program other councils can adopt.
Pilot → programPublic launch, 3 December 2026
Save My Mattress lets people buying a new mattress at a participating MegaMile bedding retailer in Nunawading have their old one collected on delivery day. Suitable mattresses are sanitised and rehomed through a local charity; the rest are recycled.
The pilot worked because the right people kept saying yes. Nothing about it could be repeated by someone who hadn't been in the room.
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It began as a conference conversation in 2025 and grew through a council, a stewardship body and a local charity. By March 2026, two retailers were piloting it. But it had no name, no brand, no standard intake, no way to recruit new retailers or charities, and a fee customers questioned. Uptake was low and nobody was measuring it.
02
We treated it as a service to design, not a website to build. We mapped four audiences (customers, retailers, charity partners and recyclers), designed the offer for the customer deciding at the counter, and kept the operating model simple, proving adoption before buying technology.
Then we named and branded it Save My Mattress, and built the website with an eligibility self-check, staff materials and a quick guide, in-store and launch marketing, a partner recruitment pitch deck, and the system that tracks submissions and donations.
Public launch, 3 December 2026
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