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The Superior Suction Roomba 650. The Invigorating Heel To Toe Masseuse. The Swiveling Pinpoint Massage Chair. The App Controlled Roomba 980. Best Mattress Buy Under $800! A unique combination of support and comfort, at a price that won't keep you up at night! *See store for more details Balance 1.0 Self-Leveling Pillow Balance 2.0 Self-Leveling Pillow Balance 3.0 Self-Leveling Pillow BedWorks™ Grand Vitae® Luxury PillowYou may have seen a subway ad showing a bike-riding squirrel toting a bed in a box. The caption: "Delivery made simple." The ad seems a little gimmicky until you realize it's actually true (OK, minus the squirrel). Casper delivers mattresses on the backs of bicycles—and makes good on its promise of next-day delivery to New York City customers. It does so with a two-ton compressor that squeezes its foam mattresses into three-and-a-half-foot-tall boxes. That solution cuts down on costs, appeals to bike-friendly millennials and explains why the company generated $20 million in sales in its first 10 months in business.
"[We're building] a brand that redefines how people think about sleep," said Philip Krim, chief executive and co-founder of the company, headquartered on West 26th Street. Long dominated by Serta, Sealy, Simmons and Tempur-Pedic, the $14 billion U.S. bedding business is ripe for a wake-up call. Casper began selling mattresses online starting at $500 in April 2014, has raised $15 million in venture capital and attracted the attention of celebrities: Ashton Kutcher is an investor; Kendall Jenner is a customer. It's among the vanguard of companies going after the Big Four's 70% market share by promising better mattresses without the hassles of pushy salesmen and huge markups. "The mattress-shopping experience can be a difficult one at best," explained David Perry, executive editor of trade publication Furniture Today. "The online retailers are promising a simpler, more enjoyable experience, and that's a message that resonates with a lot of consumers, particularly millennials."
Many of the e-commerce brands entering the market have founders with backgrounds in software, not retail. They have focused on streamlining the manufacturing process and producing fewer mattress styles that they sell directly to consumers without a huge retail footprint. Their efforts are already paying off with favorable reviews in Consumer Reports. Tuft & Needle, another foam-mattress brand, has simplified the buying process by selling just one type of mattress, which retails for $350 for a twin and $750 for a California king, including shipping costs. The company is based in Phoenix but counts New York as a major market. Andy Dunn of New York-based e-commerce company Bonobos is an adviser. It increased sales to $9 million last year from $1 million in 2013. "We treat the mattress like a piece of software, where we start with the one and iterate after that based on customer feedback," said co-founder Daehee Park, noting that his product has gone through 75 variations since the firm's 2012 founding.
"We're constantly improving instead of coming out with new versions of the product, which creates complexity of choice." Westport, Conn.-based Saatva is less well known among millennials, even though it's the oldest of the upstarts, having been in business five years. Its name comes from the Sanskrit sattva, meaning pure. "We have no interest in having a store—that's what allows us to have the price structure we have," said Jason Roberts, director of marketing. Saatva uses 12 U.S. factories to manufacture its mattresses and expects a 25% sales gain this year, to $50 million. "We don't have to worry about rent or the costs attributed to it." Part of the newcomers' success can be traced to timing: Many brands are launching in a tech-friendly environment where venture capital is free-flowing. It's a stark contrast to seven years ago, when the recession shrank the mattress market by 20%, said Ryan Trainer, president of the Alexandria, Va.-based International Sleep Products Association, a 700-member national trade organization.
"We're still digging our way out," he added, noting that mattress sales have finally surpassed prerecession levels. "Consumers who had been out of the market due to the recession are now coming back." Mattress startups, while buzzy, haven't yet dented the market share of Sleepy's, the longtime Hicksville, L.I.-based bedding chain. With an estimated $1.1 billion in sales—up 10% from 2013, according to Furniture Today—Sleepy's is still the local snooze store of choice, especially after it snatched up competitor 1-800-Mattress out of bankruptcy six years ago. Yet it also has to pay pricey retail rents for its 1,024 national locations, which need to be large enough to house several beds and brands. The company did not return a call requesting comment. "It's a sexy story, a David versus Goliath," said Furniture Today's Mr. Perry. "But the reality is that [startups] are not in a material way disrupting industry sales because they're just extremely small." The big players focus on the aches and pains of baby boomers, selling high-end Tempur-Pedics and Sertas and investing in biomonitoring, sweat-wicking fabrics and incline features that mimic hospital beds.
"They're taking an old concept in electric hospital beds and making it appropriate for a residential setting, and that's something consumers are flocking to," said the Sleep Products Association's Mr. Trainer, noting that inclines help to quiet snorers. That has left e-commerce brands open to expand to the millennial market by establishing a small retail presence. Tuft & Needle is scouting a variety of showroom locations, including New York City. In addition to its NoHo-based showroom, Casper is opening a series of temporary stores in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, called "snooze bars." "We like delivering our brand experience in the offline world, and that's another way we're able to do that," said Mr. Krim. Similarly, Airweave, a $100 million Japanese seller of bedding toppers, opened its first U.S. location in February, in SoHo. Made of only resin and air, the product, which developed out of a fishing-line factory in Tokyo, is designed to keep sleepers warm in winter and cool in summer.