Casper Sleep Sees More Competition Ahead in Online Mattress Retailing
October 17 2017 - 7:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Eliot Brown
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. -- Online mattress retailer Casper Sleep
Inc. has attracted a crowd of competitors that offer to deliver
mattresses in a box since it began in 2013, and Casper Chief
Executive Philip Krim predicts that Amazon.com Inc. will eventually
join the crowd.
"I'm sure they're going to get into mattresses and a private
label," Mr. Krim said of Amazon during an interview at The Wall
Street Journal's WSJ D.Live technology conference. He said, though,
that he thinks Casper "will always have a leg up" on the
competition, given its investment in research and development.
"We're just trying to up our own game," he said. "Innovation and
product should speak for itself."
Amazon already sells mattresses, but not private label. Amazon
was not immediately available to comment.
Having raised about $240 million in venture capital, Casper is
the best funded of a large crop of new online mattress sales
companies that have sprung up the past few years. Money has rushed
into the sector, as investors view the business model, selling foam
mattresses that can compact into a shippable box, as appealing
given they offer potential for more profits by bypassing mattress
retailers.
Mr. Krim declined to discuss Casper's expected revenue for the
year, although he said last spring that the company was operating
on roughly the same pace as 2016, when it doubled revenue. He has
said the company took in about $200 million in revenue in 2016.
While the company's mattresses, pillows and sheets are squarely
in the consumer goods category, it has attracted many tech-focused
venture capital investors based on a promise to keep growing. Mr.
Krim said he hopes to accomplish this by turning Casper into the
first brand consumers turn to when they think about sleep-related
products, even beyond mattresses, which he said are a market with
$15 billion in annual sales in the U.S.
"We're going after big markets," he said. "We think that we can
take real market share."
Write to Eliot Brown at eliot.brown@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 17, 2017 19:15 ET (23:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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