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Here's my favorite quote: > Kenny Kline and Dan Scalco swore that Casper wouldn’t touch the site. Casper’s Philip Krim told me the same: “We exert no influence
by floren 8y ago
Here's my favorite quote:
> Kenny Kline and Dan Scalco swore that Casper wouldn’t touch the site. Casper’s Philip Krim told me the same: “We exert no influence and have no influence over the site, other than that we lent them money.”
I smiled at that part, and then read on to the next paragraph:
> The new owners of Sleepopolis did disclose on the site: “Until the loan is satisfied, Casper has the contractual right to repossess the assets and forgive the remaining value of the loan…yes, that was written by our lawyers ;).” Repossess the assets: in other words, take over Sleepopolis, if it came to that. But Krim said this was just “lawyer language protecting our loan, so we get paid back.”
Wowzers!
There's all this stuff advertised in podcasts (mattresses, clothes, underwear, meal prep, snacks) which seems to be aimed at young professionals who hate the idea of having to go into a physical store and talk to a physical person. When the podcast man reads a script saying "Casper mattresses are WAY cheaper than what you'd get in a store!", I guess you're not supposed to comparison-shop and see that the Casper is $950 for a queen... which is pretty much exactly what we paid for a perfectly nice Serta memory foam mattress at a store 1 mile from our house, which included delivery and installation.
- blain_the_train 8y ago5 years ago, when i did comparision shop (remote and on-site) many remote places offered drastically less. But, it's impossible to do a 1 to 1 because, by design, the sellers don't want you to be able to identify you mattress. A online store might sell it as "Cloud" while the same mattress in store will go by "Canper Comfert". They wont have the same id either, as Canper Comftert will have some minor detail changed just to warrent a new id. Fix that problem, and mattress shoping will become a much saner process for the buyer.
- lsc 8y agoI'm not sure anyone is fooled by the "It's cheaper" - but there are a lot of us who will pay a reasonable premium to not have to go to the store and deal with salespeople in person, and personally... I think that's a reasonable luxury to buy? I mean, even if salespeople weren't... salespeople, it's still often a good several hours of time during business hours to drive to the store that has the thing you want, and I personally have a really hard time telling you how much I will like a mattress without sleeping on it for a week, anyhow, so I don't feel like I'm getting any value out of shopping in person.
- JohnFen 8y ago> there are a lot of us who will pay a reasonable premium to not have to go to the store and deal with salespeople in person Indeed. I really hate talking to salespeople, and tend to avoid going to stores where that's mandatory.
- pathartl 8y agoI like to shop online and stay out of stores partly due to the time savings, but also because of anxiety. I agree that buying online is a luxury and a reasonable premium is attached to that, but I disagree that the price should be comparable to in-store. For a company that is essentially the manufacturer and retailer, there should be quite a bit of overhead removed for them. I'm really disliking this trend where ecommerce-based manu-tailers are seen as premium brands and can increase their margins more than the other guys and make hand over fist. To me, it's even worse than slimy car dealers or furniture stores.
- lsc 8y agoNote, walmart has a wide selection of extremely cheap mail-order mattresses. No idea if they are any good, but if you are looking to save money on a mattress, it's probably worth doing some research.
- michaelmrose 8y agoWhat makes you think that the degree of overhead is directly related to the price? The price is what the market will bear.