13 ms·

Casper Sleep S-1

133 points by jonknee 7y ago

tempsy 7y ago
I haven't been in the market for a mattress for awhile now but went on Casper's website and was shocked to see the price for a Queen is now $1095. I didn't remember it being that high, and checked Wayback and sure enough it was $850 in 2015, and $950 in 2017. Given how many copycats are out there, many selling for much less, can someone help me understand how Casper gets away with selling a $1095 mattress + tax to a majority millennial crowd, who are supposedly cash strapped, and doing so successfully?
- rolltiide 7y ago
  > can someone help me understand how Casper gets away with selling a $1095 mattress + tax to a majority millennial crowd, who are supposedly cash strapped, and doing so successfully? Because the mattress sellers in the bad part of town still charge 3x more.
  - blackearl 7y ago
    I got a great mattress from an outlet, queen size for about $400. I was blown away thinking that Casper was going to be cheaper. They just have good marketing I think
    - criddell 7y ago
      A memory foam mattress for $400? That's a very good deal. The only Casper product I have is a dog bed and it's great.
      - cwyers 7y ago
        I got Costco's house brand memory foam mattress for that when it was on sale. Best mattress I've ever owned. (And I probably wouldn't have it if I hadn't tested out a memory foam mattress at a Casper store, in a bit of irony.)
      - blackearl 7y ago
        Not foam, it's some hybrid spring thing. There's so much crap out there it's hard to know what's real and what's BS
    - opportune 7y ago
      I got my favorite mattress ever from Amazon and it cost like $350 for a (firm) queen foam mattress, box spring, and frame. Casper (or someone writing about them) once wrote a blog post about how they got into the mattress business because they saw unnecessarily huge margins and direct to consumer opportunity. Now they are opening physical stores and not even charging much differently from regular mattresses. I’m just going to keep buying cheap Chinese mattresses that don’t spend hundreds of dollars per purchase on advertising
  - ivalm 7y ago
    Go to Costco, Living Spaces, or a myriad of other non-seedy stores and get a mattress for half the price.
    - rolltiide 7y ago
      and people also dont need to go to the artisanal grocery store for food, doesnt mean there isnt a market The point is that the only reason Casper is “controversial” here is because IPOs have been elevated to a coveted version of success when it has nothing to do with anything aside from being unnecessarily rare. Casper is just a vertically integrated mattress seller accessing the public markets now
      - ivalm 7y ago
        I replied to > Because the mattress sellers in the bad part of town still charge 3x more [than casper]. Which is not true. I understand there are premium choices, but this was not what I was replying to.
- gooseus 7y ago
  I'm guessing market dominance from years of targeted advertising on podcasts as well as buying/bullying mattress reviewer websites to make sure they stay as the highest rated. HN from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321807 "Casper went to war with popular mattress review site, then financed its takeover"
  - tempsy 7y ago
    so even people who are cash strapped are willing to overpay for a commodity item if they perceive it to be the best in a certain price range...? i guess purchasing behavior is very different for things you buy very infrequently like a mattress? looking at Costco and a highly rated foam comparable to Casper is $500...
    - blackearl 7y ago
      It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress. You might buy 1 per decade, people forget what the experience or price was like. I spent a lot of time researching then gave up and went to a "mattress outlet" laid on a few, then got one for around $400. I sleep fine, probably better than I ever have. There's also so much info on springs, foam, latex, rubber, on and on. It's overwhelming. Casper has good marketing and make it easy, and since it's so hard to compare, they just need to be close to other prices. They don't need to go full walmart
      - tempsy 7y ago
        $1100+tax is more than double what you'd pay at Ikea, Amazon, Costco, etc. I thought the promise of all these direct-to-consumer products was to pass savings onto the consumer because they are vertically integrated and cut out scammy middle men. Seems like all that's happened is they just keep fat margins for themselves.
        Paperweight 7y ago
        Started-up with principles. Got big. Reverted to the beancounter corporate mean. Now charging what the market will bear. Opportunity now open for new startup with principles. Rinse and repeat.
- chris_engel 7y ago
  I guess its because many people think that they need to sleep well in this hectic times and cannot allow themselves tu cut cost on a mattress. Expensive = good quality. Turns out this is nonsense - we have a foundation in germany that does independend product tests for all varieties of things and came to the conclusion that the best mattress they ever tested was some 200€ mattress.
  - topkai22 7y ago
    We have the same in the US (consumer reports) and the Casper hybrid mattress currently has the 2nd highest rating. Expensive is not necessarily better, but it is often correlated. It’s worth noting European sleep preferences are different than Americans, tending to prefer much firmer mattresses, so different testing results make sense.
    - smabie 7y ago
      That’s pretty interesting, why do you think Europeans have different preferences. I guess I (maybe naively) assumed that the distribution of preference would be the same for all countries.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  Brand appeal I suppose. I remember 1/2 the Casper price tag goes to marketing - I just bought a generic Amazon Zinus for 1/2 the price that research suggested came from the same foam factory. Seems like Zinus has gone down in cost in the last few years as one would expect with economy of scale while Casper has gone up one, $250 now from Amazon shipped, 1/4 of Casper. Simultaneously feels like Casper has cut back on marketing. Also Zinus is a 40 year old Korean company that's been doing bedding for for 15 years compared to Casper, a tech company that's been around for 5. It seems like a no brainer decision for anyone doing rudimentary research.
  - seesaw 7y ago
    I got two Zinus mattresses from Amazon for about $400 total. It has been only two months, but I have been happy so far.
    - coldcode 7y ago
      I have a Zinus I paid like $250 at most on it and it's the best mattress I've ever slept on. But, I ordered one for the guest room and it did not fully expand, so I talked with Amazon and they sent me another one. I took the first one apart, it's pretty simple set of I vaguely remember 4 layers of different foam types. Making these mattresses is pretty simple for all the brands, so the profit margin on an expensive name brand is very high. All you need is a good vacuum and decent packaging for the foam types. I have no idea why anyone would pay $1000-$3000 for a mattress.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  Costco just had them for 480 bucks. I picked one up, so far it's been worth it.
  - ra7 7y ago
    Same and it was a fantastic deal. Even without the holiday discount, Costco sells it for $599 which is close to 50% discount on Casper's $1095 price. They brand it as 'Casper Select', but it's essentially same as the the original.
    - braythwayt 7y ago
      It's price discrimination. The market for a $1,095 mattress wouldn't be caught dead shopping at CostCo, even if it's the exact same mattress. The "Select" branding isn't there to bamboozle them, it's to help them rationalize paying $500 more to be known as someone above shopping at CostCo. Casper wants one person's $1,095, and another's $599, so they use branding and channel differentiation to scoop $1,694 from both sales, instead of $1,095 for just one, or $1,198 for both. If we presume their cost is $400, then they go from $398 in margin (two sales at $599) or $695 in margin (one sale at $1,095) to $894 in margin. That's good business!
      - tempsy 7y ago
        what? Costco isn't for the poors - if anything it's the preferred destination of the upper middle suburban class. they sell high ends things. a lot of it. i'm guessing Casper's main customer base is, again, cash-strapped millennials, so to argue that these customers are somehow above Costco is a strange take.
      - cmdshiftf4 7y ago
        >The market for a $1,095 mattress wouldn't be caught dead shopping at CostCo, even if it's the exact same mattress. That's quite an assumption you're making there. I buy a lot of what I need from CostCo, I also spent over $1k on a mattress and have spent further thousands on high quality bedding. It's erroneous to conflate CostCo with cheap. They're a members only buying club which tends to buy high quality stock in huge quantities, taking advantage of the economies of scale on offer to them. Plus Zuckerberg shops there. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/photo-facebook-billionaire-mark-zuckerberg-at-costco.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/photo-facebook-billionaire-m...
- meddlepal 7y ago
  I just spent 1600+ on a (really nice) new queen. I spend a lot of time on my mattress... might as well buy a nice one I really like (Stearns & Foster)
- starpilot 7y ago
  This is preying on "wellness" concerns. Casper convinces you that a problem exists where it previously (probably) did not, that your sleep is suboptimal, and that only they can fix it for you. Prehistory, humans slept on beds of grasses or reeds on the ground. I still think 80% of your sleep quality is determined by what you do in the day: caffeine intake, amount of physical activity, overall stress level. I have a Casper. I found it way too firm as a side sleeper, but it was too late to return it, so I bought a $100 memory foam topper from Costco to make it more squishy. I could have saved a lot of money by buying Zinus mattress from Amazon and adding the topper, but oh well.
- astura 7y ago
  Advertising/marketing. People often perceive a mattress as "very important," as sleep is important, and are willing to spend a bit extra if they think the quality will be there and they'll sleep better. In reality I believe most of these "mattress in a box" companies are selling the same 2-3 mattress manufactured in the same factory. Personally, I buy mattress in the $300-$500 range. When I was in college I just slept on a brick of foam because that was what I could afford.
  - Lotus123 7y ago
    http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/
  - xchaotic 7y ago
    It is important. Given how much time you spend sleeping and people complain about spending $1000. But they don’t complain about a $30000 car they spend less than half the time in.
    - astura 7y ago
      The same or very similar mattresses are rebranded and resold as vastly different price points. Mattress sales is mostly marketing. When I was researching mattresses years ago the takeaway was basically price and satisfaction/quality of sleep are not correlated very much.
- rconti 7y ago
  And they're disrupting sleep by advertising on podcasts and cutting out middlemen and... now opening stores. eyeroll
- ivalm 7y ago
  Maybe they don't buy Casper? I am not cash strapped but shopped around a little bit and got a (very satisfying) queen size mattress for $600 last year @ Living Spaces.
- discardable_dan 7y ago
  I bought a queen at Costco this year for $599.
- master-litty 7y ago
  Casper caters to stress, ripoff anxiety, social anxiety, and budget. 1. We, the millennial crowd (tm), are insanely stressed on average. Whether it's objectively genuine or falsely perceived, brought on by ourselves or otherwise, it is something we enjoy having control over -- And choosing a "simple" mattress that is straightforward to research and buy caters to that desire perfectly. For awhile Casper only had one mattress, and it seemed like an irrefutably decent mattress. You simply chose the size! 2. If you don't like the mattress you can return it within a period of time. Mattress sellers often offer this, but Casper advertises it. It adds a sense of authenticity to the sale, and I think many people (not just millenials) feel more at peace about buying the mattress without trying it first. 3. It's shipped to you and comes in a box. Usually there's no talking involved. Nobody has to come into your home. Regardless, many of us don't even have a vehicle to pick up a mattress with anyway, nor the available friends to help bring it in through the front door. Maybe a delivery person would help but what if they don't? And what if you miss the delivery? 4. Monthly payments. I feel most millennials don't really care about the total cost of something, as long as there's a monthly payment option that is reasonable. Paycheck-to-paycheck is the format we're used to budgeting in, which easily puts a monthly payment into perspective. $35/month versus $350 upfront is way more manageable.
Ohn0 7y ago
I'm so tired of this
- rolltiide 7y ago
  Why? In a less costly regulatory environment it would happen way more frequently and it would not be elevated as news https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in-the-us-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in... Edit since I am rate limited: yes it is the best comparison. Let the public access more securities investments, the tools to manage risk are numerous.
  - jaypeg25 7y ago
    I'm all for having more IPO's (my job is actually advocating for policies that make it easier/cheaper for companies to go public) - but maybe this isn't the best comparison to make: "While this [# of IPOs in 2019] was an increase from the past few years, it was half the number of twenty years ago, while the Dot Com Bubble was forming."
- null_turkey 7y ago
  I'm not totally sure what 'this' is referencing, but if its the feeling that there are too many IPOs -- I see it as a good thing! It's so hard to find investments where a company hasn't hit their biggest growth period yet. It feels like you need to be in some inner circle of investors to get in on some of that action. I probably wouldn't invest in Casper, but I hope the number of IPOs keeps increasing!
- atyppo 7y ago
  IPOs have precipitously declined since the 90s. In 1999, there were 486 IPOs. There are now approximately 190 per year. [1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in-the-us-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in...
  - awalton 7y ago
    You're going to go with the dot-com bubble era for a comparison here?
samcampbell 7y ago
Disaggregated Revenue Data (Nine months ended September 30) Direct to Consumer: 2018- $239M; 2019- $259M [13% YoY growth] Wholesale: 2018- $31M; 2019- $54M [75% YoY growth] "20.3% year-over-year net revenue growth for the nine months ended September 30, 2019" "We have also expanded our gross margin from 42.8% in 2016 to 44.1% in 2018 and to 50.7% for the three months ended September 30, 2019"
- sharkmerry 7y ago
  Their Net Loss is still on pace to be about (90m) (most likely slightly more due to sales in Q4 being higher than others). 2018 was 93m Net loss
- whoisjuan 7y ago
  It seems that they already saturated their Direct to Consumer channel and all their growth is now dependent on their wholesale efforts. It seems risky to me, especially with a slow-cycle business like mattresses. Also what happens if retailers create their own premium brands and/or secure exclusivity deals with other manufacturers?
  - blackearl 7y ago
    No better time to dump the business on the market and run
  - paxys 7y ago
    Risky, yes, but the US mattress market has an annual revenue of ~$15 billion, so wholesale is definitely the area where they can expand a lot.
- throwlaplace 7y ago
  those are great (fantastic?) margins but i don't understand why they're not higher? there are so many memory foam mattresses on amazon that are exactly the same thing (maybe slightly shallower "soft foam" that run for e.g. ~300 for a queen that are themselves probably making great margins.
opportune 7y ago
Interesting that they want to explore medical devices, “sleep services”, and sleep supplements. Guess they are marketing themselves as the Amazon of sleep? Because right now all I know about them is that they sell overpriced mattresses
- dguo 7y ago
  You are correct: https://fortune.com/2016/04/19/casper-amazon-of-sleep/ https://fortune.com/2016/04/19/casper-amazon-of-sleep/
- cmdshiftf4 7y ago
  Though my initial response to the title was to laugh, upon further thought I think they're actually making a smart play here. They're essentially betting on "optimizing wellness" being a huge fad this decade, which I believe many others are predicting, and are using their current position to get more cash to get ahead of that. I don't associate Casper with "a quality night of sleep", probably because I'm happy with my current mattress and have no need of their product, but at the same time I couldn't name a single one of the current applications that exist to track + "optimize" sleep / circadian cycles, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that, so who knows? Maybe in 2030 we'll all be moaning about Casper putting up their Nighty Night subscription another $7 for "HD dreams" and reluctantly acquiescing to it.
root_axis 7y ago
Just want to shout out to the Casper Glow Lights, those things are awesome. Interesting to see a mattress company expand into other cool products.
- Humdeee 7y ago
  I've been using 2 of them now for well over a year and they've been excellent. I fall asleep with them every night. It's a well engineered product. The only minor criticism I could give is the dimming functionality by spinning while in the charging platform could work a little better.
mundo 7y ago
I bought a latex mattress several years ago, and will never buy another mattress. (Literally, they last 50+ years) Feels great, available in a range of firmness, no weird smells, never deforms, doesn't get hot, and naturally insect/mold resistant. I think I paid 1300 USD for a king size. I know that's only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, I'm just mentioning this since I had trouble finding much info on them. Latex is not promoted or advertised much, since they have very low markup compared to other mattresses; the store would much rather sell you a "hybrid" (usually 1/2 latex and 1/2 memory foam). But if you want to pay 2x as much to get something that lasts 4x as long, what you want is simple, boring, 100% natural latex.
- mundo 7y ago
  This is probably my most confusing slew of downvotes. What do you think, I own a plantation of rubber trees? I thought it was surprising and interesting that something invented ~100 years ago would be an optimal choice in a thriving market full of recent patents. Ah well.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  +1 for latex mattresses. Better than memory foam in every way.
- gilbetron 7y ago
  While we love our natural latex (from flobeds.com, no affiliation!) bed, it doesn't last forever. We had to replace ours at 15 years - while it was still better off than a spring mattress, it still had become worn. It had valleys and clumps - basically the latex was somewhat broken down. Compared to the new mattress, the old was more brittle and would tear easy, while the new one was resilient and springy. The difference between it and normal spring mattresses is amazing though. I highly recommend them!
- uwuhn 7y ago
  Which brand? I've never considered a latex mattress, and I need to replace my current one soon.
  - 7y ago
sfblah 7y ago
When I was 23 and doing startups full time, I slept on a hardwood floor with just a blanket and a pillow. Helped me to get up in the morning and do work, did nothing bad for my body as far as I can tell.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  I've slept on a carpeted floor for decades, zero back issues. Just one night sleeping on a conventional mattress leaves me with weird back pains and a stiff neck. Not only are they costly and a PITA to move, mattresses waste a lot of space too. Traditional Japanese tatami mats are basically the same thing in terms of flatness and hardness, they're not known for having sleep/back troubles.
  - xenospn 7y ago
    I absolutely loved sleeping in Japan and Korea. Tatami on heated floors is an absolute pleasure.
- AJ007 7y ago
  That's ridiculous that you were down voted. My brother slept on a rock hard bed as a kid and is able to sleep on the floor, without a pillow, all night no problem. The soft bed thing is more of a cultural issue than a biological necessity.
  - xenospn 7y ago
    Anyone who has ever been to bootcamp can tell you that it really doesn't matter where you sleep if you're REALLY tired. I would sleep on the ground if they let me. I would fall asleep sitting down, then stand up and fall asleep again. And when I did finally go back to my tent to sleep on my 50 year old army bed in a used sleeping bag, it was the best sleep I ever had.
seldonnn 7y ago
It’s a tech company guys
0zymandias 7y ago
Many engineers would benefit from spending a year in sales and a year in marketing. There is a whole other way to look at products like this that is often missed if you haven’t done the time.
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  Many engineers focus on sales and marketing all the time as a normal course of jobs that involve product management. Many engineers already take into account sales and marketing perspectives in very effective ways, especially quantitative ways that are underused by employees whose sole jobs are exclusively in sales or marketing. It’s very tiring to see engineers be tacitly assumed to need remedial time in other fields to gain sufficient appreciation for them, especially when the reciprocal deficiency of experience in engineering is virtually never raised for sales, marketing, etc. while engineers often do self-learn quite effective product and business skills.
cm2012 7y ago
They could be making better Facebook ads to get that acquisition cost down. The text on the image for a lot of their ads is way too small! https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinwlordbarry/status/1215786907784941570/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinwlordbarry/status/1215786907...
umeshunni 7y ago
For the last 9 months of 2019 (all in USD) Revenue - 312M COGS - 157M Sales & Marketing - 113M General & Administrative - 106M Net profit (loss) - (67M) First thought: How on earth are they spending $11M/month on G&A expenses? On further reading - Casper Labs, our over 25,000 square foot advanced research facility in San Francisco. Ah, ok then... Second thought: Why isn't R&D broken out as a separate line item?
skellera 7y ago
Just wanted to say that working with Casper customer service was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. I bought their top of the line hybrid mattress then a few weeks later they had a sale which could be used on any of their products if you bought a mattress. We really wanted the lamps so we contacted customer service to see if it was possible to get the discount since we just bought the mattress. The girl was extremely rude making it seem like I was wasting her time. She told me that there was no way to add anything to an existing order so I couldn’t do it. I asked if I had to return the mattress and reorder it to get the lamps and she said yes that’s what I would have to do but no I was out of luck because they took too long to respond to me (called after they didn’t respond to any of my messages) so the promotion was over. The whole time she just seemed annoyed that I even tried to ask. Sorry I spent $2000 on a mattress and wanted to spend more on another product. I just returned it and got a Novosbed for half the price and it was way better so I’m pretty glad it turned out that way. Keep in mind that Casper can’t sell a return so they have to donate it. The whole return was a mess to deal with as well. Glad they lost money on the return even if they get to write some of the donation off. Guess my point is that I don’t think Casper treats their customers well. I wouldn’t touch them as an investment. I personally think they’re just cashing out at this point.
- alexandrerond 7y ago
  Do you keep track of all the things you buy in case price goes down so that you can complain to customer support when they do? In my case, I contacted support to see if I could get a discount before making the purchase and they told me to wait two weeks for an upcoming promotion. Also quickly exchanged a defect mattress. Not saying they're the best, but complaining because they don't have retroactive sales....
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- rockinghigh 7y ago
  I don’t see how this is a horrible service experience. There is no expectation of a company to honor future discounts. Would you return a car if its price later dropped or if they suddenly had a better deal?
codingslave 7y ago
The trick is that there are a bunch of mattress companies on Amazon selling really cheap foam mattresses (~200$) that are basically the same as Casper. But Casper jammed a ton of money into branding and marketing, so probably has great margins on their products. Foam mattresses as a product are getting extremely cheap and the quality is really not bad. I have a cheap one and honestly like sleeping on it more than 1200$ spring bed I had.
- discardable_dan 7y ago
  Can you recommend any of these cheap Amazon alternatives?
  - ryana 7y ago
    We bought a Zinus mattress recently. $260 for a queen size and pretty great so far.
    - codingslave 7y ago
      Yeah this is the one I had. I would guess the product is very similar to Casper
    - m0zg 7y ago
      My kid sleeps on one, while I sleep on a Casper, so I can compare side by side. They're more or less the same thing for all intents and purposes, except Zinus is 1/4th the price.
  - Cymen 7y ago
    I love this one: Sleep Innovations Shiloh 12-inch Memory Foam Mattress I've had others staying in our guest bedroom love it too and go out and buy one. At this point, with a number of moves and growing family, I've bought something like 5-6 of them. I think Costco sells the same mattress under Novaflex or a similar name but at a slightly higher price point (the Amazon price varies quite a bit on the Sleep Innovations mattresses -- check CamelCamelCamel on it if curious).
  - 7y ago
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
I bought a Casper off shelf two days ago. It was the only one on the shelf in Target and it was 9.45 PM. It was pricier than I had expected and didn’t understand why it was so expensive. But I needed one pronto and it wasn’t worth my time to go looking for something else that late at night. But I did wonder why it was so expensive..
commoner 7y ago
Casper sued a mattress review site, Sleepopolis, for writing negative reviews of their products. Casper then settled the lawsuit by taking over Sleepopolis. The site now posts only positive reviews of Casper's mattresses. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg... I would take any reviews of Casper's products with a grain of salt.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
  Mattress reviews are notoriously fake. I would take any mattress review with a grain of salt.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    Not to get too meta but undermining reviews is also a tactic used by companies to manipulate sales because if you don’t trust any reviews but still have to make a decision you’re going to go with a “safe” “established” brand which usually means whoever has the most mindshare.
    - awalton 7y ago
      I see how that argument would work for Sealy, Simmons and Serta. I don't see how this would work for Casper or any of the other no-name mattress-in-a-box company.
      - TylerE 7y ago
        Given the amount of advertising most of these companies (especially Casper) they're hardly no-name.
      - adjkant 7y ago
        For younger people who want easy choices I have 100% seen this lead people to default to Casper. I send around the article on their practices regularly due to this, and buy my mattresses off Wayfair mostly based on price and basic sanity checking. Right now I have an incredible 14 inches of Queen memory foam I got for $400 that's incredible to sleep on. The brand? A no name. What I've taken away from the mattress craziness is that if you exclude the fancy things like temperature adjustment and sleep number stuff, most basic mattresses come down to basic material and then secondly firmness. As long as you get those two things right they kinda all seem to be the same.
xivzgrev 7y ago
Great business story. They quickly capitalized on a trend (tuft and needle started 2 years before), pumped it up with great marketing and distribution, and now are making their exit before a recession. Would. Not. Buy.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Feels like in all of these booming startup segments there's always an Uber.
b0tch7 7y ago
I did an insane amount of research when buying my mattress a couple years back, there are _so_ many bed-in-a-box companies now. Decided on Helix Sleep because they offer a level of customisation, and their customer support is rated incredibly highly (which I decided very important if you're going to buy a mattress without trying it). I love my Helix so much so that I convinced my parents to buy one. They didn't love theirs and sure enough, customer service was hassle-free with the return. So my n=2 recommendation: Helix is the way to go That said those Glow Lights do seem pretty awesome
xwdv 7y ago
The product I like from Casper isn’t their mattress – It’s their lights. They’re god damn incredible, I sleep peacefully thanks to those. They should just focus on stuff like that.
0xADEADBEE 7y ago
A genuinely enjoyable long-form post I read a while back involved Casper [0]. Not sure how germane it is but perhaps someone will enjoy it. [0] - https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...
rtny4821 7y ago
Casper should buy calm.com
sb057 7y ago
Unsolicited advice: buy the cheapest mattress (that doesn't squeal) that you can find and slap a $50 memory foam topper on top of it. That maxes out my comfort level.
someonehere 7y ago
Casper’s return policy is wasteful. 100 nights or your money back. After two days we didn’t like the mattress. Emailed support and told them we weren’t happy with it. The next day 1800 Junk truck came out and trashed the mattress. So essentially their returned mattresses go into the landfill and become waste if you’re not happy with it.
- johnpowell 7y ago
  Maybe they don't want a bedbug invasion in their warehouse. I bought a cushion for my desk chair from Amazon and it turned out to be garbage so I tried to return it. They said they could only give me a refund if I sent them a picture of the cut up cushion. I didn't have to send it back, just send a picture of it with a big gash down the middle. I guess, at least with 1800 Junk there is a good chance a employee will pluck the mattress out and put it up on Craigslist.
- scarface74 7y ago
  What do you suggest they do? Sell a used mattress?
- joshmn 7y ago
  I wonder what would have happened if you told them you were in the middle of nowhere.
tesmar2 7y ago
We tried the memory-foam-in-a-box mattresses and they were not good (leesa - I suspect Casper is similar.). We just ordered and received a latex mattress from Arizona (https://www.mattresses.net https://www.mattresses.net) and it's so much better. I don't work for or have any affiliation with them, I just hope this helps someone else.
raverbashing 7y ago
I think this is who put it more succinctly: "Casper is a very inefficient wealth transfer from venture capitalists to prestige podcast makers" https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1215734138981928960 https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1215734138981928960
- speedplane 7y ago
  > "Casper is a very inefficient wealth transfer from venture capitalists to prestige podcast makers" ___[Big Well Known Consumer Products Company]___ is a very inefficient wealth transfer from ___[Blue Chip Stock Investors]___ to prestige ___[Traditional Media Companies]___

133 points by jonknee 7y ago

I haven't been in the market for a mattress for awhile now but went on Casper's website and was shocked to see the price for a Queen is now $1095. I didn't remember it being that high, and checked Wayback and sure enough it was $850 in 2015, and $950 in 2017. Given how many copycats are out there, many selling for much less, can someone help me understand how Casper gets away with selling a $1095 mattress + tax to a majority millennial crowd, who are supposedly cash strapped, and doing so successfully?

rolltiide 7y ago
> can someone help me understand how Casper gets away with selling a $1095 mattress + tax to a majority millennial crowd, who are supposedly cash strapped, and doing so successfully? Because the mattress sellers in the bad part of town still charge 3x more.
- blackearl 7y ago
  I got a great mattress from an outlet, queen size for about $400. I was blown away thinking that Casper was going to be cheaper. They just have good marketing I think
  - criddell 7y ago
    A memory foam mattress for $400? That's a very good deal. The only Casper product I have is a dog bed and it's great.
    - cwyers 7y ago
      I got Costco's house brand memory foam mattress for that when it was on sale. Best mattress I've ever owned. (And I probably wouldn't have it if I hadn't tested out a memory foam mattress at a Casper store, in a bit of irony.)
    - blackearl 7y ago
      Not foam, it's some hybrid spring thing. There's so much crap out there it's hard to know what's real and what's BS
  - opportune 7y ago
    I got my favorite mattress ever from Amazon and it cost like $350 for a (firm) queen foam mattress, box spring, and frame. Casper (or someone writing about them) once wrote a blog post about how they got into the mattress business because they saw unnecessarily huge margins and direct to consumer opportunity. Now they are opening physical stores and not even charging much differently from regular mattresses. I’m just going to keep buying cheap Chinese mattresses that don’t spend hundreds of dollars per purchase on advertising
- ivalm 7y ago
  Go to Costco, Living Spaces, or a myriad of other non-seedy stores and get a mattress for half the price.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    and people also dont need to go to the artisanal grocery store for food, doesnt mean there isnt a market The point is that the only reason Casper is “controversial” here is because IPOs have been elevated to a coveted version of success when it has nothing to do with anything aside from being unnecessarily rare. Casper is just a vertically integrated mattress seller accessing the public markets now
    - ivalm 7y ago
      I replied to > Because the mattress sellers in the bad part of town still charge 3x more [than casper]. Which is not true. I understand there are premium choices, but this was not what I was replying to.
gooseus 7y ago
I'm guessing market dominance from years of targeted advertising on podcasts as well as buying/bullying mattress reviewer websites to make sure they stay as the highest rated. HN from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321807 "Casper went to war with popular mattress review site, then financed its takeover"
- tempsy 7y ago
  so even people who are cash strapped are willing to overpay for a commodity item if they perceive it to be the best in a certain price range...? i guess purchasing behavior is very different for things you buy very infrequently like a mattress? looking at Costco and a highly rated foam comparable to Casper is $500...
  - blackearl 7y ago
    It's really hard to know what's a good price for a mattress. You might buy 1 per decade, people forget what the experience or price was like. I spent a lot of time researching then gave up and went to a "mattress outlet" laid on a few, then got one for around $400. I sleep fine, probably better than I ever have. There's also so much info on springs, foam, latex, rubber, on and on. It's overwhelming. Casper has good marketing and make it easy, and since it's so hard to compare, they just need to be close to other prices. They don't need to go full walmart
    - tempsy 7y ago
      $1100+tax is more than double what you'd pay at Ikea, Amazon, Costco, etc. I thought the promise of all these direct-to-consumer products was to pass savings onto the consumer because they are vertically integrated and cut out scammy middle men. Seems like all that's happened is they just keep fat margins for themselves.
      - Paperweight 7y ago
        Started-up with principles. Got big. Reverted to the beancounter corporate mean. Now charging what the market will bear. Opportunity now open for new startup with principles. Rinse and repeat.
chris_engel 7y ago
I guess its because many people think that they need to sleep well in this hectic times and cannot allow themselves tu cut cost on a mattress. Expensive = good quality. Turns out this is nonsense - we have a foundation in germany that does independend product tests for all varieties of things and came to the conclusion that the best mattress they ever tested was some 200€ mattress.
- topkai22 7y ago
  We have the same in the US (consumer reports) and the Casper hybrid mattress currently has the 2nd highest rating. Expensive is not necessarily better, but it is often correlated. It’s worth noting European sleep preferences are different than Americans, tending to prefer much firmer mattresses, so different testing results make sense.
  - smabie 7y ago
    That’s pretty interesting, why do you think Europeans have different preferences. I guess I (maybe naively) assumed that the distribution of preference would be the same for all countries.
dirtyid 7y ago
Brand appeal I suppose. I remember 1/2 the Casper price tag goes to marketing - I just bought a generic Amazon Zinus for 1/2 the price that research suggested came from the same foam factory. Seems like Zinus has gone down in cost in the last few years as one would expect with economy of scale while Casper has gone up one, $250 now from Amazon shipped, 1/4 of Casper. Simultaneously feels like Casper has cut back on marketing. Also Zinus is a 40 year old Korean company that's been doing bedding for for 15 years compared to Casper, a tech company that's been around for 5. It seems like a no brainer decision for anyone doing rudimentary research.
- seesaw 7y ago
  I got two Zinus mattresses from Amazon for about $400 total. It has been only two months, but I have been happy so far.
  - coldcode 7y ago
    I have a Zinus I paid like $250 at most on it and it's the best mattress I've ever slept on. But, I ordered one for the guest room and it did not fully expand, so I talked with Amazon and they sent me another one. I took the first one apart, it's pretty simple set of I vaguely remember 4 layers of different foam types. Making these mattresses is pretty simple for all the brands, so the profit margin on an expensive name brand is very high. All you need is a good vacuum and decent packaging for the foam types. I have no idea why anyone would pay $1000-$3000 for a mattress.
dawnerd 7y ago
Costco just had them for 480 bucks. I picked one up, so far it's been worth it.
- ra7 7y ago
  Same and it was a fantastic deal. Even without the holiday discount, Costco sells it for $599 which is close to 50% discount on Casper's $1095 price. They brand it as 'Casper Select', but it's essentially same as the the original.
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    It's price discrimination. The market for a $1,095 mattress wouldn't be caught dead shopping at CostCo, even if it's the exact same mattress. The "Select" branding isn't there to bamboozle them, it's to help them rationalize paying $500 more to be known as someone above shopping at CostCo. Casper wants one person's $1,095, and another's $599, so they use branding and channel differentiation to scoop $1,694 from both sales, instead of $1,095 for just one, or $1,198 for both. If we presume their cost is $400, then they go from $398 in margin (two sales at $599) or $695 in margin (one sale at $1,095) to $894 in margin. That's good business!
    - tempsy 7y ago
      what? Costco isn't for the poors - if anything it's the preferred destination of the upper middle suburban class. they sell high ends things. a lot of it. i'm guessing Casper's main customer base is, again, cash-strapped millennials, so to argue that these customers are somehow above Costco is a strange take.
    - cmdshiftf4 7y ago
      >The market for a $1,095 mattress wouldn't be caught dead shopping at CostCo, even if it's the exact same mattress. That's quite an assumption you're making there. I buy a lot of what I need from CostCo, I also spent over $1k on a mattress and have spent further thousands on high quality bedding. It's erroneous to conflate CostCo with cheap. They're a members only buying club which tends to buy high quality stock in huge quantities, taking advantage of the economies of scale on offer to them. Plus Zuckerberg shops there. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/photo-facebook-billionaire-mark-zuckerberg-at-costco.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/photo-facebook-billionaire-m...
meddlepal 7y ago
I just spent 1600+ on a (really nice) new queen. I spend a lot of time on my mattress... might as well buy a nice one I really like (Stearns & Foster)
starpilot 7y ago
This is preying on "wellness" concerns. Casper convinces you that a problem exists where it previously (probably) did not, that your sleep is suboptimal, and that only they can fix it for you. Prehistory, humans slept on beds of grasses or reeds on the ground. I still think 80% of your sleep quality is determined by what you do in the day: caffeine intake, amount of physical activity, overall stress level. I have a Casper. I found it way too firm as a side sleeper, but it was too late to return it, so I bought a $100 memory foam topper from Costco to make it more squishy. I could have saved a lot of money by buying Zinus mattress from Amazon and adding the topper, but oh well.
astura 7y ago
Advertising/marketing. People often perceive a mattress as "very important," as sleep is important, and are willing to spend a bit extra if they think the quality will be there and they'll sleep better. In reality I believe most of these "mattress in a box" companies are selling the same 2-3 mattress manufactured in the same factory. Personally, I buy mattress in the $300-$500 range. When I was in college I just slept on a brick of foam because that was what I could afford.
- Lotus123 7y ago
  http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/
- xchaotic 7y ago
  It is important. Given how much time you spend sleeping and people complain about spending $1000. But they don’t complain about a $30000 car they spend less than half the time in.
  - astura 7y ago
    The same or very similar mattresses are rebranded and resold as vastly different price points. Mattress sales is mostly marketing. When I was researching mattresses years ago the takeaway was basically price and satisfaction/quality of sleep are not correlated very much.
rconti 7y ago
And they're disrupting sleep by advertising on podcasts and cutting out middlemen and... now opening stores. eyeroll
ivalm 7y ago
Maybe they don't buy Casper? I am not cash strapped but shopped around a little bit and got a (very satisfying) queen size mattress for $600 last year @ Living Spaces.
discardable_dan 7y ago
I bought a queen at Costco this year for $599.
master-litty 7y ago
Casper caters to stress, ripoff anxiety, social anxiety, and budget. 1. We, the millennial crowd (tm), are insanely stressed on average. Whether it's objectively genuine or falsely perceived, brought on by ourselves or otherwise, it is something we enjoy having control over -- And choosing a "simple" mattress that is straightforward to research and buy caters to that desire perfectly. For awhile Casper only had one mattress, and it seemed like an irrefutably decent mattress. You simply chose the size! 2. If you don't like the mattress you can return it within a period of time. Mattress sellers often offer this, but Casper advertises it. It adds a sense of authenticity to the sale, and I think many people (not just millenials) feel more at peace about buying the mattress without trying it first. 3. It's shipped to you and comes in a box. Usually there's no talking involved. Nobody has to come into your home. Regardless, many of us don't even have a vehicle to pick up a mattress with anyway, nor the available friends to help bring it in through the front door. Maybe a delivery person would help but what if they don't? And what if you miss the delivery? 4. Monthly payments. I feel most millennials don't really care about the total cost of something, as long as there's a monthly payment option that is reasonable. Paycheck-to-paycheck is the format we're used to budgeting in, which easily puts a monthly payment into perspective. $35/month versus $350 upfront is way more manageable.

Ohn0 7y ago

I'm so tired of this

rolltiide 7y ago
Why? In a less costly regulatory environment it would happen way more frequently and it would not be elevated as news https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in-the-us-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in... Edit since I am rate limited: yes it is the best comparison. Let the public access more securities investments, the tools to manage risk are numerous.
- jaypeg25 7y ago
  I'm all for having more IPO's (my job is actually advocating for policies that make it easier/cheaper for companies to go public) - but maybe this isn't the best comparison to make: "While this [# of IPOs in 2019] was an increase from the past few years, it was half the number of twenty years ago, while the Dot Com Bubble was forming."
null_turkey 7y ago
I'm not totally sure what 'this' is referencing, but if its the feeling that there are too many IPOs -- I see it as a good thing! It's so hard to find investments where a company hasn't hit their biggest growth period yet. It feels like you need to be in some inner circle of investors to get in on some of that action. I probably wouldn't invest in Casper, but I hope the number of IPOs keeps increasing!
atyppo 7y ago
IPOs have precipitously declined since the 90s. In 1999, there were 486 IPOs. There are now approximately 190 per year. [1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in-the-us-since-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270290/number-of-ipos-in...
- awalton 7y ago
  You're going to go with the dot-com bubble era for a comparison here?

samcampbell 7y ago

Disaggregated Revenue Data (Nine months ended September 30) Direct to Consumer: 2018- $239M; 2019- $259M [13% YoY growth] Wholesale: 2018- $31M; 2019- $54M [75% YoY growth] "20.3% year-over-year net revenue growth for the nine months ended September 30, 2019" "We have also expanded our gross margin from 42.8% in 2016 to 44.1% in 2018 and to 50.7% for the three months ended September 30, 2019"

sharkmerry 7y ago
Their Net Loss is still on pace to be about (90m) (most likely slightly more due to sales in Q4 being higher than others). 2018 was 93m Net loss
whoisjuan 7y ago
It seems that they already saturated their Direct to Consumer channel and all their growth is now dependent on their wholesale efforts. It seems risky to me, especially with a slow-cycle business like mattresses. Also what happens if retailers create their own premium brands and/or secure exclusivity deals with other manufacturers?
- blackearl 7y ago
  No better time to dump the business on the market and run
- paxys 7y ago
  Risky, yes, but the US mattress market has an annual revenue of ~$15 billion, so wholesale is definitely the area where they can expand a lot.
throwlaplace 7y ago
those are great (fantastic?) margins but i don't understand why they're not higher? there are so many memory foam mattresses on amazon that are exactly the same thing (maybe slightly shallower "soft foam" that run for e.g. ~300 for a queen that are themselves probably making great margins.

opportune 7y ago

Interesting that they want to explore medical devices, “sleep services”, and sleep supplements. Guess they are marketing themselves as the Amazon of sleep? Because right now all I know about them is that they sell overpriced mattresses

dguo 7y ago
You are correct: https://fortune.com/2016/04/19/casper-amazon-of-sleep/ https://fortune.com/2016/04/19/casper-amazon-of-sleep/
cmdshiftf4 7y ago
Though my initial response to the title was to laugh, upon further thought I think they're actually making a smart play here. They're essentially betting on "optimizing wellness" being a huge fad this decade, which I believe many others are predicting, and are using their current position to get more cash to get ahead of that. I don't associate Casper with "a quality night of sleep", probably because I'm happy with my current mattress and have no need of their product, but at the same time I couldn't name a single one of the current applications that exist to track + "optimize" sleep / circadian cycles, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that, so who knows? Maybe in 2030 we'll all be moaning about Casper putting up their Nighty Night subscription another $7 for "HD dreams" and reluctantly acquiescing to it.

root_axis 7y ago

Just want to shout out to the Casper Glow Lights, those things are awesome. Interesting to see a mattress company expand into other cool products.

Humdeee 7y ago
I've been using 2 of them now for well over a year and they've been excellent. I fall asleep with them every night. It's a well engineered product. The only minor criticism I could give is the dimming functionality by spinning while in the charging platform could work a little better.

mundo 7y ago

I bought a latex mattress several years ago, and will never buy another mattress. (Literally, they last 50+ years) Feels great, available in a range of firmness, no weird smells, never deforms, doesn't get hot, and naturally insect/mold resistant. I think I paid 1300 USD for a king size. I know that's only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, I'm just mentioning this since I had trouble finding much info on them. Latex is not promoted or advertised much, since they have very low markup compared to other mattresses; the store would much rather sell you a "hybrid" (usually 1/2 latex and 1/2 memory foam). But if you want to pay 2x as much to get something that lasts 4x as long, what you want is simple, boring, 100% natural latex.

mundo 7y ago
This is probably my most confusing slew of downvotes. What do you think, I own a plantation of rubber trees? I thought it was surprising and interesting that something invented ~100 years ago would be an optimal choice in a thriving market full of recent patents. Ah well.
cycrutchfield 7y ago
+1 for latex mattresses. Better than memory foam in every way.
gilbetron 7y ago
While we love our natural latex (from flobeds.com, no affiliation!) bed, it doesn't last forever. We had to replace ours at 15 years - while it was still better off than a spring mattress, it still had become worn. It had valleys and clumps - basically the latex was somewhat broken down. Compared to the new mattress, the old was more brittle and would tear easy, while the new one was resilient and springy. The difference between it and normal spring mattresses is amazing though. I highly recommend them!
uwuhn 7y ago
Which brand? I've never considered a latex mattress, and I need to replace my current one soon.
- 7y ago

sfblah 7y ago

When I was 23 and doing startups full time, I slept on a hardwood floor with just a blanket and a pillow. Helped me to get up in the morning and do work, did nothing bad for my body as far as I can tell.

newnewpdro 7y ago
I've slept on a carpeted floor for decades, zero back issues. Just one night sleeping on a conventional mattress leaves me with weird back pains and a stiff neck. Not only are they costly and a PITA to move, mattresses waste a lot of space too. Traditional Japanese tatami mats are basically the same thing in terms of flatness and hardness, they're not known for having sleep/back troubles.
- xenospn 7y ago
  I absolutely loved sleeping in Japan and Korea. Tatami on heated floors is an absolute pleasure.
AJ007 7y ago
That's ridiculous that you were down voted. My brother slept on a rock hard bed as a kid and is able to sleep on the floor, without a pillow, all night no problem. The soft bed thing is more of a cultural issue than a biological necessity.
- xenospn 7y ago
  Anyone who has ever been to bootcamp can tell you that it really doesn't matter where you sleep if you're REALLY tired. I would sleep on the ground if they let me. I would fall asleep sitting down, then stand up and fall asleep again. And when I did finally go back to my tent to sleep on my 50 year old army bed in a used sleeping bag, it was the best sleep I ever had.

seldonnn 7y ago

It’s a tech company guys

0zymandias 7y ago

Many engineers would benefit from spending a year in sales and a year in marketing. There is a whole other way to look at products like this that is often missed if you haven’t done the time.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
Many engineers focus on sales and marketing all the time as a normal course of jobs that involve product management. Many engineers already take into account sales and marketing perspectives in very effective ways, especially quantitative ways that are underused by employees whose sole jobs are exclusively in sales or marketing. It’s very tiring to see engineers be tacitly assumed to need remedial time in other fields to gain sufficient appreciation for them, especially when the reciprocal deficiency of experience in engineering is virtually never raised for sales, marketing, etc. while engineers often do self-learn quite effective product and business skills.

cm2012 7y ago

They could be making better Facebook ads to get that acquisition cost down. The text on the image for a lot of their ads is way too small! https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinwlordbarry/status/1215786907784941570/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/kevinwlordbarry/status/1215786907...

umeshunni 7y ago

For the last 9 months of 2019 (all in USD) Revenue - 312M COGS - 157M Sales & Marketing - 113M General & Administrative - 106M Net profit (loss) - (67M) First thought: How on earth are they spending $11M/month on G&A expenses? On further reading - Casper Labs, our over 25,000 square foot advanced research facility in San Francisco. Ah, ok then... Second thought: Why isn't R&D broken out as a separate line item?

skellera 7y ago

Just wanted to say that working with Casper customer service was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. I bought their top of the line hybrid mattress then a few weeks later they had a sale which could be used on any of their products if you bought a mattress. We really wanted the lamps so we contacted customer service to see if it was possible to get the discount since we just bought the mattress. The girl was extremely rude making it seem like I was wasting her time. She told me that there was no way to add anything to an existing order so I couldn’t do it. I asked if I had to return the mattress and reorder it to get the lamps and she said yes that’s what I would have to do but no I was out of luck because they took too long to respond to me (called after they didn’t respond to any of my messages) so the promotion was over. The whole time she just seemed annoyed that I even tried to ask. Sorry I spent $2000 on a mattress and wanted to spend more on another product. I just returned it and got a Novosbed for half the price and it was way better so I’m pretty glad it turned out that way. Keep in mind that Casper can’t sell a return so they have to donate it. The whole return was a mess to deal with as well. Glad they lost money on the return even if they get to write some of the donation off. Guess my point is that I don’t think Casper treats their customers well. I wouldn’t touch them as an investment. I personally think they’re just cashing out at this point.

alexandrerond 7y ago
Do you keep track of all the things you buy in case price goes down so that you can complain to customer support when they do? In my case, I contacted support to see if I could get a discount before making the purchase and they told me to wait two weeks for an upcoming promotion. Also quickly exchanged a defect mattress. Not saying they're the best, but complaining because they don't have retroactive sales....
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
rockinghigh 7y ago
I don’t see how this is a horrible service experience. There is no expectation of a company to honor future discounts. Would you return a car if its price later dropped or if they suddenly had a better deal?

codingslave 7y ago

The trick is that there are a bunch of mattress companies on Amazon selling really cheap foam mattresses (~200$) that are basically the same as Casper. But Casper jammed a ton of money into branding and marketing, so probably has great margins on their products. Foam mattresses as a product are getting extremely cheap and the quality is really not bad. I have a cheap one and honestly like sleeping on it more than 1200$ spring bed I had.

discardable_dan 7y ago
Can you recommend any of these cheap Amazon alternatives?
- ryana 7y ago
  We bought a Zinus mattress recently. $260 for a queen size and pretty great so far.
  - codingslave 7y ago
    Yeah this is the one I had. I would guess the product is very similar to Casper
  - m0zg 7y ago
    My kid sleeps on one, while I sleep on a Casper, so I can compare side by side. They're more or less the same thing for all intents and purposes, except Zinus is 1/4th the price.
- Cymen 7y ago
  I love this one: Sleep Innovations Shiloh 12-inch Memory Foam Mattress I've had others staying in our guest bedroom love it too and go out and buy one. At this point, with a number of moves and growing family, I've bought something like 5-6 of them. I think Costco sells the same mattress under Novaflex or a similar name but at a slightly higher price point (the Amazon price varies quite a bit on the Sleep Innovations mattresses -- check CamelCamelCamel on it if curious).
- 7y ago

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

I bought a Casper off shelf two days ago. It was the only one on the shelf in Target and it was 9.45 PM. It was pricier than I had expected and didn’t understand why it was so expensive. But I needed one pronto and it wasn’t worth my time to go looking for something else that late at night. But I did wonder why it was so expensive..

commoner 7y ago

Casper sued a mattress review site, Sleepopolis, for writing negative reviews of their products. Casper then settled the lawsuit by taking over Sleepopolis. The site now posts only positive reviews of Casper's mattresses. https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg... I would take any reviews of Casper's products with a grain of salt.

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Mattress reviews are notoriously fake. I would take any mattress review with a grain of salt.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Not to get too meta but undermining reviews is also a tactic used by companies to manipulate sales because if you don’t trust any reviews but still have to make a decision you’re going to go with a “safe” “established” brand which usually means whoever has the most mindshare.
  - awalton 7y ago
    I see how that argument would work for Sealy, Simmons and Serta. I don't see how this would work for Casper or any of the other no-name mattress-in-a-box company.
    - TylerE 7y ago
      Given the amount of advertising most of these companies (especially Casper) they're hardly no-name.
    - adjkant 7y ago
      For younger people who want easy choices I have 100% seen this lead people to default to Casper. I send around the article on their practices regularly due to this, and buy my mattresses off Wayfair mostly based on price and basic sanity checking. Right now I have an incredible 14 inches of Queen memory foam I got for $400 that's incredible to sleep on. The brand? A no name. What I've taken away from the mattress craziness is that if you exclude the fancy things like temperature adjustment and sleep number stuff, most basic mattresses come down to basic material and then secondly firmness. As long as you get those two things right they kinda all seem to be the same.

xivzgrev 7y ago

Great business story. They quickly capitalized on a trend (tuft and needle started 2 years before), pumped it up with great marketing and distribution, and now are making their exit before a recession. Would. Not. Buy.

Apocryphon 7y ago
Feels like in all of these booming startup segments there's always an Uber.

b0tch7 7y ago

I did an insane amount of research when buying my mattress a couple years back, there are _so_ many bed-in-a-box companies now. Decided on Helix Sleep because they offer a level of customisation, and their customer support is rated incredibly highly (which I decided very important if you're going to buy a mattress without trying it). I love my Helix so much so that I convinced my parents to buy one. They didn't love theirs and sure enough, customer service was hassle-free with the return. So my n=2 recommendation: Helix is the way to go That said those Glow Lights do seem pretty awesome

xwdv 7y ago

The product I like from Casper isn’t their mattress – It’s their lights. They’re god damn incredible, I sleep peacefully thanks to those. They should just focus on stuff like that.

0xADEADBEE 7y ago

A genuinely enjoyable long-form post I read a while back involved Casper [0]. Not sure how germane it is but perhaps someone will enjoy it. [0] - https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-blogg...

rtny4821 7y ago

Casper should buy calm.com

sb057 7y ago

Unsolicited advice: buy the cheapest mattress (that doesn't squeal) that you can find and slap a $50 memory foam topper on top of it. That maxes out my comfort level.

someonehere 7y ago

Casper’s return policy is wasteful. 100 nights or your money back. After two days we didn’t like the mattress. Emailed support and told them we weren’t happy with it. The next day 1800 Junk truck came out and trashed the mattress. So essentially their returned mattresses go into the landfill and become waste if you’re not happy with it.

johnpowell 7y ago
Maybe they don't want a bedbug invasion in their warehouse. I bought a cushion for my desk chair from Amazon and it turned out to be garbage so I tried to return it. They said they could only give me a refund if I sent them a picture of the cut up cushion. I didn't have to send it back, just send a picture of it with a big gash down the middle. I guess, at least with 1800 Junk there is a good chance a employee will pluck the mattress out and put it up on Craigslist.
scarface74 7y ago
What do you suggest they do? Sell a used mattress?
joshmn 7y ago
I wonder what would have happened if you told them you were in the middle of nowhere.

tesmar2 7y ago

We tried the memory-foam-in-a-box mattresses and they were not good (leesa - I suspect Casper is similar.). We just ordered and received a latex mattress from Arizona (https://www.mattresses.net https://www.mattresses.net) and it's so much better. I don't work for or have any affiliation with them, I just hope this helps someone else.

raverbashing 7y ago

I think this is who put it more succinctly: "Casper is a very inefficient wealth transfer from venture capitalists to prestige podcast makers" https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1215734138981928960 https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1215734138981928960

speedplane 7y ago
> "Casper is a very inefficient wealth transfer from venture capitalists to prestige podcast makers" ___[Big Well Known Consumer Products Company]___ is a very inefficient wealth transfer from ___[Blue Chip Stock Investors]___ to prestige ___[Traditional Media Companies]___