We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses

The core problems of the mattress industry (which are not present in eyeglasses industry) are the high costs of shipping and expensive warehouse costs.<p>Given these, Bed In A Box (<a href="http://www.bedinabox.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bedinabox.com/</a>) started with what seemed like it could be a potentially disruptive business model. They make-to-order mattresses (will even make custom sizes) and ship Tempurpedic-like memory foam mattresses directly to you via UPS. They suck all the air out of the mattresses so the boxes they come in are reasonably sized. Inside the box, there's a backpack-style sack which makes the mattress easier to carry. I hauled a Queen-sized mattress up four flights of stairs easily.<p>I've purchased two mattresses through them and they are high quality and extremely comfortable. The first purchase they were easily 50% the cost of any quality mattress I could find elsewhere (including Costco, Sams Club, etc.), especially if you factored in the cost of delivery. I was surprised that when I went to buy another mattress from them their prices were markedly higher.<p>I wonder if consumers were concerned that the low prices indicated low quality (not the case in my experience) or if they were unable to get the volume to sustain a low margin, high velocity business.

While you're disrupting the mattress industry, please consider re-thinking the King form factor. Changing the aspect ratio by just a few inches would make it perfectly square, which allows for you to rotate 90 degrees as well as flip, so the whole thing would wear out more evenly.<p>As an extra bonus, this would make putting sheets on easier as there's no wrong way (short of inside-out, I guess).

There are all sorts of outlets for reasonably priced, what you see is what you get mattresses: Sam's Club. Costco. Ikea. You can get a decent name brand mainstream mattress for ~$500.<p>The problem with mattresses is that it's a product where you need a salesman. There's a bunch of different products that look similar, but have significant differences. You want to match the customer with what they want (or tell them what they want) so that they don't return the thing.<p>Plus, there are some inherent logistical differences between a pair of eyeglasses that can be dropped in an envelope and shipped to anywhere in a day or two. Distribution and warehousing is expensive, the product needs to be delivered quickly (and picked up if the customer is displeased).<p>There is a market for discount mattress sales outlets on the internet -- but just as online furniture and appliance outlets haven't "disrupted" the market, mattresses online are unlikely to either.

If you attempt this, I suggest you make a deal with a motel chain: When a customer checks into a room, they discover a little sign on the bed. The sign says, "Like this mattress? Get a brand-new copy delivered to your home for $X00 by visiting mattressr.com and entering bed code MEDIUMSOFT-23."

I'm not sure if you can count this as a startup, but I bought my King-sized Sleep Innovations (memory foam) mattress with Amazon Prime for $530. And if I wanted the less-think 10" one, it would be $400.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Innovations-12-inch-Memory-Mattress/dp/B003CT37LA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&#38;qid=1347644459&#38;sr=8-3&#38;keywords=king+size+memory+foam" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Innovations-12-inch-Memory-Mattr...</a><p>The damn thing was ~100lbs in a giant box, and I got it shipped to me free. It's super comfortable and well worth the money - remember you sleep for like 25% of your life.<p>Mattresses seem like less of a specialty-item than eye glasses, so I wonder if big online retailers like Amazon can just cut out the middle man and service 80-90% of customers?

Having worked for one of the major mattress firms, there are truths in the article, but also some serious mistakes.<p>The pricing structure, where they hide the models by using different names across retailers, is 100% true. They absolutely do that to prevent price shopping.<p>The markup math is off. Mattresses are a high margin business, but most of those mattresses you see in specialty retailers are not built until someone buys one. You see, those mattresses are custom to the customer - from the tick (stitching pattern, which creates a firmer or softer surface) to the foam density, to EVERYTHING. It's like ordering a car where the car is measured to a specific person's height, weight and engine preference. You can imagine what a returned mattress is worth. Pretty much nothing. The margins have to cover all of that. Are the margins good? Yes. Would a small company be able to cut their margins to make one-off custom mattresses and compete? ...maybe.<p>Finally, there are retail outlets - Costco, Ikea, that buy from those mattress companies in bulk and sell generic mattresses much cheaper.<p>So, yeah, there's some market there but not as rich as some might think.

"By the time a customer buys a mattress, it costs them ~74% more than the production cost of the product."<p>I'm not arguing that the mattress industry isn't ripe for disruption, but very rarely is value delivered directly related to the cost of production.<p>COGS is often difficult to accurately estimate (how much do you allocate R&#38;D and other overhead?).<p>An iPhone 5 may only contain $110 worth of silicon, but the value delivered is a lot more than the raw material cost. Jony Ive's salary represents a tiny fraction of each iPhone, but his design and influence represents a significant chunk of the profit.

We need a Warby Parker for Diamonds!<p>1. Oligopoly market structure CHECK 2. Insane gross margins CHECK 3. Opaque and misleading product naming CHECK 4. Expensive distribution through unpleasant channels CHECK CHECK CHECK

<i>Like any startup idea, there will be objections. Shipping mattresses is expensive, people want to lie on them first, mattresses require research and development spending to develop, a mattress purchase only happens once a decade, etc. All these objections might be right, but they all sound surmountable.</i><p>They might be surmountable, but that doesn't make this a better opportunity than a lot of the other opportunities out there, especially for a startup. The costs involved with disrupting the mattress industry as a manufacturer AND retailer are better left to a larger company. Like IKEA, as the article itself pointed out.

FWIW, Warby Parker was not the first web-based retailer to undercut traditional eyewear sales, nor are they the cheapest. They do seem to have the best PR, though.

I am working at a company that is trying to do just that.<p><a href="http://saatvamattress.com/" rel="nofollow">http://saatvamattress.com/</a>

I'd think a better model for disruption would be Priceline. Name a price and let local mattress stores supply it.<p>My Luxotica/Ray Bans were made in Italy and (on sale) aren't any more expensive than the Chinese made Warby Parker sunglasses.

One advantage that the eyeglass market has is massive tax favorability in the U.S.<p>I believe it's still the case that prescription eyeglasses can be bought with pre-tax dollars under a "use it or lose it" flex savings plan. I assume vision plans, which often include large purchase credits for eyeglasses at least biennially, are also tax deductible benefits.<p>The result is often relatively price-insensitive consumers who "have" to spend $200+ on glasses lest they not be taking full advantage of their benefit.

For reference, here is a publicly traded retail mattress seller and it doesn't appear from their profile that they manufacture but only resell:<p><a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MFRM+Key+Statistics" rel="nofollow">http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MFRM+Key+Statistics</a><p>Take note of the margins, this isn't Microsoft sized here.<p>They have almost 900 stores in 27 states.<p>The article therefore is based on the idea of manufacturing your own mattress and selling web based. Unfortunately this would require warehouses around the country and a manufacturing facility in this country to make the mattresses. Although I'm not sure, I would imagine it would not be cost effective to ship a mattress from China (although I guess Mexico is possible) because of the size and weight. So this is not selling sunglasses or fashion eyewear which can easily be manufactured overseas as well as easily shipped (and returned).

A couple of years ago I was looking for a Tempur-Pedic style mattress, but didn't want to spend thousands for one. After doing a lot of research I found Isoform mattresses. They are only available through the mail and have a 90-day return window if you're not happy. It would be very expensive to ship numerous mattresses, but the trial of one with no commitment to buy is pretty good.

The Author shouldn't have credited Dornob for the first picture of a dreamer, but the original project, which was done by students: <a href="http://www.behance.net/gallery/Dreamers/313618" rel="nofollow">http://www.behance.net/gallery/Dreamers/313618</a> Wasn't hard to find out - Dornob linked to it. So should everybody who uses other's images.

Like glasses, it's an interesting disruption opportunity due to the sheer size of demand. Just about 100% of the population sleeps on a mattress. It's hard to find other industries with so much penetration of demand and such inefficient competition.<p>These days it doesn't seem like outbound distribution is too big of a deal (many mattresses are shippable in rolled or compressed-box form), it's the reverse logistics that are tricky. Once the genie is out of the bottle, good luck getting it back in. I'd love to be able to try out a mattress, like Zappos shoes or Bonobos pants, and return them for free if I'm not 100% happy. Maybe someone needs to invent an easily-compressable mattress so I can purchase online with total confidence.

I bought a keetsa mattress years ago and love it. The op bought one too. It seems like the best thing to do here would be to just continue to support keetsa as they really are doing a good job on pretty much all angles. Keetsa is the Warby Parker here.

I just bought a mattress a few months ago, and I agree whole-heartedly with this post. My solution was to buy a foam mattress from bedinabox.com, which I would say is the Warby Parker for mattresses.

Maybe instead of focussing on selling mattresses you should focus on some sort of price comparison machine where you can enter what characteristica you want to (must have memory foam, must be this size, must be x, y and z) and then have the machine find close matches and display the variours prices? That way it won't matter if they fix the name, since you don't compare the mattresses on names, but on features.

I just got 5 frames from WP in the mail for "in home try on." The quality of the glasses are sup-par. They feel like frames you would find at the gas station. Yes the frames are stylish, but for anyone who has bought glasses their entire lives, you would know right away why these cost $95. There is a company that is the WP of mattresses: Ikea. The product is cheap and of low quality.

Warby Parker's name has crossed my radar a few times in the past month, but I know nothing about what makes them special. Can somebody please enlighten me, because even after looking at their site, I still don't get what the big deal is. Then again, I've got 20/15 vision, and don't wear glasses, so I'm not their target market.

It's really easy to spot the industries that have ridiculous margins; just find the shops that stay open forever, yet seem to make about 1-2 sales a day. I've seen mattress stores that seem to be able to sustain one full-time employee and about 20000 square feet of showroom on a couple purchases a day. Some with sunglass stores.

I was a big fan of The Original Mattress Factory when I lived in Pennsylvania. They manufacture their own mattresses and sell them direct to consumers.<p><a href="http://www.originalmattress.com/eliminating-the-middle-man" rel="nofollow">http://www.originalmattress.com/eliminating-the-middle-man</a><p>Unfortunately they don't have a presence on the West Coast.

When I bought my last mattress, it was a relatively painless experience, and the cost was incredibly reasonable (considering a rough estimate of what the manufacture labor might have cost).<p>What kind of mattresses are people buying, and what sort of retailers are they going to, where this seems like an immensely extortionist industry?

Interesting post. Perhaps on the incumbent end, the equivalent would be "We Need an OPEC of Mattresses."

Wouldn't it be cool if a mattress came in 8 pieces so you can easily move it and flip it, and rearrange or even replace saggy sections?<p>I'm sure the need for the entire thing to respond to your body the way it does probably prevents such a thing, but that sure would make it easier to own one.

I completely agree! I recently went shopping for a mattress at Sleep Train and they admitted that they mask the model numbers of their mattresses so you can't find them online for cheaper. Someone please build this.

I'm starting to wonder if priceonomics.com shouldn't pivot to become a full-fledged data driven publication. They have been publishing some amazingly high quality content lately.

The article hints at this, but Ikea solves all these problems. They have a small set of easily discernable mattress lines that are priced extremely well.

Incidentally, $120 for a frame from Warby Parker (which is only "a couple of pieces of plastic and metal") is still too high IMO.

This needs "Mattresses" added to its database: <a href="http://nonstartr.com/" rel="nofollow">http://nonstartr.com/</a>

Clearly there is a distribution challenge (high transportation / storage costs) but I like the idea of disrupting them.

Is it so bad that an industry has high margins? $500-1000 doesn't seem that expensive for a once every 10 years purchase. Mattress salesman gotta make a living! Seems very hypocritical while we make 90% margins on software.

Someone should do a Warby Parker for Wheelchairs.

What is a "Google-esque margin"?

I believe that entrepreneurs could do well, generally, by looking for opportunities in industries that are dominated by private-equity players.<p>If an industry is overweight PE, you can bet that the market analysis looks fantastically attractive (competition isn't too fierce, suppliers have little power, buyers have little power, not many substitutes, and little perceived threat from new entrants). If a clever entrepreneur can render that last condition false and enter that market, that entrepreneur has the opportunity to shrink and consolidate a $huge market that's owned by PE players into a $smaller market that is owned by the entrepreneur.<p>PE controlled competitors will, generally, not be particularly agile, because PE tends to capture value by leveraging the heck out of a currently viable business model. It's a model that works really well as long as base assumptions hold true, but startups can ruin that for them.

100% agree. But if you must buy a mattress go to SleepCountry, they price match anything.