
Dude, no one will ever buy that online. AKA how incumbents get Pwned in tech - avyfain
http://www.breakingvc.com/2015/04/20/dude-no-one-will-ever-buy-that-online-aka-how-incumbents-get-pwned-in-tech/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dude-no-one-will-ever-buy-that-online-aka-how-incumbents-get-pwned-in-tech
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timr
There are something like _six_ of these boutique foam mattress startups, of
which Casper is one of the newest, cutest, hipster-i-est versions. I've had a
Keetsa mattress for about five years now. It's fine -- it was about 20%
cheaper than a TempurPedic when I bought it, and the fact that it came vacuum-
packed was a gimmick that made it possible to get it into my apartment. It's a
little on the firm side, but that's what you get when you have no choice.

(As an aside, nearly _twenty years ago_ , I bought a mattress from the Denver
Mattress Company, who were (and are) selling _and manufacturing_ great
mattresses for a fraction of the price of the big players. You want to talk
about innovation? Talk about those guys, not three hipsters in Brooklyn who
got some VC money last year and used it to buy generic foam mattresses from a
Chinese supplier.)

That said, there's no way in the world that this market is big enough to
support this many startups. Mattresses weren't sold in stores because the
companies didn't think people would buy them online; mattresses are/were sold
that way because they're like cars -- people buy a new one once a decade. It's
hard to build a big business unless you're extracting maximum margin per item
sold. It's even harder when five other identical "scrappy insurgencies" are
competing on price in the low end of the market.

But hey, cheap VC dollars means cheap mattresses for you. Everyone is thinking
about gross revenue and "disruption", but nobody is thinking about business
models.

~~~
solve
Suppose this is why the "Why now?" question keeps getting more important to
VCs.

Imagine a few decades from now, when practically _every_ type of software
startup will have been already been tried 100+ times. Maybe the increasing
focus on startup "team quality" that's already happening will be a big part of
the answer to that question.

~~~
timr
I think the early players in the space probably have/had a good argument for
that question -- if you're Denver Mattress in 1998, or Keetsa in 2008, you
could (perhaps) plausibly claim that the fundamentals of the market had
shifted, and make a convincing speculative argument that you could take over a
largish industry.

But the rise of _five_ new mattress startups in the last few years? That's
just sloppy, herd behavior. Investors are piling into whatever sector seems
hot, without doing even the most cursory analysis of the existing players. Why
should the 7th startup in this vertical be seen as compelling? Is it because
they have bike messengers?

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the_watcher
Any time someone says "will never do that online," I have an almost Pavlovian
response of "sounds like doing that online is a good startup idea." In pretty
much every case where people have shown an interest in doing offline, once the
experience has been replicated closely enough online, it's ended up working
well. The first company I worked at out of school, BuildASign, started as a
software to design signs online (incredibly, the founders were the first
people to build an online sign designer, at least that they've found). They
intended to sell it for a few grand to a local sign shop, as they were all in
grad school. All the sign shops they approached said "No one wants to design a
sign online! They want to come in and see samples and get help from a person."
So the founders threw up a site, planning to do all their fulfillment at a
store to demonstrate why they should buy their software. The response was so
strong that they quickly decided not to sell, and bought a printer. Today,
they have a 100K sq ft manufacturing facility and have had at least 5 straight
years of high growth revenue in the high 8 figures (and have been profitable
since year 2, plus - until a very recent PE investment - were entirely owned
by 3 people).

Point being, once something can be done well enough online, people will
do/buy/use it.

~~~
scuba7183
How did they get the idea for the online sign shop?

~~~
tacon
[http://eventualmillionaire.com/dangraham/](http://eventualmillionaire.com/dangraham/)

~~~
the_watcher
Yep, that's the story. Never saw this, thanks!

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jcoffland
...Oh and these beds offgas for days if not weeks. I ordered one from Leesa, a
similar company offering the same kind of memory foam mattress. They have the
same 100 day return policy but it turns out that you have to wait 30 days.
Casper has the same 30 day wait period. Presumably this is to give the bed
enough time to stop stinking. I don't know about the Casper bed but a week
into it the Leesa is very comfortable but still really smells. I knew about
the offgassing before I ordered the bed and I'm not a fussy person. I did not
know how bad it would be.

~~~
taco_emoji
They don't all offgas like that. Mine smelled only a little bit and only for a
couple days.

This is the one I got: [http://home.woot.com/offers/purasleep-memory-foam-
mattress-4...](http://home.woot.com/offers/purasleep-memory-foam-
mattress-4-sizes-3)

------
uptown
"Oh, and they’re [Casper mattresses] a fraction of the cost of traditional
Serta, Stearns & Foster, Tempurpedic mattresses."

That's just not true. Their queen mattress costs $850, equal or above many of
the listed competitors.

~~~
bmelton
Offtopic perhaps, but last year I purchased a mattress online from
[https://www.tuftandneedle.com/](https://www.tuftandneedle.com/). Not really
expecting anything, but having heard enough praise for their customer support,
I figured I'd take them up on their money-back offer and give it a shot.

It's damned fantastic, though the entire experience was foreign as hell to me.
I was able to order it online (for $700, I think, for the King model), have it
delivered on the day I selected. While nobody set it up for me, it came in a
box that just sort of fully expanded as I cut it open.

I don't have any particular insight on Casper, but it seems like, to me at
least, T&N sort of proved the market, so unless my timeline is off, Casper
seems like far less of a gamble than the first entrant to a market would be.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Seconded for Tuft and Needle. Its such a great mattress, I'm giving them away
as big gifts now, and family members who get them love them. +1

~~~
bmelton
I stopped short of raving about the actual mattress, because I didn't want to
come off as a shill... but yes, the mattress is phenomenal. My wife finds it
just too stiff for her comfort, so we got a topper for it, but it is otherwise
just as good (if not better) than any hotel I've ever stayed in.

The only oddity I've noticed (not a complaint, but different) compared to
traditional mattresses is that there's no bolstering on the sides, but
understanding how it's made, that's expected. It is different tho, as pushing
on the edge of the mattress, historically, has always yielded resistance,
while my Tuft & Needle mattress is just as soft there as everywhere else.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I stopped short of raving about the actual mattress, because I didn't want
> to come off as a shill

That's fair. I'm more than happy to throw my receipts into Imgur for anyone
who thinks I'm a shill. Awesome mattresses, A++ would buy again.

~~~
maxerickson
Any evidence you provide is more or less worthless in making such a
determination.

It would be a weird thing to do, but even something like creating fake bank
statements isn't particularly hard.

(I'm not implying you are a shill, just commenting on the utility of links to
imgur in verifying anything)

~~~
toomuchtodo
How sad is it when nothing is trusted online :(

~~~
maxerickson
It's not about the trust, it's about the verify.

(So I would probably take a receipt you posted at face value, but it would be
impossible for me to verify it)

------
rwc
"If you’re not aware of Casper, they’re a web-only millennial focused mattress
company"

As a millennial, I'm really dying to know what it feels like to sleep on a
millennial mattress.

~~~
smacktoward
It makes you feel like the most special snowflake there ever was! And when you
wake up, there's a trophy under your pillow.

------
vxNsr
Similar to Tucker Max and Lioncrest, I heard him on a podcast the other day
about how people kept asking him how to self publish and he would go into
great detail and they would lose interest, until an entrepreneur yelled at
him, she basically said, "this is my problem find a solution" and he came up
with a completely novel way to self publish, that was unthinkable before.

~~~
echeno
got a link?

~~~
ericabiz
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141118152523-205984021-my-s...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141118152523-205984021-my-
start-up-made-200k-in-it-s-first-two-months-and-i-m-embarrassed)

------
the_watcher
I bought a bed from Casper a few months back, and the experience has been
nothing short of spectacular. When I tell friends who don't work in startups
or are older, they are baffled until I explain it. Buying a bed has to be up
there on the list of "I see why someone would hesitate to do it online,
without trying it out first," and Casper has figured it out.

------
calcsam
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J5cH6Ct...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J5cH6CthF6IJ:www.breakingvc.com/2015/04/20/dude-
no-one-will-ever-buy-that-online-aka-how-incumbents-get-pwned-in-tech)

------
nols
The article cited in this post is actually quite interesting for being 25
years old.

[https://hbr.org/1990/07/reengineering-work-dont-automate-
obl...](https://hbr.org/1990/07/reengineering-work-dont-automate-
obliterate/ar/1)

~~~
eropple
The best stuff on how people think, work, and organize is thousands of years
old, why would an article from twenty-five years old not "actually" be
interesting?

Noophilia is a disease. You would be well-advised to excise it from
your...you.

------
smackfu
Huh, I was wondering about the returns, and how you could pack it again if
it's so tightly compressed. From the FAQ, the answer is that a courier picks
it up and drops it off at a local charity.

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joshstrange
I hate to nit pick at the design of the site but I found the light green links
on a white background very hard to read.

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limaoscarjuliet
Seems like a plug for Zipments which is funded by VC the author works for.
Disclosure please.

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Eric_WVGG
cringing at use of “AKA” instead of “i.e.” or simply “or:”

~~~
pyrocat
cringing at the use of "Pwned", what is this 2005?

~~~
neals
w00t!

------
usaphp
Looks like your MySQL server is down

