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.
We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
21–30 of 173 posts
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#22I'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. http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Innovations-12-inch-Memory-Mattr... 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…
The problem is that many people like to lie on a mattress before they buy it. Sure, that's a little silly since lying on it for a minute or so is unlikely to capture the experience of tossing and turning on it for a night, but it's clear that it's a competitive advantage to let the consumer compare a few models in a physically direct way.
Warby Parker can get away with the similar consumer requirement for glasses because glasses are small, light and easy to ship. They can send you half a dozen samples and let you pick the one you want. Not so easy with mattresses!
The car market has this problem as well (in addition to others, like the protectionist rackets that the dealerships have set up).
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#23While 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.
As an extra bonus, this would make putting sheets on easier as there's no wrong way (short of inside-out, I guess).
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#24We need a Warby Parker for Diamonds! 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
The problem is that a diamond is inherently a basically worthless rock, so its retail value is already a figment of the public's imagination. Blue Nile is the closest that exists today, but they are not that disruptive since the retail channels already have lots of competition -- it's the supply (De Beers) that's monopolized.
Another approach to disrupt that market is to grow the diamonds like Gemesis does, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemesis
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#25The Author shouldn't have credited Dornob for the first picture of a dreamer, but the original project, which was done by students: http://www.behance.net/gallery/Dreamers/313618
Wasn't hard to find out - Dornob linked to it. So should everybody who uses other's images.
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#26Like 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. They might be surmountable, but that doesn't make this a better opportunity than a lot of the other opportunities o…
> a mattress purchase only happens once a decade
This is a cultural artifact. We've reached a point in manufacturing technology where this should no longer be true.
> disrupting the mattress industry as a manufacturer AND retailer...Like IKEA,...
The most comfortable mattress I've ever slept on: A Sultan Fonnes mattress, with an egg crate foam topper from http://www.foambymail.com/ on a platform bed, no box springs. You can leave off the topper and save about $60, if you like, and you wind up with the equivalent of a great firm futon that never bunches up. The combination for Queen is well under $400, including taxes and shipping.
My plan for instant "satisficed" sleep furniture: Buy a cheap platform bed, a Sultan Fonnes mattress, and 3 eggcrate foam toppers. Keep the combination with the topper you like best and sell the other two. No going to the store needed at all. It could all be done through the mail and by delivery in most of the US.
I am not associated in any way with IKEA or foambymail.com except as a customer.
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#27While 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. As an extra bonus, this would make putting sheets on easier as there's no wrong way (short of inside-out, I guess).
Wouldn't you then have to worry about fitted bedsheets and comforters?
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#28We need a Warby Parker for Diamonds! 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
The problem is that a diamond is inherently a basically worthless rock, so its retail value is already a figment of the public's imagination. Blue Nile is the closest that exists today, but they are not that disruptive since the retail channels already have lots of competition -- it's the supply (De Beers) that's monopolized.
The real disruption will come in the form of widely available manufactured (not mined) diamonds.
I used to think of diamonds as basically worthless rocks, until I went shopping for an engagement ring stone and looked at them under the jeweler's microscope, and thought "I want to be dressed from head to toe in these things". With mass-produced diamonds, that may become a reality.
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#29"By the time a customer buys a mattress, it costs them ~74% more than the production cost of the product."
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.
COGS is often difficult to accurately estimate (how much do you allocate R&D and other overhead?).
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.
Re: We Need a Warby Parker for Mattresses
#30Clearly there is a distribution challenge (high transportation / storage costs) but I like the idea of disrupting them.