“We really consider ourselves the sleep company,” says Casper co-founder and CEO Philip Krim. “Everything we do is about helping our customers sleep better. It’s about getting a great mattress but it’s about everything that could help you sleep. We’re trying to take products to market that are end to end about sleep solutions. We want to be the world’s first global sleep brand and we think we’re well on our way to doing that.”
Philip Krim, Casper co-founder and CEO, discusses how Casper, a highly successful direct to consumer brand (DTC), is still in the early days of growth in an interview on CNBC:
We Want To Be the World’s First Global Sleep Brand
We actually think Casper stands alone. We really consider ourselves the sleep company. Everything we do is about helping our customers sleep better. We think end to end about sleep. It’s about getting a great mattress but it’s about everything that could help you sleep. In January we launched a technology product, a lighting product, that actually helps you wake up better and fall asleep better. We’re trying to take products to market that are end to end about sleep solutions. We want to be the world’s first global sleep brand and we think we’re well on our way to doing that.
We think we’re really one of the first of our kind. We were a digitally native business, having launched online with Casper.com, but we’re actually now scaling our business offline as well. We’ve opened up 23 retail stores and we have great partners with folks like Target. We believe that we will have a business where no matter how consumers want to shop for our products we have great products and great experiences. We actually think there’s really not a public company comp that’s done that journey.
Repeat Revenue Increases Dramatically As We Launch New Products.
Yesterday we launched our hybrid line which is actually the combination of innerspring technology and foam technology. We launched two different models around that. For us, we’re actually still able to compress those mattresses, ship them anywhere in the country, and they’re really phenomenal products that we’re in development for over a year in our Casper Labs program based in San Francisco. From a cost structure, it works just the same way as our foam mattresses. You can compress it, you can ship it anywhere, it’s super fun to open and they sleep really great.
We make great pillows, we make great sheets, and we make great lighting products. We are seeing higher and higher attachment rates as we launch new products and we’re seeing repeat revenue increase dramatically as we launch new products. We’re only a five-year-old company, actually as of this month. We launched April of 2014. As we get our customers to be a little bit more mature we’re seeing them come back time and time again not just to buy mattresses but to buy our full suite of products. That’s really exciting for us.
We’re In the Early Days of Scaling
We actually changed the way that you would return a mattress. In the industry traditionally it’s a huge pain, but with us, you call us up and we’ll pick up the mattress. You don’t even have to pack it back up, nothing. We will come to pick it and up and then we donate it locally. We appreciate that you gave us a shot. We also are changing the way that people shop for the products. We have our Casper.com website where you can learn all about these great products but we have 23 stores that we’ve opened. We’re opening up over a dozen this quarter, two this week in fact, and those stores are a great complement to the online experience.
We don’t break out profitability overall. Casper has a great product, we have a great business model, and we’re seeing that by taking it to market both online and offline that it’s actually growing our online business in a very efficient way. We think this go to market strategy is working well. We’re in the early days of scaling it and we believe we can keep building this out for years to come.