The moat they had was people don't buy a bed sight unseen off the internet.
They literally burn piles of money to normalize the act (100 day return policy, 0 questions asked, insane marketing spend...)
They succeed in normalizing it...
But the fact is that any bozo can call a manufacturer and get literally the same product out to your door for the same costs as them. They didn't have any exclusive manufacturing process, as the boom of bed-in-a-box raged on, everyone benefited from economy of scale as this has taken off, not just them.
There's no need for a cheap imitation, because what they sell is already the cheap option.
And there are very few mattress brands that have loyalty because people don't buy beds for brands. Tempurpedic and Duxiana are the only two manufacturers I can think of that I've ever seen leverage customer loyalty in marketing, and there's a reason for that (they exist at a completely different price point)
So now there's hundreds of these companies, and Casper's standing out of all of them is not particularly special.
So they go public at a half a billion dollar valuation for a glorified drop shipping operation and leave institutional investors holding the bag?
Is there something I'm missing?
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2020/02/05/casper-...
Well I guess some of the private investors are taking a bath as well...