Not all disruption is purely technical. In the mattress industry the disruption is more around process. Direct to consumer, service, product iteration with direct customer feedback, more vertical. There are technical innovations (foam chemistry) but that's not something that I would consider disruptive.
Historically, mattress manufacturers (the big brands) sell direct to retailers with little to no customer feedback or service. The stores resell (middlemen adding to the customer cost) with little to no customer feedback passed back to the brands. The supply chain was very difficult to break into because it was guarded from new direct to consumer entrants.
It seems like these guys generated a tremendous amount of money for themselves and orders for the businesses based on which company they gave the OK to.
You guys seemed to stay out all that, which I really respect, but it looked like some competitors really went to lengths to get that "edge" in this product category.
Thank you! But I'm afraid/embarrassed we were part of the reason they exist.
It's very frustrating because so many people fall for the reviewers as "experts". I remember when the first of them, a blogger, called me to interview us. "I'm writing an article about you guys and btw you should setup affiliate links because more bloggers will write about you".. we setup links naively and had no idea what was about to happen. The blogger then wrote about a competitor, and then another, rebranded as an "expert mattress review site" and before we knew it we aided in launching a digital version of a mattress salesman who is paid commission. Later several other expert site clones popped up. They are SEOd to the max and I don't see them going away for awhile. We shut down our affiliate links realizing it made zero sense and was a mistake/incongruent with our values and mission. We were downgraded in the reviews the next week.
What I found really interesting was that some of the new look-alike brands that paid big kick backs leveraged the reviewers to speed track their growth without needing to rely on adwords/organic word of mouth.
I've yet to see any of the affiliates actually use real science/data or ASTM testing methods. It's "opinion based." We just ignore them knowing we'll lose some % of traffic and just stay focused on the customer.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Especially as a co-founder it goes a long way! I'm still looking for that net30 D2C product of my own to get started. All the best!
Historically, mattress manufacturers (the big brands) sell direct to retailers with little to no customer feedback or service. The stores resell (middlemen adding to the customer cost) with little to no customer feedback passed back to the brands. The supply chain was very difficult to break into because it was guarded from new direct to consumer entrants.