For today’s mattress brands, a match made in heaven

January 12, 2021

The Sleep Category continues to be reshaped by DTC mattress brands– a segment estimated to have reached $1.5B in 2020.

For today’s mattress brands, a match made in heaven

The Sleep Category continues to be reshaped by DTC mattress brands– a segment estimated to have reached $1.5B in 2020.

Before COVID, the number of consumers willing to try a mattress had peaked at 43%, according to furnituretoday.com, but by March 2020, it rose to 70% and settled to 53% in April. In addition, a survey by the International Sleep Products Association reported that 45% of mattresses purchased in 2018 were online, up from 35% for purchases in 2017.

These consumers have their choice from 175 bed-in-a-box companies in business, according to Michael Magnuson, founder of mattress review site GoodBed.com. The most visible “bed in a box” brands include Casper, Purple, Nectar, Leesa, and Tuft & Needle, Saatva, Avocado, Helix Sleep and DreamCloud. Challengers include brands like Propel by Brooklyn Bedding, Nest bedding, Amerisleep, PuffyLux, Layla, GhostBed, WinkBeds. Amazon has joined the fray with its own AmazonBasics mattress.

In fact, brands competing for mattress buyers face stiff competition for consumer attention from competitive brands and D2C bedding aggregators and traditional furniture and bedding retailers.

Cannabis: The Next Sleep Category Disruptor

There is another disruptor rising in the Sleep Category – Mainstream consumers have discovered that Cannabis and CBD are beneficial ingredients for good sleep. According to the latest MRI Cannabis Study, 159 Million Americans (63% of adults) agree that Cannabis can be good for the mind and body. In 2020 alone, over 27 million people say they started taking Cannabis or CBD during the COVID pandemic–driving total CBD use to almost twenty million users.

In its 2019 research study, Sleep Cycle published a survey revealing 21% of Americans rely on Cannabis for a good night’s sleep. The same year, a study of 1,000 recreational cannabis users conducted by the Albert Einstein School of Medicine reported they purchased cannabis as a sleep aid. So for D2C sleep category brands like Casper and Purple, cannabis consumers could be a very responsive target audience.

Cannabis consumers represent an untapped, high-value target for sleep brands. Most recently, MRI-Simmons’s 2020 cannabis study showed that cannabis consumers are planning to buy a new home (13%/120 index) or a second home (7%/125 index) essential bed purchase opportunities.

In a marketplace where brand growth is scarce and consumer inertia is rampant, cannabis and CBD audiences offer access to millions of first movers (132 indexes) with a healthy relationship with sleep…and the brands that enable it.

To learn more about why marketing leaders are racing to reach cannabis consumers, download the whitepaper — Why Cannabis Audiences Are The New Gateway To Growth For Big Brands.