E-commerce mattress company Casper Sleep has had its fair share of ups and downs in the past two years. The startup raised over $300M in funding and was valued at $1.1B before announcing its IPO in January of 2020. Shortly after going public, Casper's stock price dropped from $12/share to $3/share, giving it a market value of $163M — a tenth of its initial valuation. COVID-19 was another bump in the road, causing the company to lay off 21% of its workforce before bouncing back with an overall 17% growth in revenue for 2020 in North America.
In April of 2021, Casper Sleep announced its new line of cooling sleep products, including mattresses and bedding. This is the first time Casper has expanded into sleep technology, but the products were foretold by its first consumer sleep patent application filed in 2018 for a temperature-regulating mattress. According to the application, sensors in the mattress collect data to build a temperature model specific to each user. Temperature is regulated by cooling and heating air in layers below the mattress, which is different from water-based systems implemented by companies such as Kryo. Casper filed its second patent application, a continuation-in-part of the 2018 asset, in January 2021. Patent investment in this area has been highly active for more than a decade. Casper has been slow to innovate, but at least it is creating patent assets in advance of market activity. The retailer may need to consider partnering, licensing, or acquiring to take advantage of patent-exclusive territory in this market. You can stay ahead of new products by following patent data on the Consumer Sleep Patent Forecast®.
