lswcapUnicorn mattress startup Casper is preparing to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Casper said it expects a public offering price of $17-19, and plans to raise up to $182.4 million through listing.
Casper is an online mattress startup that started in New York in 2014 and has grown rapidly by boxing beds and shipping them at low prices. After the initial investment of actor Astin Kutcher, it attracted investment from the global retail company Target, raised about 355 million dollars, and became a unicorn company worth 1 trillion.
Casper is a leading D2C (Direct to Customer) brand along with the eyewear delivery platform, Warbi Parker, and was regarded as a company that innovates the market. Various marketing efforts to attract New Yorkers were also successful. In fact, Casper was quickly recognized by customers as an innovative product, but grew by running out of huge marketing budgets to attract customers. From 2016 to 2019, Casper reportedly spent about $432 million in advertising.
According to data submitted by Casper to the SEC for listing, Casper grew from $24.9 million in 2017 to $357.9 million in 2018, but its net loss was $733.4 million in 2017 to $92.1 million in 2018. Increased to. In the first nine months of 2019, sales were $312.3 million and net losses were $67.4 million. In a word, sales are increasing, but profits are not.
Casper plans to make a leap forward through this listing. Casper refers to itself as a major player capable of playing in the sleep economy market. To manage all human behavior from sleep to the moment of waking.
Casper forecasts that the sleep market will grow to $585 billion in 2024. Accordingly, it is expanding its business to sleep-related products such as pillows, sheets, pajamas, and sleep tracking markets in addition to mattresses. Casper announced plans to expand its service countries from 7 countries to 20 countries after listing and triple the number of stores.
Casper’s listing challenge is expected to be an opportunity to examine the outcome of a startup that focuses solely on growth without profit. Although Uber and Lyft succeeded in listing last year, the stock price continued to decline and WeWork collapsed its planned listing due to poor performance. Promising Silicon Valley startups, such as hotel platform Oyo and Robot Pizza Jun, are also restructuring profitability by revealing news of restructuring from the new year. An atmosphere that focuses more on profitability rather than growth is being created in the market.
The industry predicts that Casper’s future is not necessarily bright. Some say that Casper, which has grown by spending a lot of money on marketing in a fiercely competitive market, has a relatively large loss compared to its growth. In addition, Casper’s challenge is that it does not seem to have a sharp strategy for how to grow after competing companies such as Purple, which have already successfully listed and are growing rapidly.
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