For Scott Paladini, 36, selling mattresses is a way of life. His father ran Rockaway Bedding, a chain of mattress stores, while he was growing up in New Jersey, and Paladini learned the ropes in store of his own in Bernardsville, N.J.
But instead of sticking with the same-old, same-old, Paladini tapped into what he had absorbed about the industry to create a $2-million, one-man business that he runs from a loft in a former Levelor blinds factory in Hoboken, where I met him earlier this month. His story offers an interesting example of how digitally-savvy entrepreneurs who enter traditional family businesses--even seemingly sleepy ones (I couldn't resist!)--have the potential to reinvent them as ultra-lean selling machines.
Paladini’s quest began in 2014, when he began research and development into how to do business online in the mattress industry. He realized there was an opportunity to join the competitive bed-in-a-box industry, if he could figure out how to do so ultra-efficiently, and studied publications like Practical Ecommerce for ideas.
The trick to competing, he realized, was to create a very high quality all-foam bed that could be compressed into a small package and shipped inexpensively. Working with a factory in Georgia, he developed a model that he was confident was comfortable and sturdy enough to attract a steady flow of customers. To make his mattresses more attractive, he covered them with a Celliant, a special fiber designed to recycle people’s natural body heat as infrared energy.
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“A mattress isn’t a commodity,” he says, warming to his topic. “At the end of the day, you are spending a lot of your life in your bed.”
Launching Bear Mattress in Sept. 2015, Paladini focused his marketing on people who live an active lifestyle—a demographic he is part of—and are looking for good muscle recovery at night. He’s so energetic he confesses he often goes running twice a day and meditates daily using the Headspace app to stay focused. “I love the freedom my business provides,” he says.
Bear Mattress founder Scott Paladini markets to active customers looking for a mattress that will... [+]
To get his sales rolling, he sent out samples to mattress review sites. They liked it. One selling point was the price point. With no overhead for a store or middlemen involved, he was able to keep costs down. A twin bed is $500, queens are $850 and kings are $950.
But Paladini faced some big obstacles. One was how people shop for mattresses. “People always went to mattress store to test them,” he says. To overcome their fear of buying a mattress they couldn’t bounce on first, the offered a 100-day trial, where they could get a 100% refund if they did not like the mattress, as well as a 10-year warranty. Only a couple of people returned the mattresses, he says.
To stretch what he could do on his own without adding payroll, he set up a web-based call center, where sales people in his brick-and-mortar store who were not busy could answer customer-service calls. He hired a public relations firm and a digital marketing team as contractors.
Paladini had modest hopes for the business. “We thought half a million in sales would be a really good year,” he says. But from September 2015 to September 2016, sales took off and hit $2 million.
How did the mattresses sell so fast? One reason has been reviews. Bear Mattress currently has 225 five-star reviews, and Paladini sends customers emails to invite them to post reviews, to keep adding to the repository. He also invested in digital radio ads and podcast advertising to spread the word.
Paladini has now reached the point where he is considering hiring help to expand what he can do. But he tries not to get too far ahead of himself. His strategy for success, he says, is to ask himself a key question daily: “What can I do to sell more beds today than yesterday?”
“You’re not going to go from selling one to 1,000 overnight,” he says. “My goal is to create a longstanding business that adds value to society.”
