In our fifth installment of the Ecommerce Success Stories, we interviewed the Director of Analytics of Saatva Mattress, an online luxury mattress brand that is redefining the home furnishing industry.
The ecommerce success stories is our initiative to inspire young entrepreneurs and help them overcome challenges by learning from the experiences of those who have made it big in the industry.
How It All Started
Saatva Mattresses is the brainchild of Ricky Joshi and Ron Rudzin. Before founding Saatva, Ricky was working in IPG, an advertising agency, while Ron was working as the investor and the VP of a home furnishing company.
In 2011, they took the initiative of establishing Saatva Mattress, with the aim of selling mattresses online instead of opening a brick and mortar store, the traditional method of selling home furnishing equipment. The name ‘Saatva’ translates to ‘pure’ in Sanskrit.
Due to their novel approach of selling mattresses online, they were soon picked up by top media companies including Forbes and Vogue. This lifted their brand a little. But the true success came when they did a research on the sleeping patterns of North Americans, which made headlines and boosted their brand.
Due to the coverage on multiple renowned platforms, Saatva mattresses earned a revenue of $180 million in 2016 alone.
The founders of Saatva attribute their success to the timing of their initiative. “We saw a lot of opportunity for disruption in the mattress industry and knew we had to act on it before someone else does,” Harrison Doan, the Director of Analytics at Saatva Mattress told Cloudways.
Through the effort of Saatva, mattresses that were sold for $2500, were brought down to $500. Doan credits this to the company’s research of the materials used in fabrication of the mattresses and detailed competitor analysis.
“We learned that customer service was poor and current players lacked any real transparency, so we figured our best strategy from a marketing standpoint would be to show how we excel in those areas,” he added.
With that in mind, they worked with the manufacturer to launch the product in 2011, initially focusing on regional sales in the North East to keep the shipping costs down.
Finding the Right Product/Market Fit
For Saatva, the winning strategies are based on their in-depth market research, focus on organic growth, and a comprehensive approach to paid marketing. They experimented and found the best mix of these strategies through trial and error. This kept them afloat even during the challenging times.
“When competitors started flourishing around 2014, it was a challenge to learn how to compete against them. We had a strong foundation backing us up thanks to our past growth, but we had to learn how to differentiate ourselves even more. By combining our unique approach to the market with new strategies like advanced SEO, remarketing, and aligning these with our business goals, we’ve been able to compete in an increasingly competitive industry,” he explained.
Coping with Holiday Dilemma
The retail businesses are always busy during the holiday season and this is also the case with Saatva. In the holiday season of 2017, it invested in a strong customer service team that was able to keep things running smoothly.
“The holiday season was busy, but we were extremely proud of how well our customer service representatives were able to keep up with the higher volume,” Doan said while talking about the holiday season crunch.
Creating the USP
Saatva representative said that the things that make them stand out from the rest is their lean approach to home furnishing business and an alert customer service.
“We’re fully committed to cutting out the middleman and truly believe in transparency as a huge part of our overall strategy. With transparency, we earn our customers’ trust faster than our competitors, and through our dedicated customer service channels, we retain it for longer,” he added.
Future Plans
Saatva is focusing on launching new products that will enhance their customer’s sleep experience.
“We want to introduce products that are scientifically proven to enhance sleep and are reasonably priced,” he added while discussing the future vision of the company.
Advice for Beginners
“If you’re looking to launch a new ecommerce store in 2018, prepare to really dedicate yourself to it. You need to become an expert on the industry you’re targeting, and develop a product that is truly unique.
In this day and age, consumers have a multitude of options to choose from. If you can’t stand out, you may find your startup story over, even before it starts.”
That was the story of Saatva Mattress’s ecommerce success. Want more inspiration? Subscribe to our newsletter to read ecommerce success stories of inspiring entrepreneurs.
Note: We are accepting submissions for our ecommerce success story series. If you are a successful ecommerce store or a flourishing dropshipping business, then drop us a line.
Sajjad Shahid
Sajjad is an Ecommerce Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves helping out Ecommerce store owners, merchants and marketers in establishing their businesses and startups. Sajjad enjoys playing table tennis and cricket over the weekend.
