E-commerce mattress startup Casper Sleep was valued at $1.1B before its IPO in February of this year. Two months after going public, the company’s stocks dropped to $4.12/share, or a market value of $163 million; as a result of further poor performance exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the online retailer shut down its Europe operations and laid off 20% of its employees. Casper has since been making moves to boost revenue and consumer/investor confidence, including hiring a new CFO and buying shares internally. Interestingly, Casper’s CEO also recently filed to raise $300 million as the chairman of a separate special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) focusing on digital media and marketing.

Despite all this movement, Casper Sleep is lacking in one significant area: patented technology. The company grew largely because of its online marketing and 100-day trial period with free returns, which made mattress shopping more accessible but also may be preventing Casper from turning a profit. The retailer is not innovating significantly within the mattress space. Its two patent applications are for a temperature-regulating mattress which can pair with smart home IoT products for active heating and cooling, filed in 2019 but not yet available on the market, and for a motion and gesture-responsive bedside lamp, also filed in 2019 and commercialized later that year. Differentiating oneself in the mattress industry can be difficult, especially with larger companies already investing in smart mattress technologies such as environmental control and sleep monitoring. To keep up, Casper may have to siphon money into heavier technology development or acquire existing technologies. You can view potential partners and competitors in the mattress and sleep devices space on the Consumer Sleep Technology Patent Radian®.