SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
EP 399: $1m+ Mattresses Sold using Toptal.com with Adam Tishman of HelixSleep
27 Aug 2016
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.
Chapter 2: What is Helix Sleep and how does it operate?
You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.
Chapter 3: How does Helix Sleep ensure affordability for customers?
I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million.
He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
Chapter 4: What unique business model does Helix Sleep utilize?
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. OK, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the 100 bucks is Jose Avila. He is a 17 year old that doesn't want to go to college and he wants to start his own business. For your chance to win 100 bucks just like Jose every Monday morning, simply subscribe to this podcast on iTunes right now and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it.
Chapter 5: How did Helix Sleep achieve significant growth in its first year?
Okay, Top Tribe, this episode is brought to you by FreshBooks, the invoicing tool that I use to make sure I collect all my money in an efficient manner.
Chapter 6: What role does technology play in Helix Sleep's product customization?
To claim your free month, go to nathanlatka.com forward slash FreshBooks and enter the top in the How Did You Hear About Us section.
Top Tribe, this is episode 399.
Chapter 7: How does Toptal help Helix Sleep find developers?
Coming up tomorrow morning, you're gonna hear from the founders of Ad Espresso, Massimo. They just hit a $20 million valuation, 4,000 paying customers, and 400 grand in monthly recurring revenue.
top tribe good morning our guest this morning is adam tishman and he is the co-founder of helix sleep which we're going to learn all about adam are you ready to take us to the top i'm ready let's do this nathan all right helix sleep so this is like not a good thing to listen to right when you wake up because it's going to want to make you jump right back on your bed and go to sleep but tell us about helix sleep what is it how do you make money
Chapter 8: What are Helix Sleep's customer acquisition strategies?
Yeah, absolutely. So we are a direct-to-consumer sleep brand that makes individually personalized custom-made mattresses shipped directly to your doorstep for about a fraction of the cost of retail. And so think of it almost like getting a tailored suit, but for a mattress.
We take inputs around your body type, so your height and your weight, your sleeping position, so do you sleep on your side or your back or your stomach? Your mattress preference, do you prefer something a little bit firmer or softer? And then we custom make a mattress for you, 100% here in the US.
What's it cost you to make a mattress, would you say, on average?
What does it cost us or what does it cost the consumer? Yeah, so it depends, obviously, on the size and the type of mattress. What we do do is we keep the cost consistent from a consumer standpoint, which is actually one of the larger issues in the mattress industry today.
And so whether you get a firmer mattress, a softer mattress, a more supportive one from us, we charge the same price to the consumer, which is for a queen size $900 mattress. That product at a retail store would cost closer to $2,000 to $3,000. So we're really seeing a lot of price efficiencies by going direct to consumer.
And what is the, on average, because I'm just uneducated in the mattress business, what is your cost on a $900 markup?
Um, so again, it, you know, it's something that it's a little bit proprietary to us, to be honest, but, uh, what you see in the traditional retail world is markups can range from multiple hundred percent markups. So what costs anywhere from two to four or $500 to make, uh, could be sold at a retail store for $3,000.
Is it fair to say that in standard kind of in the industry is somewhere between 40 and 50% hard cost of goods sold from material?
Yeah, that's roughly standard. I mean, I think that, you know, there's a lot of other costs that go into it that we would include above that gross margin line, you know, around shipping costs, which we ship for free and a few other things. But that's roughly correct.
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