New York City is often called the city that never sleeps. But Casper is making it a lot easier for the city’s inhabitants (and visitors) to get some shut-eye on the go.
The direct-to-consumer, sleep-heavy startup, which sells mattresses, bed frames, bedding and pillows, has just launched The Dreamery: A nap store where the tired and weary can pay $25 for 45 minutes in a private “nook”—complete with a Casper mattress. Each nap pod comes equipped not only with a Casper bed (with Casper bedding, naturally), but also with Sunday Riley face wash, pajamas from luxury sleepwear brand Sleepy Jones and toothbrushes and toothpaste from teeth-cleaning startup Hello.
Outside of the nap pods, The Dreamery’s design and decor is as millennial-friendly as you’d expect: A dark entryway is dotted with tiny lights, meant to look like stars. Constellation-covered pajamas hang behind the white, monochromatic check-in stand. A “menu” lists a nap session at $25, while coffee, bedhead and “pure joy” are free.
Modular furniture and doodle-covered walls make up the waiting area. Walk through the seemingly-star-covered hallway, and visitors will find lockers and sink stalls ready for freshening up. Jeff Brooks, CMO of Casper, said that their aim was to create a place that was calming and restful, but also “envoked the spirit of the brand.”
“You come into this incredibly magical experience, and that’s part of what the goal here was,” he said. “To bring some of that joy and magic back to that bedtime ritual.”
Brooks said that The Dreamery concept has been in the works for a year, and stems more from the brand’s mission of “cementing sleep as a critical pillar of wellness,” rather than hoping to drive sales. It’s also answering the pleas of its customers, who he said have been requesting a nap space.
“We saw this as an opportunity to advocate for getting sleep or more broadly, rest, outside of the bedroom, in the real world, when you’re on the go,” Brooks told Adweek. “We wanted to extend into something where we could focus on naps as an experience.”
That’s just what they’re trying to create. A release from Casper called the new space “a magical oasis in the middle of New York City where you can hit pause and recharge whenever you want.” And said magical oasis has a brand friendly location, too: Right next door to one of Casper’s stores in Soho. Though they’re situated next door to one another, the decision to keep the two spaces separate was a deliberate one.
“They are literally and metaphorically adjacent,” he said. “While it would be a wonderful byproduct if people love their naps so much that they want to go around the corner and buy a Casper mattress, the goal of The Dreamery is to normalize and to champion what we see as a critical behavior. For us, having the two next to each other is harmonious, but they’re designed to do different jobs.”
Visitors hoping to try out The Dreamery can book a spot through a number of mediums: Its website, for one, as well as the ClassPass and MindBody apps. Walk-ins are also accepted, if space is available. And the New York location is only the beginning for the concept: Pop-ups in office spaces or airports, on college campuses, as well as other cities, are thoughts on the horizon. Brooks said: “We see this as a highly scalable concept.”
And it’s a concept that Brooks hopes takes off, not just with their own space, but as a global trend.
“The major thing we’re really hoping to see with The Dreamery is that more and more people around the world start to embrace the idea that it’s healthy when you’re tired, to put your head down. If we can be one of those destinations, it’s a great thing.”
