Can D2C Mattress Firm Nectar Home Pull the Carpet Out From Under Its Competitors?

The direct-to-consumer mattress sector has become a lot more crowded since the days of leaving off the last 'S' for savings, with surges by recent entrants Casper, Tuft & Needle, Purple and Leesa, among others. San Francisco-based Nectar Home, parent of the Nectar and DreamCloud brands, has carved its own niche in the market, as well, topping $330 million in annual revenue in just two years since being founded in 2016 and seeing its revenue grow 600 percent in 2018 compared to 2017. But the company has its eyes on a bigger prize: the home furnishings sector, which could reach $100 billion annually by 2022, according to Statista. On that note, Nectar Home unveiled its newest brand, specialty online rug retailer Wovenly, citing data from Euro Monitor estimating that residential rugs will be a $5.2 billion annual market by 2020. Co-founder Eric Hutchinson said in an interview with Adweek that the decision to debut Wovenly “follows a strategy to enter the broader home goods market by offering products to furnish the entire home." "Mattresses has served as our beachhead into the home," he added. "The same life events that signal interest in buying a mattress also signal purchase intent for other home goods.” The company attributed part of its success to bucking the trend of ecommerce sales being dominated by millennials in urban areas on both coasts. It added that it has generated “significant sales” in smaller towns and rural areas in the middle of the country, highlighting that its state-by-state sales jibe with the percentage of the U.S. population that resides in each state. In addition, nearly 50 percent of its sales are conducted via mobile devices. Co-founder Ran Reske credited analytics and data, saying in a release: “Our ecommerce platform allows us to initiate and track over 70,000 unique customer journeys, which enables us to learn from these customers and understand their needs and preferences. With this knowledge, we’re able to deliver recommendations and solutions matched to their individual home furnishings style and preferences.” The company’s platform was developed in-house. However, the debut of Wovenly doesn’t mean that Nectar Home is straying from its core business, as Hutchinson said, “We are still very bullish on the mattress sector and will be launching additional mattress brands in the coming year.”