The mattress industry is undergoing massive disruption—is your store prepared?
Michael Magnuson, founder and CEO of GoodBed.com, has his finger on the pulse of the mattress retail industry. With over 20 years of experience researching beds and helping consumers find the right mattress, Magnuson has invaluable insights for retailers navigating today’s challenges.
In this episode of the Sleep Summit Show, Magnuson breaks down the key threats facing retailers right now, from shrinking store traffic to fake online reviews. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Magnuson outlines several opportunities for brick-and-mortar stores to fight back, including improving website optimization, sales team training, and harnessing the power of authentic customer reviews.
The three big takeaways from this episode:
- Stores must optimize their website not just for e-commerce sales but for driving overall business. This means having calls to action that get people into physical stores to try products.
- Properly training sales staff on what real customer reviews say about products can greatly boost consumer confidence and drive conversions.
- Sharing authentic customer reviews across stores is the only way for smaller retailers to gain critical mass of reviews per product to compete with fake review sites.
The mattress retail landscape is treacherous but far from hopeless. Heed Magnuson’s insights to steer your store towards smoother seas.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Mark Kinsley: What are the threats facing mattress retailers today? And where are the hidden opportunities? One of the brightest minds in the bedding businesses here, Mike Magnusson, the founder and c e o of good bed.com, is on the Sleep Summit Show, and it begins right now.
Mark Kinsley: Welcome to the Sleep Summit Show. Mike Magnusson.
It is official. You are here. You’re, I just your enthusiasm for sleep in the mattress industry and the bedding business and data and reviews is palpable. Like I, it’s coming through the microphone, man. I’m feeling it.
Michael Magnuson: I can’t tell if that’s sarcasm. I was landing on pretty thick. So I hope you pick it up.
Mark Kinsley: Uh, for people who don’t know you, tell, tell them about yourself. So you are Michael Magnusson. You are the founder and c e o of good bed.com. Uh, some people might know you from your internet videos, uh, that went viral during the pandemic. Um,
Michael Magnuson: semi viral, yeah. Yeah. For a very brief moment in time, I was a musical performer.
I had a side hustle as a mattress marketplace, online mattress marketplace. But, uh, no, just basically, uh, I. Was a former, uh, finance guy. I came to this industry, uh, as a shopper, as a consumer who was frustrated with the experience I had and kind of had an entrepreneurial itch that just ultimately ate away at me so much that I had to, uh, pursue the idea of helping to make this shopping experience better for consumers by giving them a trusted third party source for information that allowed them to search and compare across stores.
Uh, ultimately, uh, as the industry evolved to include online, of course we included online, but we are, our roots really are in brick and mortar, uh, helping people actually find opportunities to shop in their. Local area and find products that are gonna be a, a great match for them personally. We’re very much about, um, delivering information to them to help them make it the right personal choice for their unique needs.
And you have
Mark Kinsley: the largest consumer mattress review site on the internet, correct? Uh, this is a place where people can go online and share their actual experience having slept on the product. Now, the distinction I, I wanna make, which I think is very important to this category, is you also have reviews that your team, you and your team do of products to walk the consumer or the viewer through the product, the characteristics and different qualities of each mattress.
And then it’s supplemented and maybe, maybe even driven, I think you could say, by the consumer reviews. Which actually sh share at scale people’s broad opinions. And you have star ratings and you have qualities and things like that people can dig into. And that’s, that’s a distinction. Some of the other mattress review sites out there, all of them, to my knowledge, don’t have that consumer element represented.
Michael Magnuson: That’s correct. That is certainly a unique characteristic of ours. And that’s where we started. We started with consumer reviews and our philosophy was that we’re not gonna put star ratings on mattresses. And to this day we still do not. Consumers, we let the consumers, they can assign star ratings, they can share their experience because their experience is valid for them.
And then we aggregate those experiences to let people kind of learn from the wisdom of the crowd. However, we fundamentally don’t believe it’s appropriate for some one single expert to put a star rating on a mattress because again, mattresses are highly personal. So a mattress that’s five stars for me can be one star for you, et cetera.
So,
Mark Kinsley: and a pair of pants that’s five stars for me might be one star for you. Exactly. Exactly. Or shoes or whatever else. I’ve heard you compare mattresses to pants. Now
Michael Magnuson: I
Mark Kinsley: use that analogy a lot. Yeah. Now I, I want to dig in before we go to some of the opportunities and threats facing mattress retailers today.
I wanna dig into something that is kind of a broad question, but I think you can dial into it. What are some of the secrets of the mattress industry that people might not know, even people in the mattress industry from your
Michael Magnuson: point of view? I don’t, I feel like the secrets. I mean, from my standpoint, I usually think about secrets that the consumers don’t know, but those are open secrets in the industry.
There’s every one of those is, is like well known in the industry. So, such as though,
Mark Kinsley: I mean, list ’em off.
Michael Magnuson: Well, I mean, I just had a customer or a reader ask me last night about, um, you know, he heard that, that sometimes manufacturers will, um, you know, he asked basically about the ma the model name games.
He’s like, I heard that sometimes the same model will be sold under different names. And he said, uh, that’s kind of like well known. But he’s like, I heard that sometimes the same model if, if a retailer wants to call it an extra firm instead of a firm, they’ll just call it an extra firm. And, and they don’t carry necessarily the actual extra firm model that exists in that collection, but they’re gonna call the one that they have the extra firm.
And, and I have seen that happen. And uh, and so I was like, yeah, it’s super, super unfortunate. But that’s kind of a secret of the industry that retailers kind of for a long time have run the show and manufacturers kind of in an effort to make sure that their customers, the retailers are happy. They’ve kind of not maybe pushed back in my opinion enough on things like that, which do add a lot of confusion in the marketplace around those products.
So, uh, that’s kind of a secret that consumers have to deal with. Um, and there’s a million of those types
Mark Kinsley: of things, uh, and all the more reason for a consumer to go in and actually try mattresses and get fit for a mattress and find something that feels good to them.
Michael Magnuson: A hundred percent. And not to be self-serving, but all the more reason why it’s important to have a third party out there who can kind of like help bridge the gap across these retailers, um, in a way that probably it’s not.
The manufacturer doesn’t feel like it’s their place to do always. So,
Mark Kinsley: so let’s talk about the opportunities and threats facing mattress retailers today, because even if some of these things that you’re about to bring up on your screen, you can feel free to go and do that, even if some of these, if you’re watching on YouTube, obviously you can see this or on any of our video channels.
If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can always head over to FAM News and you can search for Michael Magnusson on FAM News. And this episode’s gonna pop, pop up or go to our podcast feed. Um, but before you do, uh, before we get into this, I want retailers out there to understand something that, um, maybe you understand the lay of the land as Mike is about to present it, and maybe you don’t.
So if you have any blind spots, I would just ask you to let him walk you through this because I think it’s important to define reality before. You try to do anything with it in, in this situation. So, you know, if we’re facing a monster that is unknown, uh, it’s going to, you know, come, come outta your left and flank and eat you, you know?
So maybe there are things threats out there that you don’t even know about. So, from, from your standpoint, Mike, what are the concerns today for mattress retailers?
Michael Magnuson: Well, I mean, I think everything I’m gonna mention here is something that you’re aware of, but sometimes it helps to just kind of consider it all in one place.
I mean, you’ve got a, a lot of disruption right now with your vendors. I mean, you’re, uh, the biggest vendor in the category is buying. Everybody’s biggest competitor, right? The second biggest vendor is just come out of chapter 11. Um, you’ve got the issues with the economy. Store of traffic is down pretty much across the board.
We’re looking at a possible recession. We still don’t really know where that’s gonna shape, uh, shake out. Uh, we’ve got all kinds of technology changes that are affecting this industry. Apple’s privacy changes are still rippling through. The effects of those are still being figured out, and they’ve certainly affected the, uh, efficacy of marketing in this industry.
Um, Everybody is talking about the impact of artificial intelligence and generative AI on really all facets of life, but also this business in particular. Um, and then of course you have all the normal concerns that you always had to worry about, like having a great website, uh, making sure you have effective and efficient marketing, uh, making sure your sales team is very high performing and that you have the best possible assortment of products for your consumers.
And then again, on top of all of that, as if the, that wasn’t enough to put on your plate. You have the three existential threats that have faced this industry for the last five, six years that I’ve been talking about, which are only, uh, stronger now than they’ve ever been. Which again, as a reminder are ultra cheap mattresses.
Um, Amazon, who is the kind of quintessential and most significant purveyor of said ultra cheap mattresses, but by virtue of their size and scale is a threat in and of themselves. And then of course you have the mattress review mafiaa out there who continues to eat into the consumer mind share with misinformation that is directing people away from your stores.
So in short, mattress retailers have a lot on their plate right now. I might put it another way, it’s kind of a shit show right now for retailers. So I think just having all that kind of in your mind at once is, uh, at least eye-opening. And it can, if you feel like maybe you’ve had a lot of anxiety recently, you know, maybe this helps you understand.
Okay. I. There’s pretty good reason for it. There’s a lot going on
Mark Kinsley: whenever you’ve talked to mattress retailers about all of these different things going on from t s i buying mattress firm, SS, s b and bankruptcy. Of course, s s B now has a new c e o Charlie idle, Shelly Huffs out, uh, new c m o as well. Um, people are suffering store traffic figures that are,
that
Michael Magnuson: are way down, both of whom are, are new, but but also not new.
Not new.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah. I said new C E O A, uh, yeah. Air quotes. Yeah. Reappointed. Uh, um, and then all, all of the things in the second two buckets of traditional and existential. When you’ve talked to retailers about these issues, how do they see this in terms of prioritization of threats? Is there anything that stands out above the others, or is it just this swirling basket that, like you said, is just a complete shit show?
I think
Michael Magnuson: if you were looking at this slide, if, for those of you who can see it, like the, the ones that I mentioned, As far as like the traditional kind of concerns, having a great website, the trying to do the best marketing and sales training you can and, and the merchandising with your product assortment tends to be, that’s, that’s the stuff people have always kind of, uh, at least thought they should be thinking about and, and, and should have been thinking about.
And that’s the kind of stuff that I think most people still continue to think about. They kind of just focus on those core elements and that’s probably the right thing. ’cause some of this is a little out of your control, but at the same time, you’ve gotta be mindful of how these other factors are going to affect your business and how you should be going about those core things.
Um, and that’s where I think people aren’t necessarily always as responsive as, as they maybe could be.
Mark Kinsley: I’ve heard a lot of retailers lately talking about, uh, chat G P T and AI and also talking about high performing sales teams because. If store traffic is down, every single up matters more. Mm-hmm. Not only in terms of converting that sale, but getting the, the biggest ticket possible.
And we’re gonna be talking a little plug here, we’re gonna be talking a lot about that at Sleep Summit 2023 coming up October 9th through 12 in Bentonville, Arkansas, my Backyard. Um, high performing sales teams and really creating some pathways for people forward. So the sleep summit’s gonna be the beginning.
It’s not a dead end. So we have a lot of things we’re gonna be announcing and introducing that are going to boost your high performing sales teams. And also, yours truly is gonna be taking a deep dive into chat, G P T AI Automation and what it means for mattress retailers. I am way, way down this rabbit hole
Michael Magnuson: like I’m, I’m in
Mark Kinsley: Wonderland at this point, but it’s fascinating because of what kind of a seismic shift it, it’s going to create, whether you like it or not.
And people are worried about AI taking jobs. AI may not take your job as somebody who. Understands how to harness ai. Very much could. Mm-hmm. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna go into it while not trying to scare you even more, but allowing you to potentially harness that in a way that’s going, gonna help your business.
Alright. So keep going. So we have this big changing world that retailers are up against. What next?
Michael Magnuson: Yeah, well, I mean, essentially, uh, the, the world has been disrupted. It just, these are continuing, um, forms of disruption that are coming in. And so, uh, I, I mean, I have some information, I dunno how much we want to go into here, how much we have time to go into here.
But, um, uh, if I’m summarizing it, one of the things I’ve shared with retailers over the past few years, uh, since the pandemic hit was that. When the pandemic hit, it came in and it actually changed consumer behavior as it relates to people’s willingness to buy online in this category without trying it in a store first.
And, you know, we had kind of at, uh, over the past seven years, we’d certainly seen a lot of disruption in that regard. This was a category, as most people know, where almost nobody was willing to buy a mattress without trying it eight years ago, nine years ago. But then with the advent of all these, uh, online mattress brands that came up and got a lot of attention, um, and offered these generous return policies and the like, that number quickly, quickly rose, but it did hit a plateau prior to the pandemic.
Um, it hit a plateau around 40%, um, where it, where it kind of leveled out until we hit the pandemic. And then I talked to people about how wow, the pandemic. Kind of represented this step function change. It went up to over 50% PE of people. Were now all of a sudden willing to, do you have that
Mark Kinsley: slide? Can you pull up, put that slide up there.
So show people. Um,
Michael Magnuson: yeah, so this is kind of where we were, um, prior to the, prior to leveling out. This is the first kind of the, we didn’t actually start tracking this metric right when Casper launched, but about a year, year and a half after Casper launched, when it was already had already gone from roughly zero to 20%, uh, we started tracking this metric.
Each month we have thousands of data points of consumers telling us whether they need to try a mattress before they buy it. Um, and they’re just telling us this in the context of using our site to shop basically, and Right.
Mark Kinsley: And I think that’s pretty well established. Okay. So, so let’s, let’s go through
Michael Magnuson: this.
So anyway, so yeah, it goes up to 42%. And then, uh, and you know, meanwhile, the, uh, total number of online mattress brands, uh, is, is skyrocketing. It’s going up by one per week during this three year period. While that number, while, while the addressable market is, is going from zero to 40% of consumers, um, and then it levels out okay at 42, 40 3%.
And, and then what happens is then we start to see attrition in the number of online mattress brands for the first time. And we also see that a bunch of those online mattress brands start going into brick and mortar stores, um, whether their own stores or partnering with retailers, uh, or even big box. Um, so they start diversifying their distribution essentially.
Um, and then we have the pandemic. So after two years where it had basically plateaued and we saturated the. Portion of the market willing to buy without trying. We have the pandemic and it shoots up to 71% in the April of 2020. So it goes from
Mark Kinsley: 43% for people that not, that are just listening from 43% kind of plateaued, willing to try without buying.
And it shoots up to 71% in April
Michael Magnuson: in the blink of an eye, like in the course of a single month. It just flies up. Um, and again, these are all thousands of data points that this is based on. So, uh, then it quickly settles down within a few months after that by summer, late summer of 2020, but we’re still now at like 50% or more of people who are willing to buy without trying, which is essentially like a 25% or 20 to 25% increase in addressable market size for all these online guys.
Um, and a shrinkage for the, for the folks who are selling. You know, through traditional stores. So it’s significant. It sounds, uh, it’s even more significant than it might sound when you say 43 to 50%, um, change. But then what we’ve seen since then, this was the good news that I have, uh, this is the good news that I have to share with retailers, which is that since, um, mid 2021 when it was still up around 50%, so that where we were still in a lot, in a lot of ways, the depths of the pandemic.
Since then, it actually has come back down. So unlike so many other categories where the. Uh, effects of the pandemic have more or less changed our behavior permanently. This seems to be a category where people’s behavior has more or less reverted to where we were before the pandemic. So we’re seeing now, like back now in the low forties percentile of people who are willing to buy without trying in store.
So that’s really good news and arguably some of the first really good news brick and mortar retailers have had as it relates to disruptive trends over the past eight, nine years. So I was happy to be, be able to share that when we did this analysis.
Did you want me to continue or did you have any follow up questions on that? I heard,
Mark Kinsley: I heard you hit a button there and I thought you were going to the next
Michael Magnuson: slide. Oh, it was dramatic. I’m sorry. No, I was, I was advancing just to get the Okay. You want me to continue? All right. So, um, one thing I want to people have asked me when I’ve shared this information with them is, What, you know, why, why is that?
Why have things improved? Um, I have a few theories for it. I’ll share them. One is that I, I do think that brick and mortar retailers deserve some credit for improvements they’ve made to the shopping experience, largely in response to the threats that online retailers or retailers have presented over the last decade.
Um, they’ve changed a lot of these, these name game practices and the, uh, sort of like the market up to market down stuff is not as, uh, Pervasive or egregious as it always, uh, was before, um, some of the selling practices, the aggressive salespeople, those types of tactics, I think have been, uh, largely dialed way back, if not eliminated.
Store policies have become way more consumer friendly in terms of return policies and, and the like, in order to kind of, uh, keep pace with or like have parody with the online guys. So all that has had an impact, I believe. And likewise, I think, and a lot of the online
Mark Kinsley: brands have have said, Hey, I’m gonna help you drive foot traffic, and they are actually doing it.
Michael Magnuson: Yeah. So, well that’s another thing. Yeah. Partnership. We’re working, uh, traditional, but that doesn’t really affect the consumer so much. That’s more like the, you know, that’s not, these, these, my, my hypotheses here are more about what things have happened that may have affected how consumers respond to the question of whether they, um, Want to try batch before chop it before they buy before, yeah, try it before buy.
Gotcha. But I will say that the willingness, uh, of, of, uh, the availability of online brands in those stores for sure has affected their willingness to buy without trying, because now they can get the brands that they’ve been reading about, those online brands that tend to have a lot of marketing, to the extent that that was the thing that was wanting them, that was making them wanna buy online was having access to that brand.
Well now they can get that brand in a store and they’d much rather try it before they buy it, so they can have their cake and eat it too at this point. Um, but likewise, I think the brands that, putting aside the brands that were kind of once the quote unquote online brands, The traditional store brands have also responded.
They’ve simplified their product lineups, you know, there’s a lot less of this model proliferation. Uh, they’ve simplified their pricing, a lot more map pricing out there, I think, uh, which consumers, uh, find a lot simpler and less, um, nerve wracking. The idea that you’re kind of getting, uh, taken advantage of with the, the pricing of a mattress store.
Uh, I think traditional store brands have improved the way they advertise. Um, we see a lot more digital advertising now, and it’s still got a long ways to go in terms of its efficiency, but it, it certainly has improved a lot from where it was. Um, and like this is the point I was making earlier, that they are also adding d t C brands to the lineups in these physical stores so people don’t feel like they have to choose, do I want the brand that I read about on Instagram, or do I want to try it before I buy it?
They can potentially do both. Um, and then of course you have, uh, improvements to the, the digital footprint of the retailers. The retailers have improved their own websites, um, so that helps. Uh, they’ve also added some store reviews. That’s something I think that since the pandemic, many retailers have made a concerted effort and had success building.
Um, and then of course, um, some consumers have come back to the idea of buying in a physical store because they tried buying online or maybe someone they know tried buying online had a bad experience. So some of the kind of hype has probably, um, been gone full circle, if you will. So those are just some theories.
I don’t know what’s exactly the key driver there, but I think all of those are plausible factors. There may be more. Um, so, uh, you know, one of the things though that I, I do caution people is like, while this is good news, uh, One should still be mindful that the in the future, this is not necessarily going to stay this way forever.
And one very clear piece of evidence of that is that when you look at willingness to try, our willingness to buy a mattress without trying it in a store, first, the answers are extremely stratified by your age. And it is literally a direct line. Like the oldest people say people over 65, 20 8% of ’em say they’re willing to buy without trying.
You go up, you go 10 years younger, it’s you’re already up to 38%, 10 years younger than that. You’re at 48% by the time you get the people who are under 45, they’re at 54, 56, 50 8%. Um, and so what it tells you obviously is that, you know, obviously the younger folks are much more willing to buy without trying it.
And that. Has not changed. That’s always been the case. And so as those folks become a bigger and bigger portion of the mattress buying universe, this percentage is gonna continue to go up. So, and
Mark Kinsley: I can corroborate that with a different data point that I recently saw. And it was an analysis of a hundred different mattress retail stores, and they were looking at foot traffic.
And one of the stats that stood out to me above everything else, uh, was the number of people, the, the high percentage of people that were coming into the stores that were over age 70. And I kept looking at the data and it was just the, the data was clearly showing that it was older people who were coming into the store shopping for mattresses.
Mm-hmm. So that supports that graph there, you know, saying, Hey, people over 65 years old, most of them, you know, want to try before they buy.
Michael Magnuson: Yep. Um, I’m gonna share my screen again. I know, I know
Mark Kinsley: you’ve got some, uh, some info also, uh, that, that I want to get to about, uh, reviews and what to solve for around reviews or what to do about the reviews.
Um, so I know we have to kind of set that up a little bit about, um, yeah. You know, I know this is your wheelhouse, talking
Michael Magnuson: about reviews. Well, I’ll, let me just, let me just share this one slide that I just, since I just skipped ahead to it. Um, Mattress related search trends. Yeah. When I look at like, just overall demand for the market, I look at like searches that relate to the, to the word mattress.
Um, if you go back to 2010 and you look at that, uh, that chart essentially month, monthly data, um, this is from Google, you can see a sort of steady, but like relatively minimal year over year increase, um, that we were on the trajectory that we were on, which is kind of just like, you know, more and more people were, were using the internet in that 20, early 2010s timeframe and more, more and more people were researching it, uh, before they buy and things like that.
Then you have, uh, 2014 is when Casper launches and the amount of, uh, attention. That went to the mattress category. The amount of media, the amount of marketing dollars that were directed in this category, all of a sudden increased radically. And you saw the effects, uh, for the next seven years. You saw a straight up into the right line in terms of the, uh, number of searches people were performing related to this category.
It was a direct, uh, result of all that. Increased attention in marketing. Uh, so that basically peaked out around in mid 21, mid 2021. Obviously, actually it really peaked out right after the pandemic started. Um, but it continued kind of on its upward trajectory through, uh, the middle of the following year, August of 2021 specifically, at which point it has basically promptly fallen since then, and it’s fallen pretty significantly, like we’re down in 2017 type territory.
In terms of like people’s overall attention to this category as, as reflected in their search behavior. Um, So, uh, you know, I just note on, on the slide if you’re looking at it, that it’s clearly not the only driver because one of the main drivers, of course, is what’s, what happened with, um, the pandemic and people’s kind of pull forward of demand and, and, and liquidity and interest rates and things like that.
And of course, the possibility of recession looming over people’s minds as it relates to big ticket purchases and so forth. Those have all been major factors over the last couple years driving the decline as not to mention housing and, and, and, uh, factors related to that. However, another factor you may not be aware of is that right before August, 2021, apple made its privacy changes, which made it way harder to target active mattress shoppers with like efficient marketing.
If you think about it, tv, terrible way to target mattress shoppers, right? A hundred people are watching your TV ad. Only one of them on average is shopping for a mattress right now. The other 99 are not in market. The way the online guy guys grew so quickly was they didn’t market to those 99. They marketed only to the one.
And the way they did that was through online advertising that was specifically targeted to in-market mattress shoppers. Um, nectar has made, uh, you know, nearly a billion dollar business out out of doing that. Uh, however, Apple’s privacy changes made that way harder and way more expensive starting in mid 2021.
And I believe that as a result, mattress companies had to, particularly the ones who were spending a lot of the money on advertising, which was the D T C guys, had to dial back their marketing a ton because it no longer was cost effective. And so by dialing back that marketing, it also had the kind of converse effect on the overall amount of search activity in this category than what we had seen happening over the previous seven years.
Basically, it, it caused that. That amount of search activity to fall. Um, so that’s a theory that I have that I think definitely was a contributor. It’s hard to say how much of a contributor, but certainly it did make things, uh, it has made things worse for the category. So that’s just an interesting data on the overall category.
I also, if you’re looking at the slide, you could see it’s, it’s kind of interesting to note that if you were to see where we are now relative to the trend that we were on up until 2014 when Casper came along, it literally is like a direct line, uh, a straight line. We were on the exact same trend that we would’ve been on, had none of this online disruption ever happened.
It’s kind, which is kind of funny. It’s almost like these last nine years were all just a dream. It’s
Mark Kinsley: just a gentle incremental, yeah. Increase in mattress related search trends. We went through all this turmoil, went on this crazy rollercoaster and ended up.
Michael Magnuson: Where we would’ve been anyway. It is a gentle upward shift.
So anyway, so, um, but what I wanted to point out, having just kind of set the table with that context, I wanted to point out some opportunities that I see for brick and mortar retailers. ’cause I think there’s so much that brick and mortar retailers can still do to improve their businesses. And, uh, one of the frameworks that I like to use is I like to think about revenue.
Um, ’cause I’m really focusing, when I talk about improving your business, it’s really on the revenue side of things. Um, and I think about revenue pretty simply. It’s how many prospects do you have? What portion of those do you convert? And then what dollar amount do those conversions end up spending?
What’s your ticket size? That’s really it. Those three metrics, prospects, number of prospects, percent conversion and dollar, uh, ticket size. That’s it. You go, those are the three metrics. You, if anything that you do to improve your revenue has to move one or more of those metrics in a positive direction. I looked at that then and I said, okay, let’s take the key functional areas of your business.
You know, starting with marketing. What can you do? Um, what are some kind of low hanging fruit opportunities that can improve your business? Well, in, in terms of the prospects prioritizing your ad spend on in-market shoppers in the manner that I just talked about is still an area of opportunity for nearly every mattress company, except some of the biggest D t C brands who are, who’ve been the ones who’ve been doing it really well.
Um, there’s still a lot of money spent very inefficiently in this category. Um, that’s so, by the way, one of the reasons I know that is because there’s a lot of opportunity that people have to do stuff with good bed that they’re not doing. And we are one of the few places you can reach in market shoppers and only in market shoppers.
So when I speak to this, uh, and I can be like knowledgeable, like about. Opportunities that are being missed. I know for sure opportunities are being missed as it relates to us, and I can only imagine that other opportunities like us to the extent that they exist, are also being missed by those same companies.
So that’s one obvious super low hanging fruit kind of number one on the list. Uh, but in terms of conversion also, I think, um, making sure that you target the right message to the right audience is still an opportunity with your marketing. There’s a lot of broad marketing that is, um, that is not necessarily, uh, optimized.
Likewise,
Mark Kinsley: you going back to, you know, right message for the right audience. When you looked at that chart on the number of people over the age of 70 that still want to try a mattress before buying, you could have some specific messaging to that audience because you know that that’s a considerable set that still wants to come in
Michael Magnuson: a hundred percent.
And that’s, and it kind of plays into this idea that like these broad channels of marketing, you know, the traditional media. Just kind of don’t allow you to do the kinds of things that you need to be able to do to, in order to tailor that messaging in order to make sure that you’re maximizing the opportunity to bring that prospect to you.
Um, ticket size, likewise. Like, let’s take example. Uh, if you’re, um, if you’re trying to sell a high-end product, you need to be targeting shoppers who are open to high-end products. Like you’re, you’re, you’ve gotta be doing specific marketing that is, that is looking for people who have very high disposable income, very high, uh, willingness to spend on this category, things like that.
So again, marketing plays into not only getting more prospects, but, and not only. Tailoring the message to convert more of those prospects. But it also tailors, uh, it focuses on, sorry, but marketing also can drive your ticket size by being able to target the right audience for specific products that may be higher end, for example, or, uh, that might.
That might want accessories like adjustable basis and the like. Um, online reputation. That’s another huge area of opportunity. Um, uh, store reviews. Having store reviews, not just on Facebook or Google, but really everywhere your prospects are going, if it is hugely important still, you know, people don’t always get go to, go to where you happen to think it’s important to have store reviews, so you gotta have ’em anywhere that your prospects are going.
You need to look great. Um, that’s still a big opportunity. Your website of course, um, plays into all of this. I still think there’s big opportunities and E S E O. A lot of websites I see still are lacking product details and really good images and importantly, they’re lacking product reviews. Um, store visits are definitely going to, um, oh, here’s another thing about websites, uh, that is less of an issue for maybe a small, really small retailers, but like I see this problem or this mistake with mid-size and larger retailers all the time.
They wanna give their website to sort of an e-commerce division, and that e-commerce division runs the website and they’re kind of measured on the performance of the e-commerce production of the website. That’s not the right approach. I can tell you that is not the right approach because the role of your website, principally in this business is to drive your overall business, not to drive.
Just the online e-commerce part of it. And we just talked about how many people want to try before they buy, especially if you are a brick and mortar retailer. So if you are optimizing your website for e-commerce, then you’re doing it wrong. You should be optimizing for your overall revenue, recognizing that most of your prospects wanna buy in your store and your goal is getting them to your store.
So, you know, there was a
Mark Kinsley: big period of time where that was a huge push. People, especially during the pandemic, if you’re a brick and mortar retailer, I heard lots of people limp into the web saying, yeah, we’re getting online. We’re getting online now. And so you, you’re saying some of them have over-indexed, if, especially medium to larger retailers on having that e-comm presence instead of using that as a, as a job to get people in their stores.
Michael Magnuson: It’s, it’s how you’re measuring your success and how you’re holding the people who run your website and make the decisions about how information is presented and how calls to action are rendered on the website. You, if you are measuring them based on the e-commerce sales of the website, You’re doing it wrong and ’cause they will optimize for the wrong things.
If you think about it, like what do you want the call to action to be? Is it add to cart? I, for most brick and mortar retailers, no, it’s not add to cart, it’s talk to a sales rep, it’s come try this bed. It’s something like that, like the vast, if you’re optimizing for add to cart, I mean, that’s just a very oversimplified example, but you can see where I’m going with this.
Like you’re, you’re optimizing for the wrong things and there’s a million decisions that, that come off of that, about how you present information and how you lead people through an experience on your website that basically stem from what ultimately are you, how ultimately are you measuring success here?
So that’s just a mindset, but I see that’s mistake and it’s a, an every mistake is also an opportunity. So it’s a huge to me opportunity to, I. Make sure that your opt, your website is optimized for the right things, which is ultimately driving your overall business of which e-commerce is part. But it is by far not, uh, the main thing, nor will it be anytime in the near future.
Mark Kinsley: So I think it’s a good pause point for retailers. Ask yourself, what is my website optimized for? Is it optimized to bring people into my store? Is it optimized to get them to. Yeah, add something to cart, but it shouldn’t be, you know, I think that’s a, a good pause point for people just to reflect on for a minute.
So, and then you get into your website.
Michael Magnuson: By the way, think about this too. If you’re not convinced that, uh, that you’d rather, um, send someone to your store, think about what product are they gonna buy if they just are self-guided entirely on your website.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah. Just look at your average tickets online versus in store.
That’s that simple, I think.
Michael Magnuson: And what accessories are they gonna add to that ticket, like, versus if they come into your store. I mean, it’s, it’s, if you think about it in that way, it’s kind of like if you are pushing them, pushing them to add to cart, you are literally pushing them to a small, to a lower exp a less expensive product with fewer accessories, probably a higher return rate.
’cause they’re not gonna have the guidance of your sales team to help them make a good choice. Like there’s, you’re, you’re pushing them to make, to be a worse customer for you. You’re optimizing your website in such a way that’s, that’s basically asking them to be a worst customer for you. So anyway, that’s just a, we, we, we went deep on that one, but that’s emblematic of like, where I think there’s a lot of opportunities out there in the market.
Um, as it relates to conversion. Your website also has a lot of opportunity. Product reviews play a role here as well. We know a lot of people come to our website while they’re in a store, right? They’re coming, they’re, they’re in a store, they’re on a bed. They now wanna know, does this bed have good reviews?
’cause I don’t wanna like, make a thousand dollars, 2000, $5,000 purchase unless this thing has good reviews. Where will they go first? Probably your website. But if your website doesn’t have reviews, they’re definitely not gonna just stop right there. They go look elsewhere, right? In fact, even if your website does have reviews, they probably are gonna look elsewhere if they want to.
Third party kind of opinion. Um, but nonetheless, product reviews are important to have on your website because at, at a minimum, um, you can present. Some reassurance that reviews provide, uh, related to the products that you carry. Um, and of course your website needs to be optimized for BBAs, right? Like we, we know that there are tools out there like podium that, uh, make that easier for consumers who have tried something in the store to ultimately consummate the purchase.
Um, your merchandising efforts obviously play a role here as well, obviously as, as relates to the number of prospects you have carrying brands that can drive store traffic, as, as Mark alluded to previously, is, is something that’s, I think, Still an opportunity for many retailers. Um, and likewise as it relates to conversion, carrying brands that have product reviews is also an opportunity.
Um, and then as it relates to ticket size, obviously it’s all gonna be about the mix. You have to have a mix of high-end products, and you have to have accessories that are compelling add-ons to the products that you have. And then as it relates to, um, your sales efforts, I do think that in terms of the number of prospects, it’s overlooked.
It’s an overlooked opportunity that the quality of your sales team, and it’s the sales, the in-store shopping experience is one of the, kind of the most overlooked drivers of getting more prospects. Because if you can channel that great experience into referrals, loyalty, and maybe most importantly, good reviews, it will come back to you in the form of more new prospects.
And in terms of conversion as it relates to your selling team, your sales team, training RSAs, this is again, a hugely overlooked, long overlooked opportunity for the industry. So many times we hear from consumers that they go into the store and they feel like they’re smarter than the salesperson. Now, that may or may not be the case, but that is their perception.
And their perception is based on the fact that they’ve done a bunch of online research before they went into that store and they learn things that the R SS A didn’t seem to know. Like, for example, what did the product reviews say about that product? So if you’re not training your RSAs on what the product reviews say, you’re missing a huge opportunity to earn the trust of the consumers that walk into your store.
And not only that, If they’re not being trained on what the reviews say, then they’re unable to play offense and use those reviews as a proof point to underscore the things that they’re telling the consumer about that product. So what’s gonna make that, that, that pitch more compelling than being able to say, look, don’t believe me.
You don’t have to trust me. This is what the reviews say. And so being able, the only way they can do that is if they’re really being trained on what those reviews actually do say and can reference them, um, effectively. So, uh, and then the last thing, uh, just as it relates to ticket size, I think there’s still an opportunity to train RSAs on the benefits of a full sleep solution, whether that is related to, uh, the, the interaction between the mattress and a pillow or the mattress in an adjustable base or, or maybe some kind of a topper or temperature related solution.
So there’s, there’s opportunities to grow ticket size through R s A training, uh, for sure as well. So that’s just kind of like a, a quick take on some of the revenue growth opportunities that I see for, for retailers today. And, you know, it’s worth noting, again, if you’re looking at the, the YouTube version of this, I just highlighted, I just took the same information that was on the slide and I just highlighted where reviews appear on this.
And you can see that there’s a lot of areas of opportunity. That relate to reviews, and that’s because I think historically reviews have been kind of an overlooked or under, um, exploited opportunity to buy buy mattress retailers. I would even add to
Mark Kinsley: this and say that you could potentially put this in the marketing column because I’ve seen some really effective retailers take good reviews.
Sometimes those are reviews of their stores. Sometimes those are reviews of specific products, and they use those as marketing. Um, they use those, that’s true with their RSAs to, to help with conversion. But even in the, on the marketing side of things, you know, having somebody that represents an audience profile of somebody that would be an ideal customer for you, um, in an ad with a certain review of a certain product that you’re trying to promote, that can be very effectively
Michael Magnuson: used in your marketing.
You’re right, it probably should belong in the, in the conversion box of the marketing row here or something. Or maybe more. Yeah. There’s probably more places where they, they could be, uh, for those looking, not looking at the slide, the marketing row is the one row that doesn’t have any red mark’s highlighting that.
I think they probably could and should,
Mark Kinsley: another way of saying that is testimonials, right? Yeah. So a testimonial and a review can be very similar. They can be, they can be the same thing, but they can be different as well. Uh, but I love mm-hmm. Whenever testimonial marketing is used effectively, and I often encourage people, retailers, that we work with to make a note in your c r m about somebody that’s dynamic, about somebody that seems enthused about the product, about somebody that’s buying a, you know, a product that you would want to, that, that you, you believe in and come back to them after three months.
And send a little camera crew over to their house and you know, if they agree to do it, incentivizes them some way to put ’em on camera and capture that review for that product or for your store and use it as a marketing asset because yeah, you know, that
Michael Magnuson: third call, call first. Call first. That’s a good policy there.
No, I mean, yeah, just show up, you know, where they live.
Mark Kinsley: Just hop
Michael Magnuson: on in.
Uh, yeah, that’s it. So, uh, agreed. Agreed. Totally. Um, in the interest of time, I’ll skip, I’ll skip ahead a little bit. Just, I mean, th that last little bit was a segue into kind of the importance of reviews. I think we all kind of know, uh, at this point we should know at least I don’t, I don’t know that everyone does really, really in their gut know, but we should know at this point how important reviews are.
And I’m talking not only about, uh, store reviews that you may have. You’re probably further along on, hopefully you’re further along on, ’cause those are a little easier to get. But also product reviews. Um, and you know, we, we, I’m, I’m gonna kind of like breeze past some of the reasons, ’cause we all know that like the vast majority of consumers research their product online.
Right. That we also know that since the pandemic, and this is something that has not changed, most of the decision is happening online. It’s not just that they’re doing some research and then they’re just trying to find a store to go to, to start their real decision making. It’s no, they’re coming in that the store is almost like their last step of the process.
It’s like they’ve done their homework now they’re just trying to get the validation of that. Touching and feeling the product lying on it to, uh, make sure that they feel good about it. Um, so, you know, basically these are all critical reasons why, uh, being found online is really important. And not just being found, but also giving people all the information they need to feel like, yeah, I do want to go to that store and try that product and, ’cause I think that’s what I wanna buy, like, all the information that they need to get to that point.
It’s like a higher bar than it’s ever been, right? It’s not just, uh, uh, all the information I need to, to know that. Maybe I’ll go there and start thinking about this. No, no, no. It’s a, it’s way beyond that. And so it includes reviews, it includes third party validation for most consumers. Um, so. That’s, uh, really important.
And the, the bottom line is that like product reviews have become table stakes for retailers. I, I, that that’s in fact, uh, at a recent conference, that’s how it was put by someone and I couldn’t agree more. Um, and the one point I do make to people who, for anyone who kind of like, I, ’cause I have gotten this pushback once or twice before where people say, you know what?
Like, I get what you’re saying, but our customers are not that concerned about reviews. And what I’d say to that person is, do you think that you are seeing a representative sample of all customers in your market? Or is it possible that because you don’t have reviews, there’s a subset of the market that you’re not seeing?
And yeah, they’re not your customers, but, but there’s a causality. And, and, and in effect, as the number of consumers who don’t care about reviews, shrinks and shrinks and shrinks. Your customer base on whom you’re basing, that assessment is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And essentially you are limiting yourself by not having reviews to that shrinking, uh, portion of the, of the universe of customers.
So, um, that’s really gonna just important point to make that like you’re, if you don’t have reviews, you can’t base how important reviews are to your business on what those customers say, because those are the ones who came in spite of that.
Mark Kinsley: If you hang your hat on my customers, read the newspaper, okay, that’s my customers read the newspaper.
If you’re gonna ride that horse until it didn’t have legs, I don’t, I don’t think it has legs anymore.
Michael Magnuson: You, you’ve already, you’ve already stopped moving forward. For sure. That horse is definitely lying on the ground, but yes, exactly. That’s a great analogy. Great analogy. Uh, so, you know, and the last point I’ll just make too, about the importance of reviews is that if you don’t have reviews, what you’re essentially doing is leaving yourself exposed to the people who do have reviews out there on the internet who are, um, uh, dominating search results in your market, which is the mattress review.
Mafiaa. And, and by the way, these aren’t real reviews. Of course, they’re pay to play bss, like, you know, they don’t mean anything. They’re just a bunch of garbage. But doesn’t mean that consumers aren’t gonna believe it. They don’t know any better. Google doesn’t even seem to know any better, and as a result, they’re gonna steal business from you, right?
They’re, they’re a hundred percent gonna steal business from you, and you’re basically leaving yourself exposed to that. And they’re gonna continue to just do what they do, which is, you know, The deceptive salesman in disguise type of stuff that ultimately direct
Mark Kinsley: people stores. We in the stores from you.
Many people don’t know. I mean, I saw an article posted and somebody tagged me on LinkedIn and they said, what’s your opinion of this? And it, it was a, an article that got into some, some specifics about the mattress. And I said, sadly, I checked the links and this is nothing more than a, than an affiliate page.
And it was from a reputable, seemingly reputable publication. Um, but there were inconsistencies in the reporting, contradictions in the reporting, and then you can check links to see if it’s actually a paid link, and all of them were. Mm-hmm. And so I had to point that out and it completely shifted the conversation away from the topic.
But even us in the industry, many
Michael Magnuson: people don’t know. Oh, the Mag Mattress Review Mafiaa now. Yeah. It includes most traditional publishers. That’s how crazy it’s gotten. Yeah. And a lot of times if they don’t hire their own army of 20 something nubs who don’t know anything about mattresses, but know how to like basically sell products with through the review medium, if they don’t hire their own army, they partner with one of the other mattress review mafiaa guys to write the content for them under their banner
Mark Kinsley: so they get the traffic and actually doctors attached to the properties now.
Oh yeah. And yep. You know, credible, credible sources, seemingly credible sources, but it’s all putting content between the consumer and the product companies in the sale of that product, um, to, to take a, take a commission to make money.
Michael Magnuson: Yeah. And the important thing to take away here I is that product reviews gives you a chance to fight back on that.
Because ultimately when people find these websites, it’s often because, Usually, maybe even because they’re searching for the thing that’s most important to them in this purchase, which is third party validation. Right? Right. They’re searching for some something to give them trust and confidence.
Unfortunately, they’re finding untrustworthy sources, but if you don’t have reviews, then there’s no chance they’re gonna find you. So you’re basically seeding all of that. Give yourself a chance to these competitors. Yeah, give yourself a chance and you can give
Mark Kinsley: yourself a chance also in your local markets, because there is prioritization of certain aspects of search in local markets.
So I, I know that probably gets more into store reviews and things like that. That’s right. Instead of product reviews, but that’s, that’s,
Michael Magnuson: yeah. Product reviews give you a better chance than you might think to, to show up ahead of these guys because of the localized search algorithms in your market. You should be more relevant than one of these guys is if you’ve got good information from consumers like.
Good review content from your customers or from customers about these products. So yeah, I think you have a, you have a better chance than you might think. Um, and, and customer reviews too are better than what the reviews. These, these guys have these garbage edit supposedly, uh, editorial type reviews, even though they’re just really pay to play.
Um, yours, your reviews would be some, uh, the type of content that Google definitely has a lot of respect for, which is consumer reviews, customer reviews. So that’s really, that would be valuable ammunition in your fight against these guys. So that’s context for, uh, why it’s important. But I also wanna give a little bit of background to like maybe offer some, some grace to retailers in this category for not having made more progress on this and, ’cause it’s, the thing that I realized that really was pointed out to me by retailers around the beginning of the pandemic was this product, this problem of how to get product reviews in this industry.
I knew it was hard, but I hadn’t really thought through the math of just how hard it is. Um, and so I put together some, some illustrative math to kind of help people, um, to help explain this to others once I figured it out for myself, uh, or once it maybe had been explained to me, which is that one of the critical things about product reviews is getting to a critical mass of reviews.
This is the real light bulb thing that was explained to me by some retailers, which is that you don’t really want to be at this. Like anybody can add reviews to their website, right? Like it’s easy to just, I mean, relatively easy to add a form, um, and some star ratings to show the reviews when you have them.
But if you’ve got a bunch of products on your website, and you know, this one has zero reviews, this one has one review, this one has two reviews, this one has zero. A lot of retailers made the argument to me, and I’m not sure I, I disagree that that’s actually worse than having just no sign of any reviews whatsoever.
’cause people look at that and they’re like, wow, like people can review this, and yet no one has. It’s like, well, no one’s even bought it. I mean, how unpopular a product is that? But no one’s ever even bought it. So, Almost having like no reviews is better than having less than a critical mass of reviews.
So the challenge, so what is a critical mass, by the way? Like, um, this is my kind of arbitrary, somewhat arbitrary, but, but based on my gut instinct as someone who’s been in the space a while, I kind of feel like if you’ve got more than a hundred reviews of a product, then there’s like no doubt, right? That people have no doubt about that product.
If you’ve got somewhere between 30 and a hundred reviews, people can feel confident about that product. If you’ve got 12 to 30, somewhere in that range, people are like, okay, but I’m a little uncertain. If you’ve got between three and 12, that starts to feel a little risky. And if you’ve got less than three, That might even be kind of downright dangerous.
Uh, it feels like well almost reckless to be purchasing that product. That’s, that’s my sense of how consumers might think about reviews and quantities in this particular category. So the question is, uh, how do you get to, let’s say 30 becomes the number that we use Illustratively, um, as critical mass of reviews.
How do you get to that? Because let you know that’s where you know, the magic number like it where you wanna get to. Um, and if you look at the math of what it takes to get to that level, it’s hard. And this is where I offer, you know, grace and slack to retailers. ’cause I realized like this is, there’s a, there’s a structural reason why retailers haven’t been able to crack this ’cause it’s almost mathematically impossible for most retailers to do this.
So let’s take a, a, a large retailer as an example. Uh, uh, what I’m calling a large retailer here, by the way, has 50 stores. Okay? They carried 50 models. On, on average in each store. And let’s say they sell a thousand mattresses, thousand units a year. So they’re 50,000 total units across, uh, their 50 stores, a thousand units per store.
Let’s say they ask every single one of those customers for review, and they get a 2% yield on those review requests. That gets them a a thousand reviews. So a thousand out of the 50,000 customers submitted a review. Um, now they gotta divide that by their 50 models. So on average, they’ve got 20 reviews per model after a year.
Okay? So we’re, remember we’re trying to get the 30 per model. That’s the, that’s your critical mass. That’s gonna take you on average 18 months. That’s if you have 50 stores and you’re asking every single customer for a review. Okay? 18 months, well, guess what, by the way, Two years is when the models are gonna have get changed over and the manufacturer’s gonna say, good news, uh, everything’s brand new.
Go ahead and start over on those reviews. So, so 18 months doesn’t really cut it. Okay? So that’s for a 50 store retailer. Now, imagine you’re a 10 store retailer. Well now you’ve got 10,000 units a year that you’re selling and you have a 2% yield. Well, now you’re only getting four reviews per model per year.
You’re never gonna get to critical mass. You literally will never get to critical mass because every time you get, you start getting anywhere near it, the models, or by the time you start getting anywhere near it, the models that you are getting reviews on are no longer on the market. And a small retailer, one store, let’s say, I mean, absolutely zero chance.
So basically anything, anywhere under 50 stores or maybe even under 75 stores, you don’t really have a shot at this on your own. Okay? The only way to solve this problem, Is to share reviews. And that’s the kind of light bulb moment that a bunch of retailers helped us discover during the pandemic is they came to us and they said, they kind of laid out some of this thinking, and for me and our, and they said in connection with that, can we use your platform to kind of be a central clearinghouse for reviews so that we can have critical mass?
And that’s when I realized that this was a real problem for brick and mortar retailers that was not gonna be solvable any other way. And we decided, sure, we will make our reviews available. We’ll make this platform available and we’ll build the technology that’s required in order to do that. And so that’s, that’s the story of, of, of some of what we’ve been doing for the last two years is preparing for this, um, So basically, how does, how does sharing work?
It’s pretty simple. Like you have a new review come in of a product from any number of different retailers. It goes into a pool with other reviews of that product that may have been collected through Good Bed directly or may have been collected through any number of other retailers who participate in this network.
And then basically that review gets, or all of the reviews in that pool become available to all of the retailers who carry that product. It’s pretty simple as well as they’re also available to the brand and they’re available on Good Bed for consumers who wanna read reviews on, uh, on that third party platform.
So this goes
Mark Kinsley: back to the conversation we had, remember syndicating reviews years ago? Yep.
Michael Magnuson: Yep.
Mark Kinsley: So that’s a big deal. I mean, for, for brands that don’t have, um, a lot of distribution, um, online or don’t sell online, Uh, it’s a, it’s a huge thing. I mean, we need to be able to, you know, some of the boutique brands, really great product brands, uh, that don’t have a concentration of reviews.
It, this solves a, this solves a real problem for people. The retailer has to want to adopt it though, and the retailer has to be the one that drives the, the consumer actually submitting a review for that product. I think there’s partnership programs and things that brands can do, but I really do like this and, and I think that it does help to fight back against some of the fake reviews too that are out there
Michael Magnuson: and it’s literally the only way to solve this problem.
Like if this is, this is like if, if, if you don’t love the idea of sharing reviews with other retailers, like I, I, I can understand like, but there is no other way. Like that’s, this is
Mark Kinsley: the only option. Well, really
Michael Magnuson: you have no, I mean, I, I, I mean like you could, I guess you could try to create your own syndication network if you don’t for some reason.
So want Yeah. To use good, bad, I mean, but, but we’re the, we’re out there. We created it. And I think it’s important to just like mention we did this just to help brick and mortar retailers. I mean, this is not like a huge money making opportunity for us to be honest. Uh, we believe in this industry, like it’s really important to our long-term success as good bed that this industry thrives.
It’s important to us. We, we, because we support the brick and mortar channel of this industry, it’s important that the brick and mortar channel and the brands they carry, uh, survives and thrives. So from that standpoint, it’s in our interest to offer something like this because we know that this channel is going to.
Get hammered over time if they don’t solve this problem. And we also know that the existing providers of tools in this category, like Bizarre Voice and those kinds of companies, they’re, they cover every category under the sun, like the last thing they care about. I mean, those are enterprise solutions.
They’re made for like Walmart and Macy’s. You know, these are not made for the bread and butter of the mattress industry, which is under a hundred million dollars in sales kind of companies. Small to mid-size companies, uh, local footprints. Yeah, absolutely. That’s not who those software solutions are for.
They, they’re not in business to care about the mattress industry and to care about these companies. We are, and therefore we’re, we can and are willing to offer this kind of solution cheaper, essentially. Like we’re, we’re willing to make it affordable because we know fundamentally that unless, uh, All boats can afford to participate.
We can’t lift all boats. This requires a network. Yeah. So we’re willing to basically make this affordable to all
Mark Kinsley: boats. Well, Mike, and there’s really no reason why. Thanks for, thanks for walking us through this man. Really appreciate it. Uh, I think this is, this is the culmination of a lot of thought and a lot of being a part of an industry, uh, which I think is critical.
Um, I know people can go to Good bed.com to get connected with you. Any other way you’d like to get them plugged into you?
Michael Magnuson: No, I mean, that’s the best thing. I mean, obviously you could reach out to us by email. Um, if, if you don’t know my colleague Jeff, you can reach him at Jeff at Good Bed. You can reach me at Mike at Good Bed and, um, awesome.
We keep it pretty simple.
Awesome.
Mark Kinsley: Thanks for being on the Sleep Summit Show. It’s good to see you, man.
Michael Magnuson: Always good to see you.
