So you may be asking: what does a company delivering
mattresses on bicycles in New York City have to do with PeapodLife and
ecosystems? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
But let’s back up a moment.
When the online mattress startup Casper began selling their
mattresses for $500 US each, they decided on an innovative value proposition.
Using a two-ton compressor, the company stuffs their foam mattresses into a box
roughly 3 feet high (104 centimetres by 53 cm by 50 cm).
That means if you live in New York City, your mattress comes
delivered via bicycle; outside of NYC, regular delivery. Now, for anyone living
in a condominium, small apartment, and especially a walk-up or walk-down apartment,
dealing with a bar-sized fridge box can be much easier than with a queen-sized
mattress.
Suffice it to say, the concept caught on with millennials and
those not wanting to deal with the hassles of regular mattress delivery. Plus,
it makes for great ‘unboxing videos’ online:
And fret not, Canada.
“Our plan was to expand into Canada
in 2015, but we had an overwhelming amount of interest from Canadians asking if
we could ship it to them, so we’re starting [in 2014],” Casper co-founder and
chief executive Philip Krim said in an interview. (Financial
Post)
Now you might think buying a mattress before trying it is a
silly proposition. The company offers a 100-day in-home trial period. As for
price, at $650 CDN for a twin and $1000+ CND for a king, Casper’s products are roughly
a third less to half competitor’s mattresses made with comparable materials.
Innovation is the Key to Today and Tomorrow
If there’s a takeaway from this story it’s this: even
entrenched and stayed industries like mattresses (just think back to decades of
people buying their spring mattress at Sears) can be dragged kicking and
screaming into the 21st Century by disruptive technologies and
innovative new approaches.
PeapodLife’s mission is to disrupt the status quo of housing
and building, and bring innovation to an industry that is literally thousands of years old. And despite what
they’ll tell you, honestly very little has changed.
Innovative…But Sustainable?
Delivery via bicycle certainly smacks of environmental
consciousness. But there seems to be a lot of packaging that goes into one of
these super-compressed deliveries. When you think about it, if you buy a
regular mattress, that too comes wrapped in plastic; in fact, with the mattress
compressed, Casper may even use less packaging
than a regularly delivered mattress. But frankly, we just don’t know and haven’t
done the hands-on research to find out.
PeapodLife, on the other hand, begins from a foundation of
true sustainability—ecosystems. We can’t promise we’ll deliver your ecosystem
on a bicycle, nor will we promise an exciting unboxing video (at least, not yet);
but we will promise that once your high order rainforest ecosystem is installed
and filling your space with good vibes and the fresh, clean air of nature, you’ll
not only sleep better than you could have ever imagined, your waking hours will
be that much better, too.
