Casper mattresses go mobile amid plans to expand

With boats outfitted with mattresses and a soon-to-travel “napmobile,” mattress startup Casper is expanding its reach by land and sea.

Now 17 months old, Casper has raised a $55 million funding round, launched an editorial site and is exploring product offerings beyond a mattress. The company’s goal is to expand across the U.S., while also exploring international possibilities, starting with Europe.

To test out cities, Casper is launching a Nap Tour, where a trailer with mattresses in nap pods travels the East Coast, starting Friday in Boston and ending in Miami. The company has also hosted pop-up shops across the country and a Labor Day boating event for customers, which was partly to poke fun at traditional mattress store holiday events .

“All of these are just different ways that we get to interact with our customers,” Casper Chief Executive Philip Krim said.

The company makes one kind of mattress, constructed of latex and memory foam, which it sells online only and ships directly from a manufacturer in the U.S. or from its facility in New York. The Casper mattress retails from $500 to $950.

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Casper has reached a run rate exceeding $100 million with 92 employees, Krim said, and he plans to hire more. When the CEO last spoke with MarketWatch in February, the company had $20 million in sales in its first 10 months.

The company closed a $55 million round of funding in June led by Institutional Venture Partners and including investors such as the Pritzker Family and celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Adam Levine.

The goal with all of Casper’s actions is to be well-positioned when sleep becomes the next trend in a healthy lifestyle, Krim said.

“The global brand vision is really to be the first brand that you think about to get a better night’s sleep,” Krim said.

While consumer attention is increasingly focused on healthy eating and exercise, Krim believes a good night’s sleep will be next. That’s why Casper launched a sleep-related editorial site in June that isn’t intended for short-term money-making — in fact, the site doesn’t currently have ad support — but is a long-term play to become more well-rounded in the sleep category, Krim said.

Casper is also looking into more product offerings, such as pillows and sheets. But Krim says they don’t plan to offer more than the one kind of mattress, because it has been well-received — so much so that the mattresses are currently back-ordered.

“We keep underestimating the growing demand for the product,” Krim said.