Casper Was Ill-Prepared to Leave Unicorn Realm for Real World
Awash in money, the mattress startup spent too freely and lacked the discipline of its biggest rivals.
Philip Krim is the CEO of Casper.
Photographer: Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images
For the latest in disruption, I direct your attention to a phenomenon Silicon Valley has labeled “DTC” — direct to consumer.
A half dozen years ago, Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s were small companies selling razors and blades online at rock-bottom prices. Today, they have 10% of the market while mighty Gillette’s market share has dropped 20 percentage points. Warby Parker created a direct-to-consumer model for eyeglasses. Glossier did the same for beauty products. Rent the Runway leases designer clothes and accessories. These companies were all unicorns — “billion dollar brands,” to borrow from the title of a new book1on the DTC phenomenon by Larry Ingrassia, a former top editor at the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times (and, full disclosure, my former boss).