Retail Therapy: Casper
A RETHINK Retail podcast episode with Ian Scott, Hitha Herzog & Andrew Neelon
Instead of a written article this week, I wanted to share a podcast I was recently featured on by RETHINK Retail: Retail Therapy: Casper.
I was fortunate and honored to be included in RETHINK Retail’s Top Retail Influencer list for 2023 earlier this year alongside Hitha Herzog and Ian Scott, and we recently spoke about the rise and fall of Casper.
My insights and observations for those who prefer to read:
My general perspective was that, much like many other DTC brands, Casper benefitted from…
Being born at a time when e-commerce was just in the early days of becoming mainstream (2014); capital was cheap, and e-commerce was being funded like the tech industry — everyone wanted in, and it wasn’t hard for brands to secure investor capital to fuel growth
Customer acquisition costs were low on Facebook (now Meta) and Google; growth was as simple as pouring digital marketing dollars into the top social media network and the top search engine
Boring industries were ripe for disruption: men’s pants, glasses, and mattresses quickly became (and still are) hot beds of DTC brand startups
…and subsequently struggled with
Intense competition in digital marketing channels; many DTC brands were (and in many cases still are)…
…targeting the same demographics (HENRYs)
…in the same (auction-based) channels (Meta and Google)
…which leads to explosive growth in incremental CACs (see below)A culture of growth at all costs: building a great brand was more valuable to founders than building a great business; in fact, these were seen as synonymous, contributing to the “growth at all costs” mindset that got many DTC brands into the predicaments they’re in today (investors now value profitability over sales growth)
Challenging capital markets: Casper IPO’d in 2020 right before the pandemic; timing couldn’t have been worse; this was also around the same time that investors began to prioritize profitability over growth
However, I remain optimistic because:
Casper has a well known, and great, brand: everyone knows who Casper is and, assuming they can keep up a reasonable level of marketing, that brand awareness can be salvaged
They remain committed to a diverse portfolio of channels across e-commerce, stores, and wholesale
New management is focusing on narrowing their focus on fewer SKUs
Listen and read more at the links below!