The reddit exposure sent 3,000 people to the site resulting in 400 signups. It also sparked added social media exposure as people began tweeting and blogging about the company, even offering to build web applications on top of the service.
How a Single Air Mattress Sparked a Billion-Dollar Company
Six months after the company launched, it was doing $1M a year in annual run rate. Eventually, Bonobos would expand to sell formal wear, swimwear, shirts, and many other accessories, focusing on pieces where men traditionally had problems with fit. The company that built its name only selling a single pair of corduroys initially had revenues of $9.5M in 2010 and nearly $70M in 2013.
By focusing on an engaging experience that makes buying fun, BarkBox identified a profitable niche and expanded it. By tapping into a latent, unfulfilled market need, it created an entirely new category. A similar insight birthed Chubbies, another millennial-focused company that offered just one product to a single audience.
Since its foundation 12 years ago, Airbnb has become a mainstay of the tourism industry, and today, is used by an average of two million customers every single night. But the company, which is worth an estimated $35 billion, wasn't an overnight success. In fact, the company took two years to get off the ground, and its biggest early boost came from the founders' decision to sell limited edition cereal boxes. Read on to follow Airbnb's journey from an idea dreamt up in a bedroom in San Francisco, to the multi-billion-dollar powerhouse it is today.
When the company graduated from the Y Combinator programme in March 2009, it made two very significant changes: firstly, it simplified its name from Air Bed & Breakfast to Airbnb, in a bid to move away from the love-it-or-hate-it original air mattress concept. Simultaneously, it expanded its property offering beyond shared spaces into private bookable rooms, entire homes and apartments, and began listing some of the unique tree houses, igloos, tepees and private islands it is renowned for today.
I bought a small furniture factory in Anaheim, CA. and converted it to a waterbed frame and bedroom furniture factory called Accent Furniture. I also started a waterbed sheet manufacturing company in Missouri called Snuggles to manufacture waterbed sheets, mattress pads and comforters. These products were a great complement to the waterbed mattress. Consumers came into a waterbed store ostensibly to buy a waterbed, however the vinyl waterbed mattress was just a small part of what was included in their total purchase. Many of our customers bought a complete bedroom set, an upgraded semi-waveless or waveless mattress, solid state heaters, upgraded drawer pedestals and padded rails to help them get in and out of the bed. Of course you needed special size sheets, mattress pads and comforters because waterbed sizes were different than regular dead beds. The vinyl waterbed mattress would usually cost less than $300 for a good waveless mattress, however, all of the other accessories could total over several thousand dollars. The waterbed mattress was the engine that drove the explosion of accessory sales which drove the revenue of waterbed stores. Then something disruptive happened, the soft sided waterbeds. Now consumers could buy a waterbed mattress that looked like a regular innerspring mattress. The side rails were foam instead of wood. It used regular sheets, mattress pads and comforters so you no longer needed to buy them at a waterbed store. The average waterbed sale (including furniture and accessories) dropped from about $1700 to about $850. This product solved some aesthetic issues and was more practical because it used conventional bedding but it did not increase the unit volume or market share of waterbeds. It still had many of the challenges with filling and draining that was present with other waterbeds. Now you can buy them without the need for a heater. 2ff7e9595c
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