Eve memory foam mattress

jenniewb

Maybe because they're half price?


Can't help wondering though; with all those new buy-to-rent landlords, how many will now be advertising with a premium price due to the "memory foam mattress" feature in their rent-to-the-masses flat...

Pun

That sounds an awful lot of returns they are 'rejuvenating' - wonder what happens if you try to return one of these?

SarahMiles

The Telegraph's Business Correspondent doesn't pull any punches talking about Eve. This article below is about their upcoming float and massive losses as a company. It costs them £250 to sell every mattress thanks to their marketing! 15% of customers return them. For those thinking they're getting a 10 year warranty with Eve mattress, think again. They might not be around next year at this rate!

Eve? You’d do better to stuff money under a mattress

There’s an old episode of The Simpsons in which Ranier Wolfcastle, a musclebound Teutonic action star, is interviewed about his new film. It’s an $80m production that he describes as “just me in front of a brick wall for an hour and a half”.

His exasperated interviewer, a highbrow film critic, demands to know how he sleeps at night. Wolfcastle deadpans: “On top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies.” One wonders whether the people behind the stock market debut of Eve Sleep, a mattress seller that is raising £35m on Aim, might give a similar response if they were being candid. They must have been in dreamland when they put a £140m valuation on a company that made sales of just £12m last year.

Forget about profits and dividends “in the short and medium term”. Eve, which delivers vacuum-packed slabs of foam that top out at £950, says it want to spend all its earnings on marketing to increase its share of a fluffed up and absurdly defined “European sleep market” that it claims is worth £26bn. Eve-branded pyjamas and furniture offer massive opportunities for growth, we’re promised. Not that there are any earnings. It made a loss before tax of £11.3m last year, up from £1.5m over the previous 15 months.

The fact that none of the early backers are cashing in at this stage offers a little comfort to anyone considering buying the shares, but not much. If Eve was a great prospect they would surely reinvest. After all, it has only been two years since its first fundraising.

Either way, Eve definitely needs the money. It had £4.6m cash at the turn of the year and was burning almost a million pounds a month. In fact, the admission documents reveal that in March Eve had to bring in £5m in emergency funding from fund manager Neil Woodford, an existing investor.

“This investment was required to fund the company’s short-term cash requirements and was made to protect the investor’s original investment while the business sought a longer-term funding solution,” the admission document reveals. That long-term funding solution, it seems, is catatonic punters on Aim.

Regardless of the cash injection, the odds are against Eve. It is just one of a pile of venture capital-funded companies selling mattresses online. In essence it is mostly a brand, and one that is fundamentally quite similar to its rivals. Most of us only buy a new mattress about once a decade.

Building a powerful brand around such a transaction will probably be difficult and definitely be expensive. It costs Eve nearly £250 in marketing and other costs to sell each mattress.
The fact that the float has attracted only two new institutions to invest above 3pc, Standard Life and Hargreave Hale, points to Eve’s uncomfortable financial prospects. If a company at so early a stage and so far away from profitability has already become too risky or expensive for its own venture capitalists, alarm bells should ring.

On top of that, this year has been very quiet for new listings. Any company that braves that market in the middle of a General Election campaign is over-confident or a touch desperate.
Regardless, there are probably better places to put your money than Eve shares. Under a mattress, for instance.

Marcon

A very useful article/warning - thank you!

mrmagica

It's been a couple of years since I last looked - but I'm pretty sure 100% memory foam mattresses are a budget choice, and not ideal. It is unlikely a bed in a box is going to be good as a high quality pocket sprung mattress, with a layer or either latex or memory foam on both sides. I think the buzz around memory foam made people think this was the best possible tech, and you can find one for as little as £100. Find a high quality pocket sprung with the foam top = best of both worlds with quality inner.

Camman123

In regards to the comment about the mattress arriving in a box. What they do is compress all of the air out of it and then roll it, so that it fits in a long box. Pretty standard routine now for a lot of online mattress suppliers. Once you take it out of the vacuum pack seal it will begin to inflate with air again. Usually takes about 4 hours or so