ATLANTA—Mattress manufacturers Serta Simmons Bedding and Tuft & Needle have completed their merger, bringing together two significant players in the mattress industry, helping each to diversify services and product offerings.
Tuft & Needle, a bed-in-a-box mattress company, began offering its products online in 2012 and delivered them compressed and ready to burst out of their vacuum packaging. The Tuft & Needle concept, co-founders JT Marino and Daehee Park said, was born out of a frustration with traditional mattress shopping.
It was a concept that worked, and it disrupted the mattress industry, opening the door for new bed-in-a-box players such as Caper and Purple and leading traditional mattress firms to reassess their approaches.
"We started Tuft & Needle because we saw a clear opportunity for the mattress industry to put the customer at the center of everything it does," JT Marino, who co-founded Tuft & Needle with Daehee Park, said in a statment. "The industry is evolving faster than we could have imagined, and we're proud to have been the catalyst and driver for the transformation."
The merger, according to Michael Traub, Serta Simmons Bedding CEO, matches the know-how of an established mattress firm with a fresh perspective and data-driven decision making that helped to launch, grow and sustain Tuft & Needle.
"Tuft & Needle is the original disruptor in the direct-to-consumer mattress industry and is a rare example of an economically healthy, fast growing start-up," Traub said in a statement. "Combining SSB's nearly 150-year legacy and leadership in product innovation with Tuft & Needle's expertise in delivering a best-in-class consumer experience, this merger will greatly accelerate our growth and innovation in the direct-to-consumer segment, and significantly enhance our e-commerce capabilities across brands. Together we have a clear path to transform the consumer experience at scale as well as the future of the industry."
Details of the merger were not released, but an August news release announcing the merer noted that it would provide Serta Simmons retail partners with "advanced consumer insights, avenues for generating higher foot traffic, and consumer-centric innovations as key drivers for growth in the evolving market." Tuft & Needle was to lead the development of multi-channel marketing tools for retailers, according to the release.
The merger also allows Serta Simmons Bedding to begin integrating Tuft & Needle's direct-to-consumer features across its existing brands Serta, Beautyrest, Simmons and Tomorrow.
"Under Michael (Traub's) leadership, SSB is actively driving toward evolution within the company and the greater market," Marino said in a statement. "By joining the SSB team, we look forward to fully leveraging each organization's strengths and accelerating our trajectory together towards the vision of being recognized as the global leader in sleep. Tuft & Needle will continue to build our brand and culture in our unique way, while immediately beginning to infuse our learnings and capabilities into the broader SSB organization."
Tuft & Needle co-founders remain with the business: Marino is now chief strategy officer and Park is chief growth officer. Both report to Traub.