55. Direct-to-Consumer Mattresses

July 8, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Messy Economics of Online Mattress Shopping

Derrick Hales lives in a six-bedroom house in Scottsdale, Arizona, with a five-car garage. It sounds spacious, but things get tight because Hales shares his home with dozens and dozens of mattresses. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of NapLab, a platform that tests and reviews mattresses for a living. His testing process is meticulous: he uses a thermal camera to measure cooling, an accelerometer to track motion transfer, and a medicine ball to test how quickly a mattress regains its shape after compression. He measures edge support down to the pixel level using Photoshop. The reason Hales goes to such trouble is straightforward economics. Mattresses are a $13 billion industry in the US, and more shoppers than ever buy them online from direct-to-consumer brands like Casper and Purple. When a customer clicks a link on NapLab and buys a mattress, the brand pays Hales a percentage of the sale. He earns a very good living—more than most doctors and lawyers, he says. But his job is also controversial, because when reviewers have an incentive to generate sales, things can get messy.

The Old Way: Showrooms, Markups, and Confusion

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction: The Mattress Reviewer's Home** - Derrick Hales, founder of NapLab, lives in a six-bedroom house in Scottsdale, Arizona, but it's filled with dozens of mattresses he tests for a living.
2 (03:13) **The Mattress Market: A Herculean Task** - The U.S. mattress industry is a $13 billion market with thousands of models, confusing materials, and an enormous price range.
3 (09:17) **The Direct-to-Consumer Disruption** - Casper and other DTC brands promised a more transparent, convenient experience by cutting out the middleman and shipping mattresses in a box.
4 (13:16) **The Trust Problem: Confused Consumers** - The rise of online mattress reviews has introduced serious trust issues, leaving consumers more confused than ever.
5 (15:38) **Derrick Hales' Origin Story** - Hales started reviewing mattresses after a frustrating in-store experience and a chance encounter with early bed-in-a-box brands.
6 (17:36) **The Affiliate Marketing Minefield** - Mattress review sites are often funded by affiliate commissions, creating a conflict of interest that can lead to unethical practices.
7 (20:17) **The Casper Lawsuit and Its Aftermath** - Hales' previous review site, Sleepopolis, was sued by Casper after publishing a negative review, leading to a sale funded by a loan from Casper.

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Show Notes

Online companies promised to bring transparency to the mattress-buying experience. Did that work out? Zachary Crockett takes a look under the sheets. This episode was originally published on July 7th, 2024.

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