Description
Casper Sleep (also known as Casper) is a public e-commerce company that sells sleep products online and in retail locations. Headquartered in New York City, the company has showrooms in New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere. Its mattresses are manufactured in Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
Casper was launched in April 2014 by Philip Krim (previously of The Merrick Group, angelbeds.com, tranquilitymattress.com and SleepBetterStore.com), Neil Parikh, T. Luke Sherwin, Jeff Chapin (previously of IDEO), and Gabriel Flateman.
In January 2014, the company raised $1.85 million in its first round of funding. The round was led by Lerer Ventures and Norwest Ventures and also included funding from Crosslink Partners, Vaizra Investments, and Correlation Ventures.
On April 22, 2014, Casper officially launched, selling $1 million worth of products in the first 28 days. In August 2014, an additional $13.1 million was received in Series A funding, including investments from New Enterprise Associates, Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher's firm, A-Grade Investments, fashion designer Steven Alan, Queensbridge Venture Partners, and the investment group of musical artist Nas.
In November 2014, Casper expanded its delivery from the contiguous United States to include Canada.
Led by Institutional Venture Partners, the company raised $55 million Series B venture funding in June 2015. The Series B funding included participation from celebrity investors: Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio, Scooter Braun, Adam Levine, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital.
Led by Target Corporation, the company raised $170 million in Series C funding in June 2017. The Series C funding included participation from Tresalia, Institutional Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Irving Investors. In September 2017, Casper collaborated with American Airlines to provide a full suite of sleep products.
In April 2018, Casper Sleep partnered with American Airlines to design pillows, blankets and other products for the airline's passengers. Casper also announced later in April that they would be opening up a Canadian office in Toronto, along with a manufacturing facility in the country.
In early 2019 Casper Sleep received a $100 million Series D funding from its existing investors Target, NEA, IVP, and Norwest Venture Partners, as well as new sponsors Dani Reiss of the Canada Goose Holdings and Gordon Segal of Crate & Barrel. Dani Reiss also entered the startup's new independent board directors along with Karen Katz (board member of Under Armour and former CEO of Neiman Marcus Group). With the new round of funding, the company was valued at $1.1 billion, according to Bloomberg and Casper Sleep.
On January 10, 2020, Casper Sleep Inc filed an S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declaring their intention to IPO under the ticker CSPR.
On February 6, 2020 it went public at $12 per share, translating to a market value of $476 million, listing on NYSE under the ticker CSPR.
On March 31, 2020, its stock dropped to $4.12 per share, translating to a market value of $163 million, down from its $1.1 billion valuation in March, 2019.
In April 2020, Casper announced the winding down of its European operations and laid off 21% of its staff (78 people) after a poor IPO performance and declining revenues due to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, the company announced that Greg Macfarlane, Casper’s CFO and COO, would depart the company in May.
