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Malcolm Lui:
Welcome to the High Value Sales Show of Eversprint.com. I'm Malcolm Lui, the Managing Member of Eversprint, and today we're speaking with Ron Rudzin, the President and CEO of Saatva Mattress, an online retailer of luxury mattresses that are priced much lower than comparable brands found in traditional mattress retailers. Welcome to the call Ron.

Ron Rudzin:
Thank you Malcolm.

Malcolm Lui:
Ron, you grew your company's revenue from $24.4 million in 2014 to $202 million in 2017, a 729% increase. Before I ask you how you grew your company sales so fast, can you briefly share what your company does beyond my very quick intro and how your company differs from the competition?

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. We were the first online luxury mattress seller we launched in 2010 and to quickly make sure everyone understands the the way we're different is that most people connect online Mattress companies with bed in the box. We are not that at all. We are actually a luxury brand. We are selling you the same type of product you buy in mattress stores without the store. We operate in three categories. We have ultra premium in a spring ultra premium memory foam and 100 percent natural latex and we work with 18 factories throughout the country. One hundred and fifty delivery centers throughout the country for in-home white glove delivery. Our beds can't be and are never folded and compressed into a small box. You know our business was was based on a raw materials analysis that I had done in 2008 where I'd gone to some of the popular mattress stores in the country and took apart beds that were in the twenty five hundred dollar real estate for queen size and I did a raw materials analysis of those products and I realize that I can build that same quality bed which is the ultra premium classification that twenty five hundred dollar level bed without having commercial rent utility costs for a store.

Ron Rudzin:
Excessive commissions the amount of people that have to have in each one of the stores to do business and you take out all of those costs I was able to sell that same quality product for about twelve hundred dollars less than what they were showing at the store and that was the start of the business model and that's kind of what makes us different. And since we've launched really no one does exactly what we do. There are about 150 bed in the box companies out there priced from 300 dollars to 900 dollars. You know I feel you know somebody wants to buy a bed in the box I understand it but they should never really have to spend more than five hundred for that to get something on Amazon. The quality is never going to be what it would be for a mattress like what we sell which is ultra premium meaning that we have no more coils in our bed or we use higher grade memory foam five pound memory foam or a 100 percent natural latex or covered and called that organic cotton. They can't be compressed and put to a small box.

Malcolm Lui:
Can you share with us what the three biggest drivers were of your sales growth over the past few years and 2014 to 2017.

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. First we're very we've been up to this past year we've been very ROIC focused. In other words we were we were always fascinated how much time it would spend on Web sites and the named site for Sanskrit for purity and truth. And we wanted to expose the industry for what it was that it unfortunately gained a very bad reputation for itself over the last 30 40 years. So one of the things that we immediately did was we put our spec sheet right on our Web site so people can print up the website with this fact sheet take it to a mattress store if they felt they wanted to do so and compare to see what a store would charge for the same specs in a mattress that we offer. Then I wanted to layer on top of that extraordinary customer service in 2007 2008. I spent so much time reading about the mattress industry online and its horrible reputation that had developed over years and I said wow what an opportunity I could sell a product for so much less. And I'm going to give the highest level of customer service. And if you read about our company since 2010 we are the best reviewed mattress company on the Internet by far.

Ron Rudzin:
And I ask everyone to please read about us and read the detail in the reviews about us. We were very close with our customers we are a 24/7 operation so you can order a bed and speak to someone 3 o'clock in the morning or 3:00 in the afternoon and then in addition to that the other differentiator is what I mentioned just a little earlier is that instead of being that online company that you know packs a bit up in a small box it compresses the bed density to its doorstep. We actually make everything to order with eco responsible materials wants to make your bed as place you place an order with us some parts of the country it's five to 12 days some parts is seven to 15 days but we make the bed fresh for you goes to our hub and we deliver set it up in the room of choice and we also take out any old bed that you have they're all free of charge when you purchase from us. And that's how we are different

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah. Leveraging rooms is definitely appreciate Emma when I bought my bed it came in a box and the U.P.S. delivery guy only had to drop it on my doorstep but luckily he was a friendly enough guy to help me bringing into the house because those things weigh quite a bit

Ron Rudzin:
Yeah. Well you know look at the bed in the boxes they're portable. There's a market for it. You know we basically understand there is a consumer that would need that you know but for long term like our beds are designed to last 10 to 15 years you can read on our site about them the quality of the materials that we use the organic cotton carpet that we use is just a a much higher quality product. You know we you know we feel our competition is really the great beds that are out there. I don't knock these beds but you know great beds from Simmons and from Stearns and foster Kemper PDX. These are great brands. My feeling is you just don't need to spend that kind of money on them. So we're not saying we're better than those brands and the ultra premium class classification but we're saying that we're the same as them and you don't have to spend that much money. We also have a little bit more green angle to our beds. We use a natural sizzle for our flame retardant so there's no harmful sprays or chemicals ever put on a sock a mattress. And you know recycled steel. We also with our foams we take out some of the Petroleum and we we put in soy in Cornwall so we also have a lot of green initiatives going on with our product. And we are a lead sponsor for these sustainable furniture council. So you know we're just doing a lot of really good things the company has a great reputation in every part of the country and that's where you see that we're different

Malcolm Lui:
Now to recap for your biggest drivers the first one I have was a focus on your return return on investment on whatever activities that you do. Second one extraordinary customer services and a third one was making everything to order and having a

Ron Rudzin:
Having

Malcolm Lui:
High

Ron Rudzin:
A

Malcolm Lui:
Touch customer service as well in terms of from factory to home type service. Would you say those are the three factors

Ron Rudzin:
They are

Malcolm Lui:
Ok great now. Can you share a little bit more detail of your focus on why and how that drove

Ron Rudzin:
Charlotte.

Malcolm Lui:
Some of the

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
Decisions you made

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. So this is for those who who are listening to your show. It's it's funny you know an entrepreneur will wake up and he or she will have a great idea and it's a question of can they get the idea in motion and get it live. And then they go and do so and how much money they need to actually make this happen. I started Sipho with my own money three hundred fifty thousand dollars and my focus the reason why I was excited about it. My two co-founders very internet savvy they're the younger of the founders I bring more of a manufacturing logistics skill set and customer service skill set. They bring kind of the online technology skill set but our focus and what excited me was that in business. Sometimes when you're when you're advertising you know if you go back 30 years ago you putting ads in newspapers or you take a billboard where you go on TV right away and so many people are seeing your ads that don't need your product and that's just costly and it's very hard to do the analytics with the Internet. Back in 2010 I was fascinated that I can advertise my product in a place which I call in a space that had customers who would in the market for a mattress. And I knew if I told the best story I had a 120 day trial I knew that my product show I can show the value on the website. I can explain it in full detail with our spec sheet and other explanations that we have about our farms and our covers and how we build our product. I'd be able to obviously make the sale and that's exactly what happened so we were able to stay what I call in market advertising which means that whenever I paid for an ad it was in a place where people where a person was in the market for a mattress rather than putting up money for a billboard eight years ago and people would drive by the billboard in 99 percent of them didn't need my product that's expensive.

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Ron Rudzin:
So this was a way that I can go and be profitable from day one and grow the company and we have multiple brands and we are probably one of the top two or three marketers in the online mattress space in the country from from back in 2000 10 to

Malcolm Lui:
So

Ron Rudzin:
Today. And it's just this past year that we've gone out of market and started doing more brand type of advertising you know with the hope that obviously that comes together in our future and gives us wind at our back for our performance marketing and building a brand

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Yeah I saw on your website set that la la mattress dot com. You have quite a number of ads running do it online at

Ron Rudzin:
We do. Yeah we have. Well first of all we have different brands like our our ultra premium memory foam is called looming leaf by side for our 1 1/2 percent natural latex is called Zen haven by Sartre. And then we have our classic soft in a spring which was our original mattress everything by the way comes in comfort choices so you're not stuck with one comfort level in our inner spring you have a choice of height in mattress you can get our eleven and half inch which we call our custom Slim where you can get our fourteen and a half jumbo luxury. We also are launching into 2019 we're watching two other products. I won't talk about them yet but we're launching two other mattresses. We want to make sure that we have all categories covered. And again we're able to do you know open these businesses basically and drop them right to our 18 factory one hundred and fifty hub network. Of that we have put together over the last eight years

Malcolm Lui:
Now in terms of so I can see from our perspective it's on the marketing front. You focus on advertising where you can measure the return on your advertising so you're not wasting your advertising spend. Can you talk a little bit more about your customer service. You're 24 by 7 operation. How did you

Ron Rudzin:
Absolutely.

Malcolm Lui:
Determine you know where the gaps were in customer service relative to competition relative to what you saw internally. And how

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
Did you address it and close it.

Ron Rudzin:
Absolutely. Well first I would I would recommend for any customer in the mattress space. So I'm sorry the mattress buying mode know you go online look at some of the legacy brands that are out there from from from years past and the treatment of customers whether with regards to taking care of warranty issues or service issues. I wanted to lay around I wanted to have a system where when somebody called our office they would get the highest level of customer service. We try never to put anyone on hold. Let's just say at any given time we have 70 or 80 reps on the phones prepared to deal with everything. We didn't want our reps to just be one dimensional just hey they could just sell you the bed. But any issue that might come up on a delivery day you know if you're wondering when your delivery might come they can. Are our reps are all trained to get you that information. Any any any issue that you have you'll very rarely need to be put on hold. And I started studying like cable companies when any anybody who you called automated phone systems and I just wanted to apply what I call old fashioned customer service and coupled with modern technology. You know our company is as hip as you can be right. You know we're Internet savvy company we've got the greatest marketing team we do Facebook. We do social media we do FCO we have content all of those things that you're supposed to do but at the core of it we are an old fashioned customer service type of company.

Ron Rudzin:
You call here you get a live person a nice person that will speak to you kindly and politely and do everything to help you. Whether you call like I said whether it's 3:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the afternoon. We are well staffed and making sure that every customer that buys us has a fantastic experience. We want to make sure that we are your mattress company for life. And I know how temperamental the today's consumer is. And you have to you know there is no challenging consumer today. You just have to take care of them. You have to accept if something goes wrong that it's on us and we have to make it right. And that has been the philosophy from the day we launched and as soon as I was able to afford to have a nice staff I did it because I wanted to. We knew people were shopping on the internet during the day during the evening and during late and and certainly through the night. We do business every night. And I think people love the fact they can call and get information. Anytime we'll have a question about a previous purchase we are already well beyond anyone else in our space. We believe

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah I actually called your office to get in touch with the sap is interviewing. And I didn't have your direct numbers. I just called your general line got someone on the phone who I think was a bit surprised when I asked for you. But he did try his best to try to connect me with you as well. So I definitely did try to do it as much as you possibly can to help recall us but just fantastic

Ron Rudzin:
I absolutely will thank you for that I've had other interviews where the person who was interviewing me said Yeah I tested you on that and they called Seven o'clock on a Sunday morning and a nice kid answered the phone and was able to answer my questions. And I'm so proud of that I can't because it feels good knowing that I'm doing the right thing and that we put a business model in place that really does the right thing. You know this is you know we have an excellent reputation with the Better Business Bureau all over the country. We've never had any major issues at all. And we enjoy 95 percent success rate with our product. So now it's just about getting our brand out there and growing our company and keep doing what we do.

Malcolm Lui:
Fantastic. Now that your third driver which I in my mind is pretty much the experience of the customer from the moment they placed the order to the day that it actually arrives in their home delivered to whichever room they choose and I imagine where it may be in the home whether it be a ground floor or three floors up

Ron Rudzin:
All

Malcolm Lui:
You know

Ron Rudzin:
Right.

Malcolm Lui:
What's your thinking behind that.

Ron Rudzin:
Sure

Malcolm Lui:
You know

Ron Rudzin:
Absolutely. Well you know first we cover all of our mattresses in a beautiful organic cotton. And we also don't like mattresses sitting around in warehouses and warehouses and we have so many that we work with we have a hundred and fifty partners around the country and to hope that all of them do FIFO which is first in first out on your inventories. We just feel there's just too much. We'd rather just make it fresh for the consumer. We might we lose a sale here and there because somebody wanted something in a day or two days. I'm sure that's possible. But at the end of the day I think we gain more where every customer knows when they place an order with us. We are making the bed fresh for them. It gets to our delivery hub within days or delivery helps Cole set up a four hour time window for it on a specific delivery day for the consumer. Like I said we bring it in we set it up in the room of choice and we take out the old product or free of charge and we just love that we know that every product that goes to the consumer's home is sealed packed and fresh. There are a lot of companies that somebody might buy from that day. They do stock and you're not really sure if the warehouse personnel didn't just pull the easiest one to get to rather than the first you know the last one that came in. So you know all of our products are fresh and you can look at the tag on our bed and see when your product was made. It was after you ordered it as compared to you know a lot of companies that keep inventory in warehouses and you know whether it gets dusty or there's a hole in the plastic or the box whatever it might be. We like our system. It works for us and our customers appreciate it.

Malcolm Lui:
So some mattresses typically last 10 years 20 years so bad buying a mattress that's been sitting in the back for six months or longer. Or year.

Ron Rudzin:
To say that for me again Madam I'm sorry

Malcolm Lui:
Yeah mattresses typically last what 10 years 15 years. Is it so bad

Ron Rudzin:
No.

Malcolm Lui:
To buy a mattress that's been sitting in the back of the warehouse for a few months. Happy year

Ron Rudzin:
Well it's you know it's the type of temperature in the warehouse the dust in a warehouse and things of that nature more than it affecting how long it will last. It's more more about damage that could be caused or dust on it or a bag rips things of that nature. People generally want a fresh product that they're going to be sleeping on. That's my personal opinion and I and luckily the people in my company all agree with us or agree with me on that. But no batteries don't last 10 to 15 years or 20 years. You know the you know basically mattresses in the you know the lower price points. Let's just say a low price point being the 5 to 900 all arranged. They generally last about seven years. Ultra Premium mattresses like soft mattresses left 10 to 15 years. Certainly the the ultra premium class turns in foster beds and Simmons They all spent 15 years as well latex actually even less long latex actually gets up to you know it can last 20 years. But you know we certainly recommend thinking about a new bed with ultra in the ultra premium class within 10 or 15 years depending on use but cheaper beds you know cheaper made coal units cheaper fabrics those kind of breakdown six or seven years.

Malcolm Lui:
Okay. Now in terms of looking ahead a bit what are your plans for 2019.

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. Thanks for that question. It's a great one. As I mentioned earlier I just kind of alluded to a two mattress launches that we're going to do we're adding two more products to our two to two hour offerings and we're also building out which we started late late in the year we started in the third quarter. We launched what we call soccer dreams and on soft dreams we sell a beautiful organic pad mattress pad gorgeous organic 100 percent organic sheets and a beautiful natural shredded latex pillow that's covered in organic cotton. And this business has been hugely successful for us and we just can't wait to just keep adding products that are our product team as we speak is working every day. We want to bring comforters and blankets and add to our pillows and add to our sheets of flannel for the winter. Some different types of fields we also are going to be offering bed frames high end bed frames to compete with the restoration hardware level type bed frames. So we'll be launching that hopefully in the second quarter. So that's something that we're really looking forward to. So between our launches and of our mattress our mattress launches and the work that we're doing a soft dreams all of our what we call ancillary products that's also very very exciting for us. We think there's so much so much business there for us to build on.

Malcolm Lui:
Now in terms of your marketing What's it. What are your plans for marketing in 2019 and maybe maybe you

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
Share a little bit of what you've been doing marketing wise and and what you plan to do more than maybe less

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
Up in 2019.

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. It's it's been a major major shift for us. Great question of course when a company gets to the 200 million dollar range. You know things start to change. You know you are almost omni present you know online. You know obviously you can build on that and always be more efficient which which we work every day to be. But the mix of how we're going to promote shop for an advertiser site for in 2019 with there'll be a major major shift to what we call out of market advertising right the end market was the whole ROIC philosophy. Right. Advertising in a market where people need your product out of market is TV and other forms of out of market billboards bus stops shelters and having having having your name out there like that. So this year we're going to change or we're going to do what we're going to make a little change in our marketing mix. A lot of it is going to go into television. So we created an enormous amount of brand content and brand assets to bring to market and we started in the fourth quarter and it's already proven to be very very successful we're feeling a lot of wind in our back coming into into this January into this 2019 first quarter but we will be doing a lot of television a lot more Facebook and a lot of YouTube. So those those those that that's what I'll give you for now we

Malcolm Lui:
Okay

Ron Rudzin:
Have a bunch of other things that we're doing as well but not prepared to talk about that yet.

Malcolm Lui:
Sure. Now do you do all this in-house or do you have partners help you with your marketing

Ron Rudzin:
Now for a while for our branding for our branding we we work with a company called preacher out of Austin Texas. We have two offices we're based out of New York Queens and in our other office that's where we do all of our customer service. All of our ordering financial is all done in New York and all of our marketing is done in Austin Texas. So we have we have our office down there as well and preacher is our branding company and they're based out of Boston. And then for a lot of our media buying we use a company called Media storm. They're based out of downtown Manhattan and they're all partners and are our media buying approach going forward. So far in 2019

Malcolm Lui:
Okay. So do you. What. But to a degree of video marketing in-house.

Ron Rudzin:
Well the marketing in-house our performance marketers know the bulk of it all performance marketing is still done out of our Austin office. So I would say that 70 percent 70 80 percent right now and it'll probably go down to 60 percent because you know our mix is changing

Malcolm Lui:
Right. And what do you do. What do you mean by performance marketing

Ron Rudzin:
Performance. Marketing is the ROIC in market. You know

Malcolm Lui:
Like.

Ron Rudzin:
Text ads being you know people google something in the mattress world. We're going to show up. That's

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Ron Rudzin:
What I mean by that.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Got it. Okay. And have you now. Now what's the thinking behind shifting to the out of market philosophy. Because at the very beginning of our conversation you mentioned how a bit of the out of market advertising was a bit of a waste of money right because people aren't ready to buy

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
A match. So now

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
You're at the point

Ron Rudzin:
Yeah.

Malcolm Lui:
Where you think it does make sense. So what's

Ron Rudzin:
Well

Malcolm Lui:
The thinking behind

Ron Rudzin:
Let

Malcolm Lui:
That.

Ron Rudzin:
Me let me clarify I didn't mean for it to sound like it was a waste of money. It just cost a lot of money when you don't have a brand yet or you don't have enough money to keep having out of market branding. So now that we're we're a company that you know we've made money since we started and based on that we're able now to go out and actually spend enough money out of market. So you know that takes months and months for you to start feeling the wind at your back. We are now in a position where we're able to go out and do that. And with that allows us to do is build a brand because you know people might have known us when they went searching but before they search they wouldn't have heard of us. So now they're going to you know now when they go search they're also you know more than likely would have seen three of our commercials. So that will then help the performance marketing side

Malcolm Lui:
Right

Ron Rudzin:
And

Malcolm Lui:
Exactly.

Ron Rudzin:
That's kind of our philosophy. So now now we feel comfortable because of the size that we are you know to grow a company to have 18 factories in 150 delivery hubs is different than having one factory and two hubs you know in the northeast. So now we're at the point where we feel you know I've been disciplined enough I've been ROIC focused enough. Now I want to take the company and make it a billion dollar company and you can't become a billion dollar company in the way we were doing it to become a billion dollar company. You have to build the brand. You have to have brand identity and you have to have your name out there prior to when somebody needs a mattress. So when they do need a mattress and they search well they start thinking about it you're going to be top of mind

Malcolm Lui:
Right now you can measure the value of your out of market marketing

Ron Rudzin:
That's always difficult but that's where we work with companies like I mentioned before media storm. You know my own adult we have our own analytics team we have a data warehouse and on an analytics team we know everything is data. One thing about today's business when you think back about business 20 30 years ago for those who know it whether you or you know particularly in retail. I think he did business more from the gut. They just were you know obviously there were ways to analyze your business 20 30 years ago but nothing compared to today. Today your business can almost become very mathematical. Obviously you can always have a new competitor that comes in and shifts the way you look at things. But generally speaking years ago you will be put out to newspapers or you would just hope that people would come into a retail store and foot traffic was good and you'd see sales go up and you do surveys today. A customer coming from online you could basically follow exactly how they came to you. You know how long they spent on your site you can retarget them. So it just becomes the world the business world today. To me it's so exciting because if you have a great analytics team you understand your marketing you have enough data and we have years and years of data that help us so much have what I consider to be an advantage. That's what makes us good at what we do.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So you know how can you track. You know what. You give some examples of how you can be tracking your out of market marketing and advertising. City

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. So our out of market you know an easy one would be right. You know you know when your television commercials are running let's just say

Malcolm Lui:
Yet.

Ron Rudzin:
And then you're watching the flow of traffic to your Web site has your direct traffic for site for dot com gone up

Malcolm Lui:
Sure.

Ron Rudzin:
While you're running those commercials so it's stuff just as simple as that. And then it allows us to retarget those customers and so forth. But that's just the simplest. That's putting it in simplest terms.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. How

Ron Rudzin:
There's

Malcolm Lui:
You

Ron Rudzin:
So

Malcolm Lui:
Get

Ron Rudzin:
Much data that goes around you know out of market and how to analyze it. It's certainly harder than when people just click on you for a text ad on online. There's more work to it but certainly manageable and you know where we're in the process of we think becoming great at that. But again we did we just really started our adult market program you know late in the year

Malcolm Lui:
Yep

Ron Rudzin:
2008.

Malcolm Lui:
How you measure that top of mind metric. Right. Where people see the advertisers and they know the name and not ready to buy matches yet. But

Ron Rudzin:
Sure

Malcolm Lui:
Three years down the line. Big time for me to buy a bed and then go home and check ups. And then

Ron Rudzin:
Sure.

Malcolm Lui:
You know why they're checking

Ron Rudzin:
Up

Malcolm Lui:
I.d. They just know that it's in their head

Ron Rudzin:
Yeah. It's a very simple answer. Conversion rate goes up

Malcolm Lui:
Uk

Ron Rudzin:
Period conversion rate goes up. So in other words let's say you're unknown and people come to you they click on you then they want to shop around. It might take longer for them to purchase. They're going to call you a couple times and I go on the website way more times than they would today or when they when they are aware of your name or they seen you or they're comfortable with your name because they've seen you on television you're going to close them fast you're going to close them more often. So it's conversion rate and that's what we do. That's what we consider the wind at the back of the performance marketing to

Malcolm Lui:
Right for sure. And I guess you're gonna guess you're going to have to be pretty careful your analysis to make sure you have the right attribution because you're performance marketing team isn't going to just be kicking back and keeping things static right. I can be trying to improving those things

Ron Rudzin:
Yet

Malcolm Lui:
Independently of your out of out of market marketing

Ron Rudzin:
Totally what you say Malcolm is 100 percent correct. That is it's basically the whole business. You know obviously when you. It takes a long time to build what we built for manufacturing and delivery standpoint and very very hard for people to do today because when I was building this the click price the average clip price in the mattress space was less than half of what it is today. So I was able to build out a network pay a lot of extra money for deliveries all over the country I was able to afford it was the click price was low but now that the click prices high. You can't you can't spend that extra money to build out a network as you grow throughout the country. So I was able to bring my delivery costs down because I am such as you have such a large network. While while the price was going up so to do both today to have a huge network and pay to click price you know as a company we have to gamble millions of dollars a month to see if their system would work. So we feel we're in a real fortunate position. And you know now it's all just about you know figuring out the attribution as you just described that's that's the major part of the business or other part of the business manufacturing logistics. I don't wanna say it's easy for us. We're just very good at it. It runs and we want to keep growing that. Today the site for company is approximately 60 miles away from every every person in the United States. I'm sorry 60 miles away from 80 percent of the population in the United States. I want to grow that I want to try to get even closer I want to try to get under 50 miles away from 90 percent of the American population and that's a goal that I have for the next 18 to 24 months.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. So the marketing are you doing email marketing are you doing snail mail marketing

Ron Rudzin:
Yeah. Well we. We have found some success this past year in the last half of 18 with email marketing and also direct mail. So that's something that we're going to do a lot more work in in 2019.

Malcolm Lui:
Okay now but on the challenges side of the equation what are the challenges that that that you see. You need to overcome to hit your targets for 2019

Ron Rudzin:
The balance of out of market branding and competition online and again for me it's always been how can we get out there and tell our story better. We feel we are a clear win. If you're shopping online for a mattress our system is better. Our products are better. And when I and I just know what we're trying to get people to not look at us because we're online that we're like a bed in the box a 16 inch by 45 inch box with a mattress stuff that is just not who we are. We are a luxury brand that you buy online. It has the same options that you would have in a store you can even buy your your your box foundations metal frames adjustable bases all in home white glove delivery of choices of heights. You have choices of comfort levels. So it's really like shopping at a store without a store as compared to a one type of mattress compressed in a box that gets to your doorstep. And that's my biggest challenge is making people understand that when you sell purely online the connection to the bed and the box and again bed in the box all the companies have done a good job promoting bed in the box. To me I think in a year or two that's going to be the brand is bed in the box. It's almost like a commodity but just making sure. And again I know there's a market for it. In our opinion here you should never have to spend more than five hundred dollars for a bed in the box but for a better quality product. You know we think the software company is the answer. You don't need to go to a store you come. You get a great home trial. Hundred and twenty days in home white glove delivery we remove the old bed everything that you can possibly want we have to offer

Malcolm Lui:
So you mentioned before

Ron Rudzin:
And get and get. I'm sorry Malcolm in getting that message out is the point.

Malcolm Lui:
Okay.

Ron Rudzin:
How do I make that how do I make that clear that is that is the most challenging thing that sits on my desk

Malcolm Lui:
Right.

Ron Rudzin:
Looks at me every day.

Malcolm Lui:
Right. Earlier in a conversation you mentioned that you're at a 95 percent number that your 95 percent success rate. That's accurate for that 5 percent of people who were unsatisfied who were unhappy. What was that. What was the drivers of their dissatisfaction and unhappiness

Ron Rudzin:
Sure sure. Well for some folks it's just not the right system. You know where a Euro pillow top we have what we call the most popular type of bed in the open ultra premium classification you know in our in the spring line is the same type of bed that you'll find in any luxury hotel you know individually wrapped coils Euro pillow top. But you know might not be the right system for someone that's number one number two. We don't have extremes. So people who like a really floppy soft bed probably not our customer and somebody who likes something like table top hard. That's not our customer. So on a scale of 1 to 10 to 1 and 2 customer and the 10 customer or even the 9 and 10 customer is really not for us we're really the customer like more in the middle. You know the three to eight hour but best selling is that right in the middle medium firm. We have stuff that's you know 15 20 percent firmer or 15 20 percent softer. But you know we just don't want to be in a business where we were setting for selling something that was rock hard. I'll lose that sale for. There are a few folks who need that. They need it for maybe physical reasons medical reasons and I totally understand that. And then there are people who like really floppy soft beds and they're good for a while but over time they'll probably have an issue with them although they could be comfortable for a period of time but top a company is all about support.

Ron Rudzin:
And so I didn't want to go too soft so I was up from like a 3 to an 8 with the main seller being in that middle range that at 5 to 7 range. And we really believe in support you know Abed it's not just how it feels when you go into it but a bed should feel great when you leave it. And that's what our beds are really about we support what we call the lumber zone from the middle of the thigh to the top of the stomach. That's the most important part you never want the body to be when you turn to your side you want your natural gaps and arcs to be filled with support and not fight you too much in the shoulder and neck area. And this is how we how we think about it. And people do not today think about sleep the right way. And I pitched this all the time and I talk about it regularly whenever I have an opportunity and we try to get our eyes are our customer representatives to talk about it. If if the consumer gives us the opportunity to sleep is an activity you know look we all go out we have fun but the worst thing you do is when you have a lot of fun and somebody drinks too much and they fall asleep on a couch or they just went home and fell asleep and there goes that's the worst sleep you can get for regular life you know your regular work life your regular weekend life you want to prepare for sleep just like you do if you're going to go play a sport you stretch you put on the right equipment and you go work out if you or whatever it is you do in life basically you go and you prepare for it like whether it's just test at school or you're in a dance that you practice and you prepare for it.

Ron Rudzin:
Sleep is the same exact thing I tell everyone you have to have a mental preparation for your sleep and physical as well you have to make sure the temperature is right. I know me personally I like to take a warm shower before I go to sleep. The temperature in the room has to be right. I need a little pillow under my right leg. I need to be wearing the right clothes and I prepare for sleep. It's an activity and I just try to get this off the company tries to teach everyone that. And one of the other things that we've done this past year we've built tremendous amount of content. So anybody who is looking for any information about sleep or mattresses they can come to the site company what do you buy from us or not and get a world of information on sleep sleep technologies what's good in the matches what to look for in a mattress why you need a box spring or not. Or frame we have a tremendous amount of content. We believe that we can be the best educators online for sleep and for mattress products because we operate in basically every category. Right. In a spring foam and latex

Malcolm Lui:
Ethic. Three last questions for you here to summarize sidebar in one line. What would it be

Ron Rudzin:
Truth

Malcolm Lui:
Okay.

Ron Rudzin:
We we are we are we have we have brought the truth to the mattress industry we have exposed it for what it is we have no gimmicks. There is no confusion. We don't offer you know discounts and and wild sales. None of that we believe in objective measures of comparison. Check our products measured against someone else's. And we believe we'll be the better choice and the better value at the end of the day.

Malcolm Lui:
And

Ron Rudzin:
More

Malcolm Lui:
That's

Ron Rudzin:
Often than not.

Malcolm Lui:
All right. Fantastic. And to ask questions after you run Who are your ideal customers and what's the best way for them to contact your company.

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. Well we always tell everyone go to stop a dot.com that's the easiest get get the first feel for us and you'll from our Web site you kind of get a feel for who the company is. We would love for everyone to call. We think that is just you know just a great introduction to who suffers as well see that no matter when you call again like I said earlier in the broadcast 3:00 at night 3:00 in the afternoon we don't care call you're going to get someone really nice to be helpful and wants to give you great information and we want to make sure we sell you the right product. And if it's not we won't sell it. But we want to show that off. So that's that's kind of how we look at that.

Malcolm Lui:
Would you like to spell out your domain name or your website. And if you like give your phone number.

Ron Rudzin:
Sure. It is such as a TV a dot.com and software Sanskrit. I might have mentioned earlier for truth and purity. That's what that does. That's that that's what's often means yes and our phone number is 8 7 7 6 7 2 2 8 8 2

Malcolm Lui:
Thanks so much

Ron Rudzin:
And

Malcolm Lui:
Ron.

Ron Rudzin:
We would love for a. Yeah of course

Malcolm Lui:
So aside from talking over over you. Thanks so much for being on the show and sharing how you grew your company so fast.

Ron Rudzin:
Great. Malcolm thank you so much. Thanks for the great questions. And we hope to hear from you soon. Thank you so much.

Malcolm Lui:
We've been speaking with Ron Rudzin, the President and CEO of Saatva Mattress, about his company's rapid growth. For interviews with other fast growing high value sales companies, or to learn how we can accelerate your firm's high value sales through automation, visit Eversprint.com.

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