In conversation with the CIO of the ‘Amazon Prime of mattresses’

How was Mattress Online started? 

Mattress Online was started back in 2003 by Steve Kelly, an industry expert in the mattress and bed industry, and Steve Adams, an entrepreneur in e-commerce. The starting point was bridging traditional retail with the next step, which was getting it online. Bear in mind, this was 2003 so things were very different back then, so we revolutionised the mattress industry by bringing it online. My role back then was to consult and build original websites.

Do you consider it to be a family business and how does that play into your strengths as a company?

No, we don’t really consider it a family business as we are very team-focused. Family is second, because obviously, Steve Adams is my brother. Even though it’s cliché, it feels like a family in that we get on really well together. One thing that we do really well is we live by our values, and that has translated is how we work with the teams. Another one of our strengths is that we care and we recognise all human beings. 

I think that’s how we merge the feeling of being a family with our ‘team first’ values, and it shows because we’ve got a lot of people who have received long service awards during their time working with us. When people do come to work with us, they can love it so much they stick around, and that isn’t by accident, because we have a team who are here because they want to be, and they genuinely believe in what we’re trying to do. 

Why did Mattress Online make the decision to create the role of chief innovation officer, and how will this further growth for the company?

With any company, there’s a point in time where you can achieve scale. Over the last couple of years, we’ve finally hit that point where we now have the right team, the market share, as well as the revenue, which have played a role in us now thinking of what those next steps are. The role came about because we wanted to take things to that next phase faster.

What are some of the unique responsibilities of the role, and how do you plan to action these responsibilities? 

For me, the role is a catalyst to help the teams deliver on the future strategy of the company. On a personal level, I’m extremely passionate about tech and the e-commerce space, but my objective is to help all teams within the company. To achieve that, I’m going to be spending an awful lot more time across every department of the team looking for those opportunities to work smarter, work smoother, and better across the board.

What do you ultimately hope to achieve in this new role?

The ultimate goal is to ensure that Mattress Online stays relevant and that we become market leaders over the next two or five years. That’s the big macro goal. On a personal level, I deem success to be working closer with the team and helping everyone feel a shared sense of accomplishment because that’s something that will help drive our goal forward.

The bigger goal is to have everybody part of that journey. My role will involve dealing with initiatives, day to day responsibilities, as well as looking at market trends, and ways to bridge that into the individual projects that the team can deliver on.

What were your responsibilities when you were “unofficially involved” in the business prior to your formal appointment to chief innovation officer?  

Prior to moving into this role, I was a consultant. I’ve advised, designed and built web solutions, which is something that aligns really well with what Mattress Online needed over the years. My old role was unofficial because I was an on-call consultant of the company, working with a variety of other companies over those years at the same time. I specialised in things like SEO and user experience, which are all things that Mattress Online needed. 

What drove the decision to open brick-and-mortar stores as well as maintain an online presence, and how has the transition been? 

Some £1bn worth of our mattress revenue is still done offline, and what’s interesting is that about 95% of people who do buy offline do their research online. There’s definitely a bridge between the two, but a lot of those transactions are still happening in brick-and-mortar retail spaces. We are a retailer at heart and our goal is to be where our customers want to shop. 

As a company, we are genuinely and invested in rebuilding the High Street and part of that is incorporating a hybrid retail strategy because we believe that’s a win for consumers and for the brand as well. Internally, we want to be the Amazon Prime of Mattresses, but we also recognise that we don’t want the High Street to miss out. On top of that, we essentially want to grow our brand awareness, and our market share, so wherever a customer is, if they are trying to find the best place to buy their next mattress, when they search ‘shops near me’, we want to be the one that comes up. 

We’ve also run our own brick-and-mortar store for 17 years, so that’s given us a lot of insight and a lot of experience. That has positioned us really well to understand which stores fit well and how to integrate that into the Mattress Online family. 

Besides the rolling out of an additional nine stores across the UK, what else has the company got planned? 

Before I answer the question, there’s some really good news. Today, we just announced our new store in Sheffield, so now we only have eight stores to go. In terms of other plans, we’re looking at new revenue streams. We do mattresses really well, but what we want to expand into is beds also. It’s an area that we’re going to be growing into. 

We’ve also had a new website since May, which gives us the opportunity to launch better initiatives, offer a better web experience, as well as get people better and smoother buying journeys and pairing the right products together. All these little things help serve the customer. At the same time, we also want to improve or get organic visibility, so that when people are searching online, our visibility is really strong.