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By Mario Toneguzzi

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GoodMorning.com, based in Edmonton, has been described as a “sleeping giant”, becoming Canada’s largest Independent online mattress company as it nearly tripled growth in 2019, reaching revenue of over $40 million.

“We were the first online mattress company to launch the in-home trial. That was the point where the online mattress revolution, if you want to call it that, began. It all started with us,” said Sam Prochazka, President and CEO of the retailer

The company was founded in 2009 as Novosbed and rebranded to GoodMorning.com in early 2019.

“Since then we’ve been working hard to build this company,” he said, adding that the retailer has sold more than 60,000 mattresses across Canada.

*sam prochazka and novosbed mattress. photo: goodmorning.com*

The company’s roots began when Prochazka had a “terrible” experience mattress shopping in the traditional way in late 2008.

“I just felt there was a real opportunity to offer more value to customers - huge opportunity. And over the last 10 years we validated that sentiment,” he said.

*apollo mattress. photo: goodmorning.com*

“We’ve grown this business without investment. We’ve sustained double- or triple-digit growth every year since inception. Healthy growth every year since we started even with the onslaught of competition.”

The company does sell across North America but 95 per cent of its business is in Canada. Prochazka believes the company is the largest e-commerce business in Alberta.

“When I look at the ebbs and the flows of the business in the last 10 years, it’s the periods of time that forced us to innovate and add more tools to the toolbox that were turning points,” he said. “That’s what I would attribute the last 12 months of growth to, the foundation for the next year, and well into the 2020s. Competition is healthy. But in this industry, it’s also ruthless.”

The retailer’s success was helped by a number of digital-friendly, customer-centric innovations including 100 per cent free returns, a mattress donation program, and a 100+ night in-home sleep trial that changed the future of a multibillion-dollar industry.

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“It’s an enormous amount of work. In many respects in Alberta we’ve got this can-do attitude without the hubris. I would ascribe the majority of our success to that. We’re constantly focused on optimizing the way we deliver the products, what’s in the products, how we market them. We obsess over the customer experience. Those are the ingredients,” said Prochazka.

“In 10 years, by the end of the decade, we want to have a quarter of Canadians sleeping on a GoodMorning.com mattress. That’s our goal. It’s really just a matter of how we get there. We think there’s a real opportunity in this business to build a mattress company that is very different. We differentiate between the approaches of a most loved versus least hated approach.

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“We see big opportunity coming to it from a more customer centric standpoint if we can offer value through things like consistent pricing year-round so people don’t have to worry about haggling or waiting or timing their purchase properly, things as simple as that we think we can change the traditional approach to business.”

The mattresses are designed in Edmonton and are manufactured across the country. The retailer sells mattresses of all sizes and prices. This week, they will launch their seventh and most technologically-advanced mattress, coined Apollo, which uses cooling copper-infused foam.

Mario Toneguzzi, based in Calgary has 37 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald covering sports, crime, politics, health, city and breaking news, and business. For 12 years as a business writer, his main beats were commercial and residential real estate, retail, small business and general economic news. He nows works on his own as a freelance writer and consultant in communications and media relations/training. Email: mdtoneguzzi@gmail.com

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