Mimpi to sell mattress exclusively online in Indonesia

By Yunnie Marzuki | Mar 21, 2017

Company targets the swiftly growing middle class market
Offers a free 100-day home trial along with a with 10-year warranty

MIMPI is a Jakarta-based online-only tech startup that will soon start selling luxury mattresses. The company targets to launch Mimpi Mattress by the end of March.

The idea was born when Mimpi co-founder Frank De Witte (pic, above) moved to Indonesia and went out to purchase a new mattress. His search began at showrooms where all the mattresses looked alike and the showrooms were boring. When De Witte walked around these showrooms he was hounded by pushy salespeople who didn’t have any real idea about the technology used in their mattresses. They also offered discounts which didn’t really add up in the end.

“It felt like a walk in the dark. To make matters worse, you can only try the mattress out for a few minutes which makes it impossible to know whether you will like it or not when you use it every night,” De Witte says.

After a frustrating day of mattress-hunting and De Witte shared his woes his best friend and Mimpi co-founder Sven Vervaert who had also gone through the same painful process when he came to Asia more than a decade ago. The two comrades then decided to change the mattress business in Indonesia.

De Witte and Vervaert believe that business can be ethical, honest, transparent and informative. They also firmly believe top quality luxury mattresses do not need to cost a fortune.

“We believe that everyone is entitled to the best sleep ever and this should not be reserved for the very wealthy only,” said De Witte.

De Witte and Vervaert went home to Belgium to speak with industry professionals in order to design the perfect mattress with a fresh, new look. Two years later, having invested their own time and resources, Mimpi was born.

De Witte, with his background in finance, chemical trading, real estate development, hospitality management, e-commerce, sales and marketing along with Vervaert whose background is in communication technology, software development and general management believe in quality craftsmanship without tricks.

“We designed a new technology in Belgium and produced this new technology locally with the best materials and the best manufacturer to get the best quality; the best of both worlds. In this way, we can sell the best product for the best price,” explains De Witte.

The power of the internet

Mimpi’s strategy is to combine good old-fashioned customer service with modern e-commerce technology. Together with their partners, they spent years developing the mattress.

“We took feedback from thousands of people and distilled these into one perfect mattress. Hundreds of prototypes later, we arrived at the most comfortable mattress ever made. We don’t talk in terms of soft, medium or hard because we believe perfection is not subjective. We are so confident in our product that we allow you to try it out at the comfort of your home for 100 nights.

“This hard work resulted in an affordable luxury mattress which we now sell directly to our customers online. For too long, mattresses have been sold through expensive stores at massively inflated prices,” De Witte says.

Targeted market size and challenges

Mimpi targets the upper middle-class community. According to De Witte, the market potential is huge. Indonesia has one of the fastest growing middle-class markets in Asia and their buying power is increasing yearly.

According to data from Knoema, GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) in Indonesia was US$3,027.83 in 2016.

De Witte explains that a similar mattress sold at traditional or offline stores would cost at least three times their online price. He feels that a mattress should not cost a fortune but over-priced and over-complicated mattresses have unfortunately been the standard.

“The industry knows the markup is sometimes unfair. Mattresses are sometimes marked up as much as six to 12 times by the time they’re sold. That means you’re mostly paying for gimmicks, retail markups, sales commissions, and wholesaler’s profits. We cut the costs in the sales and logistics process, not in the manufacturing process. Rest assured our mattress is a true luxury mattress made with the highest quality,” De Witte says.

Mimpi has started a countdown to their launch in Indonesia on their website http://www.mimpimattress.com and they are currently preparing to launch in Singapore and Malaysia as well.

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