This legacy mattress brand’s smart beds are its secret weapon in the sleep wars
The smart bed world is rife with splashy products from well-capitalized startups. Legacy brands have made fewer waves in the space, but Sleep Number and its latest products could change the balance in the booming smart bed market.
The company, which has steadily been improving the capabilities of its smart beds since it first launched in 2016. In the ensuing years, the company’s mattresses have collected more than 19 billion hours of sleep data from more than 360,000 users who have shared their data with the company to be used in R&D.
“We can throw out a survey and look at responses, but we have previous biometric data, we have future biometric data, and we can start to build algorithms,” says Mark Aloia, head of sleep and behavioral science at Sleep Number’s SleepIQ Health. These algorithms power the next-gen series of smart beds Sleep Number rolled out in early April.
With additional sensors and AI designed to learn from the biometrics and sleep patterns of users to create a customizable and adjustable sleeping experience, the new beds can monitor vital signs and deliver sleep insights gathered from pressure sensors in the beds. Aloia says the pressure sensors underpin the entire smart bed technology, picking up the smallest of movements and translating them into metrics like breathing and heart rate. The new beds also incorporate temperature sensors, and their capabilities can be augmented by the company’s new line of Lifestyle Furniture, which include ambient lighting to support circadian rhythms and built-in individual speakers to mask noise.
The capabilities Sleep Number has created are putting it right in the center of the growing smart bed market, and putting the legacy mattress maker in direct competition with some of the buzziest startups in a space that has drawn a lot of attention—and money. Between 2016 and 2021, investors put $1.9 billion behind companies focused on sleep tech and equipment. Companies like Google and Samsung have built sleep tracking into smart devices like the Nest Hub and GalaxyWatch while startups like Eight Sleep, which launched its first smart mattress cover in 2019, have risen to valuations topping half a billion dollars.
Sleep Number has been a publicly traded company since 1998, and though its fiscal 2022 saw both its sales and profit dip, its market cap is currently estimated at $578 million. Like other smart mattresses, it has a leg up over more traditional wearables in that the life of a mattress tends to be between seven and 10 years.
“I have no preconception in my mind that I’m a lifer for Fitbit,” says Raj Mills, SleepIQ Health vice president. “Whereas people who buy Sleep Number smart beds tend to be lifers because of the capabilities that they benefit from.”
Aloia says the company is ultimately hoping to optimize the intersection of comfort, design and sleep science, with a particular focus on what Aloia calls the “greater opportunity of health and wellness.”
Sleep Number has explored the health-and-wellness opportunity before. In 2020, researchers at the company developed an algorithm that predicted when someone would contract COVID-19—and presented the findings in 2021.
“We asked [our sleepers] a slew of questions around their COVID experience, and then we looked at their biometric data and mapped their data against their reported diagnoses,” Mills said. “We were able to take what their normal biometrics are and we saw sudden changes in their respiration, motion, and heart rate, not only prior to onset of symptoms, but we could tell when they were starting to get better.”
With this capability in mind, researchers at Sleep Number have committed to further exploring preventive health applications, including launching a study with Mayo Clinic surrounding sleep indicators of cardiovascular disease. Mills calls the company’s approach a “bi-directional process,” in which Sleep Number assists the field of research with data from users while also implementing that research into their innovations.
“That goes back to our mission,” Aloia says. “When our mission meets the goals of sleep science, I think the future is unpredictable. We have a lot of opportunity.”
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