The fastest-growing start-up in Europe has been identified and, surprise, it’s a bed-in-a-box company. Tech and reporting companies Ayden and The Next Web (TNW) made the declaration at their fifth annual Tech5 Competition celebration dinner earlier this week. The yearly match-up sees hundreds of brands from the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and Sweden vying to be crowned as the queen supreme of the European start-up world. This year, the winner was Emma, a German-based mattress retailer founded in 2015 as the answer to the bed-in-box trend in the United States. To emerge victorious, Emma, along with all the other businesses that finished in the top ten, had to provide verified growth rate information to Ayden and TNW along with signed affidavits confirming their validity. Once all this information was compiled, it was revealed that the mattress company saw a revenue increase of 14,315%, making it the clear front-runner.
Emma currently features three different mattresses in its line-up: the flagship Emma One, the three-foam-layer Emma Original and the premium Emma Air built with special ventilated technology. These beds, starting out at just €290, are only available in Germany and the UK. Over the past decade, direct-to-consumer bedding companies have seen tremendous growth in the start-up sphere. Some attribute it to the low costs of buying and shipping online, while others credit the transparency of working with a company that makes its own beds. Many believe it reflects a growing awareness of the importance of a good night’s rest. The bed-in-a-box trend has made people more cognizant of how they sleep and how to sleep better, turning their eight hours of sleep into something truly restorative.