That last bit starting with “Importantly” is indeed important: A 16% repurchase rate and a 14% first-year repurchase rate imply that only about 2% of customers buy something new after a year.

Is that clear from the S-1? If 14% of customers return in Year 1 and return again every year thereafter, and 2% of customers first return after Year 1 but then return every year thereafter, wouldn’t the quoted statistics hold? And wouldn’t that bode well?

I am reminded of the old Volvo commercial about how “nine out of ten Volvos sold in the past ten years” were still on the road. The ad never pointed out that nine out of ten Volvos sold in the past ten years might actually have been sold in the past two or three years. In this case, though, the shoe is on the other foot (couldn’t think of a bedding metaphor). You are treating the Year 1 returners as one-and-done, and I’m not sure — lawyer talk for “I doubt” — the inference is warranted.

Casper discloses how the brick-and-mortar stores are performing on their own, but aren’t the stores really just billboards with benefits? My attitude toward an online company is enhanced by seeing that it can afford a store and that the store looks like the company knows how to do what it does.

I imagine that mattresses are to Casper what books were to Amazon — the camel’s nose under the tent of a customer base. Admittedly, the replacement cycle on a book is much faster than for a mattress. (One can read a lot of books on the same mattress.) And Amazon sells mattresses. But if Casper sells night stands as reliably (as to quality and service) as it sells mattresses, one would imagine there is a niche for it becoming one’s “bedroom” company.