04 September 2015
London to Berlin on an Eve Mattress?
London residents like to think they are in the centre of the
world, or at least in Europe’s top capital. Boris Johnson calls London, “The
greatest city on earth”. In addition to being a leader in financial services,
international trading markets such as commodities and insurance, there are
thriving marketing, creative and business services industries. London has even
managed in 35 years to move from bottom of the world league of restaurants to
top.
And then there’s the tech start-up scene. London claims European
leadership in start-up creation, finance and growth, helped by being the regional
capital of venture capital and tech-focused advisory boutiques. With incubators,
shared office spaces, support networks and even its own area of London in
Shoreditch, London has the most successful start-up ecosystem in Europe,
producing the most start-up companies in the European Union and the most success
stories.
But London shouldn’t ignore Berlin. The central European
city is buzzing with new companies, many with international reputations such as
SoundCloud, Delivery Hero, Babbel, Mister Spex, Outfittery and 6Wunderkinder. The
city is large, diverse and much cheaper than London. Finance is available, as
is government support. It’s London’s major tech competitor.
Let’s take the example of Eve Mattresses. Eve is a typical
London start-up, aiming to disrupt the market for mattresses. They noticed most
mattresses are not very comfortable and that the money is made not by the
manufacturers but by the resellers or spent on logistics – these are large
items to store and to move around. Their simple idea was to build a comfortable
mattress and deliver it directly to the consumer in a box, with the mattress
expanding to its full size once unpacked. Brilliant, you may think. In fact,
it’s a disaster.
The morning after my first night on an Eve Mattress I
overslept by 90 minutes. The second day, I couldn’t get out of bed because the
rest of the day seemed to offer nothing that I couldn’t get by staying under
the covers. Eve has over-achieved, which is just not on.
Once, the United Kingdom was a great power – it’s in the
name Great Britain, after all. We were the world power, with our fleet, trade,
language and culture. Then along comes the Eve mattress. We have no chance of
being world leaders if we sleep that well. Battles are fought at dawn and world
markets won by being the early bird. We were successful because our mattresses had
lumps, were made of horse hair and full of bugs, all actively encouraging us to
get up and get going. The morning cup of tea was invented to compensate for a
bad night’s sleep. If we all get Eve mattresses, we’ll turn up late for work, unshaven
but smiling. That’s a disaster for our international competitiveness.
The government is concerned: UK productivity is worryingly
low compared with our peers, and nothing seems to work to improve the balance
of payments. The French can apparently overcome strikes and 35 hour weeks to be
more productive. That’s frankly not surprising as they are not sleeping on Eve
mattresses.
So I have a plan. Eve should focus on the German market,
offering their great products to the over-energetic Berlin entrepreneur
community. A website www.evemattresses.de
in German, encouraging sales by reducing the price to €600 from the UK price of
£600 should do the trick. In parallel, introduce a British mattress which is
suitably uncomfortable, guaranteeing backache if you sleep in. That way Eve can
save London from losing out to Berlin, and improve the UK balance of payments by exporting their British-made mattresses.
I’m so excited I need to lie down for a bit. See you (much)
later.
