Bear sees success in partnership with Extend

Maturing as a brand to reach a wider array of customers

Bear is a lean-but-mighty team. The brand, which launched its namesake Bear Mattress in 2014, grew rapidly in popularity over the years, ultimately landing as #7 on the Inc. 5000 in 2019. While its initial brand positioning was athlete-centric, Bear evolved and expanded its product offering to include new, premium mattresses and sleep accessories as its core customer became a much broader audience. To capture more of the market, the team decided to research new tools to help pull this broader category of customers through the marketing funnel faster and offer their customers an additional value-added service.

Tackling the challenges of playing in a crowded e-commerce space

Bear’s Vice President of Ecommerce, Steve Catanzaro, recognized that when shopping for a mattress online, consumers have many choices. A key factor that helped propel the online mattress industry forward was generous return policies from brands across the board. Consumers’ positive response to this value-added service suggested that they want to shop with confidence, so Steve seized the opportunity to offer product protection to help further boost consumer confidence at checkout. After comparing the three largest product protection providers, Bear ultimately chose Extend for its industry expertise, its ease of implementation, and its progressive mindset towards putting customers at the center of their solution.

The unparalleled benefits of Extend

Industry-disrupting customer service

Keeping the customer experience positive has always been paramount to Bear, and it was most impressed with Extend’s speedy claims adjudication. Compared to other product protection providers, who can take days to adjudicate claims, Extend gets it done in 90 seconds or less in most cases. This attention to customer service and customer experience closely parallelled Bear’s company ethos. 

“Customer experience is paramount to Bear, so it was important for us to align with a product protection provider that closely mirrors our ethos and puts the same emphasis on customer satisfaction that we do.”

Steve Catanzaro
Vice President of Ecommerce, Bear

Protection plans that put Bear ahead of its competitors

Thanks to Extend’s proprietary insurance stack, Extend’s underwriting team worked with Bear to provide product protection plans that were both affordable for the customer and offered coverage for a longer period of time compared to some of Bear’s competitors. Mattresses are an investment that customers tend to keep for many years, and that long-term coverage helped instill consumer confidence that Bear would be there for them for the long haul. The Extend team was also able to act fast and set up plans for newly-launched products within hours of them going live on Bear’s site. As a lean team, having the support, speed, and expertise of Extend to implement these product protection plans on its behalf was invaluable.

“Partnering with Extend was a no-brainer for us. Consumers can sometimes be hesitant to purchase big ticket items online, so product protection is ideal for offering peace of mind to our shoppers.”

Steve Catanzaro
Vice President of Ecommerce, Bear

New, happy customers with Extend product protection

Initial attach rate increased to 16%

When it first went live with Extend, Bear saw a significant increase in attach rate, driven by its implementation of all three offer placements on its site (PDP, modal, and cart). After running some AB tests, the team found that the modal offer in particular drove more customers to checkout and to complete their purchase, increasing Bear’s attach rate to 16%.

In just over a month, Bear sold over 220 product protection plans to customers, many of which the team believed were higher up in the marketing funnel.

Bear’s product reviews speak for themselves: with products averaging 4.5 to 5 stars and each with thousands of reviews, Bear’s customers have the confidence and peace of mind to buy online and are thrilled with their new mattresses (and better quality of sleep). And with Extend covering their large-ticket, long-term purchase, they can rest assured that if something goes wrong and life happens — a spilled cup of coffee, a pet accident, or a puncture — they’ll be taken care of.