Casper, the bed-in-a-box start-up that reached a $1 billion valuation selling mattresses over the internet, is getting more serious about providing customers better sleep. This week it launched a new line of melatonin and CBD-infused gummies in partnership with Plus Products, a San Mateo, California-based company that makes THC edibles in California.
Getting into the CBD market may seem like a gimmick timed to the first frenzy in the cannabis capitalism market, but Casper has been looking at the CBD market for years under the direction of its co-founder and chief strategy officer, Neil Parikh, who comes from a medical background and is a CBD user himself.
Casper co-founder and CEO Philip Krim told CNBC that Parikh, who attended medical school prior to founding Casper and whose father is a pulmonologist, has been the most progressive with regard to the emerging health trends that the company’s five co-founders have studied over time.
“Neil was pretty early to the emergence of CBD, its potential for helping people sleep and how it helps him sleep personally,” Krim said. “Because we saw the killer application of CBD products helping people sleep, we are approached all the time by different companies that want to get into this space. As we got to know Plus over a pretty long period of time and we looked at really everyone else out there … we found that this was the right partnership for us.”
