From the "Western old man" to Jackson Yee, the influencer dependence of Mousse Mattress

AI Inquiry · Mousse AI Product Revenue Soars, but Low R&D Investment Raises Concerns for Long-Term Competitiveness?

Established for over 20 years, the veteran mattress leader Mousse Co., Ltd. has experienced performance fluctuations and frequent strategic adjustments in recent years.

With the introduction of the dual-track strategy of AI in AI+ and brand rejuvenation, Mousse Co., Ltd. recently signed a contract with Yi Yangqianxi on one hand and deepened its AI smart mattress ecosystem cooperation with Huawei on the other, launching its annual strategic new product: Mousse Smart Mattress Pro H-Design at Beijing’s Water Cube.

Moreover, under the slogan “Sleep well for 1/3 of every day, support life for 2/3,” Mousse Co., Ltd. is attempting to accelerate its evolution from a traditional home furnishing company focused on products to a technology company that provides sleep solutions. Data shows that in the first half of 2025, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s revenue from AI products tripled year-on-year, which is quite impressive. As a result, Mousse Co., Ltd. is undergoing a series of concentrated actions aimed at brand renewal, upward transformation, and technological upgrades, seeking to achieve higher premiums.

However, upon closer examination of Mousse Co., Ltd.'s recent transformative actions, it is not difficult to notice that the company’s marketing expenses exceeding one billion each year and its perennial R&D investment of less than 200 million reveal another side of the company’s lack of long-termism as it transitions toward a tech company. With the local economic downturn painting a new backdrop for the era, the reduction of incremental factors in the home furnishing industry poses a significant challenge for veteran home furnishing leaders like Mousse Co., Ltd. to find definitive growth in the existing market, and the difficulty of transformation is also continuously rising.

In this regard, AI, brand rejuvenation, and even the creation of a smart technology ecosystem seem more like a grasp for Mousse Co., Ltd. The core competition in the future still lies in seizing high-end premiums to enhance the company’s pricing power.

However, price increases are often the result of a company’s strong brand accumulation, rather than a means. Especially when a company no longer enjoys impressive growth, short-term gimmicks may not be the real answer.

I. The Transformation Path of Mousse Mattresses

Mousse Co., Ltd., a home furnishing enterprise focused on the R&D, production, and sales of mattresses, bed frames, and other sleep systems, has developed over several decades and has become an industry leader, with major products including mattresses, bed frames, sofas, and bedding. Among them, mattresses are the company’s core product, and its core brand “Mousse” has ranked first in high-end mattress sales nationwide for nine consecutive years.

However, in recent years, affected by the rapid differentiation of the consumer market and the downturn in the real estate cycle, Mousse Co., Ltd. has seen its performance begin to fluctuate, triggering frequent strategic adjustments by the company’s management. In the context of a major downturn in real estate, finding incremental growth in the closely related home furnishing industry is not easy.

Data shows that in 2021, the nationwide new construction area of residential buildings exceeded 1.9 billion square meters, but by 2025, it is projected to drop to 588 million square meters, only 30% of the peak period. The disappearance of new housing increments has directly led to a weak demand side in the downstream home furnishing industry, making the transformation process for leading enterprises like Mousse mattresses, which are closely tied to this sector, inevitably full of twists and turns.

The company’s fluctuating performance in recent years corroborates this point. In its prospectus submitted in 2021, Mousse Co., Ltd. reported that from 2019 to 2021, its revenue surged from 3.862 billion yuan to 6.481 billion yuan, with a cumulative increase of 67.8%. Additionally, its net profit rose from 333 million yuan to 686 million yuan, marking a cumulative increase of 106%.

However, as the major cycle hit, starting in 2022, Mousse Co., Ltd. seems to have entered a lengthy season: from 2022 to 2023, the company’s revenue began to decline, with 2023 revenue at 5.579 billion yuan, a significant decrease compared to 2021, and by 2024, the company’s revenue was almost stagnant. The situation did not improve after 2025.

In the first half of 2025, the company’s revenue decreased by 5.76% year-on-year to 2.478 billion yuan, and net profit attributed to shareholders decreased by 4.14% year-on-year to 358 million yuan. By the third quarter of 2025, the company’s revenue and net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses had decreased by 3.01% and 25.29% year-on-year, respectively, while net cash flow from operating activities plummeted by 62.08%.

Additionally, due to the rapid differentiation of the consumer market in recent years, the demands of price-sensitive users and high-net-worth users have diverged and become difficult to reconcile. In an era of widespread consumption downgrade, leading domestic mattress companies have driven prices of latex, pocket springs, memory foam, and other configurations down to rock-bottom prices. Under the logic of low-priced brand competition, this has also directly resulted in a consumer group that is 30% price-sensitive.

Some survey data even indicates that if mattress prices rise by 10% at the terminal, 25% of consumers will immediately switch brands, and with further price increases, 40% will delay purchases. For this reason, the necessity for strategic adjustments at Mousse Co., Ltd., which previously benefited from the “Westernization” dividend of domestic brands during the growth period, is continuously increasing.

If we look closely at Mousse Co., Ltd.'s series of strategic adjustments over the past few years, it is evident that the traditional brand has launched a dual-drive strategy of AI+ brand rejuvenation, from offering products to providing solutions, attempting to break free from the low-price competition dimension in traditional home furnishing, and building differentiated advantages through technology and ecosystem to capture the richest profits in the high-end market.

II. Path Dependence on Internet Celebrities

Once a company has passed its rapid growth phase, it will inevitably enter a development dormancy period that is no longer exhilarating. At this point, customer acquisition is no longer straightforward, and one of the core factors for stabilizing the company’s revenue and profits will focus on price increases.

The strength of pricing power is often a key standard for assessing the quality of a company’s business model during transformation. However, pricing power is typically the result of a company successfully overcoming various operational issues, rather than a means. Currently, Mousse Co., Ltd., which is committed to high-end transformation, faces a still complex situation, and one of the key challenges is brand aging.

Previously, Li Xiaofeng, vice president of Mousse Group, mentioned: “A realistic issue Mousse faces is brand aging, as many young people perceive it as ‘a brand used by my parents.’”

When the Mousse brand image was born, the company used a visual symbol resembling “a foreign old man who looks like Steve Jobs,” hitting the dividend of specific periods and the development of specific domestic “foreign brands” in China, quickly opening the market.

However, at present, the expression of brands like Mousse has begun to create a gap with the young consumer group that pursues individuality and technological appeal. Data shows that consumers under 35 account for nearly 60% of the home appliance market, indicating strong market potential in the younger demographic.

For this reason, brand rejuvenation has undoubtedly become one of the core focuses of Mousse Co., Ltd.'s strategic transformation. In response, the management of Mousse has been active, launching a series of combined efforts: in recent years, with the dual-track strategy of ALL In AI+ rejuvenation running in parallel, Mousse has shifted from selling products to providing solutions, evolving its competitive dimension from simple product comparison to scene resolution.

Especially in February 2026, Mousse Co., Ltd. officially announced Yi Yangqianxi as its first global brand spokesperson since its establishment. In this regard, Mousse’s management stated: “Signing Yi Yangqianxi is first and foremost a declaration to young people: this is also your brand.”

They further emphasized that the company is not simply bowing to traffic: "Many companies invite celebrity influencers for sales, but Yi Yangqianxi is not a purely traffic-based star; he possesses quality and is very focused.

The spirit of deep cultivation he embodies is in line with Mousse’s 22 years of dedication." However, a question remains difficult to bypass: has Mousse Co., Ltd. truly accumulated sufficient brand equity, and is it time for sustainable price increases and to reap the rewards? This question is closely related to Mousse Co., Ltd.'s increasing marketing investments in endorsements and traffic operations in recent years.

In fact, recent years have seen Mousse Co., Ltd. take aggressive actions in its efforts to elevate brand perception and transition to youthfulness, such as signing international supermodel Du Juan, collaborating with luxury brands like Armani Beauty, and spending millions to host a fan night concert in Hangzhou, along with previous estimates suggesting that Yi Yangqianxi’s endorsement fee could exceed 100 million yuan.

Mousse Co., Ltd. has been aggressive in its pursuit of enhancing brand quality and transitioning to youthfulness, but from the actual operational effect, the company’s fondness for the traditional “big spending on celebrity endorsements” model raises a question of whether the linkage between celebrity endorsements and the company’s AI strategy can truly work, while continuously increasing its marketing investment.

Furthermore, from the early establishment of hot topics and the creation of a domestic “foreign brand” endorsement to the current narrative of celebrity influencers and AI, Mousse’s brand operation logic may not have changed; the era’s hot topics remain the company’s focus, and the relatively clever brand tactics have become an inherent dependence of the company.

An intuitive case is that after the brand was established, Mousse Co., Ltd. presented itself with the image of a “mysterious foreign old man resembling Steve Jobs,” accompanied by extensive publicity: for many years, this domestic brand seemed to want to portray itself as an international brand. Notably, just before its IPO in 2022, the CSRC’s inquiry letter required Mousse to clarify the basic situation of Timothy James Kingman (the image figure of Mousse), its relationship with the issuer’s products, whether external product advertising was appropriately stated, and whether there were any false advertising issues.

Additionally, the long-standing heavy investment in marketing has made it difficult for the company to shed its label of “heavy marketing, light R&D.” Data shows that from 2019 to 2021, Mousse’s advertising expenses were 445 million yuan, 396 million yuan, and 480 million yuan, with advertising expense rates of 11.53%, 8.9%, and 7.4% over three years, significantly higher than the industry average. From 2023 to 2024, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s sales expenses became the largest expenditure item, totaling 1.406 billion yuan and 1.403 billion yuan, accounting for a quarter of total revenue.

By the first three quarters of 2025, Mousse’s sales expenses reached 1.079 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of over 10%. In contrast, the company’s R&D expenses were only 161 million yuan, less than one-sixth of its sales expenses.

In the past year, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s sustained high-intensity marketing has stabilized market presence, while the company’s excellent cost control has also provided more considerable profit margins. For example, from 2019 to 2025, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s mattress unit cost has generally decreased from 939 yuan annually, reaching around 600 yuan in the first half of 2025, showcasing excellent cost control. Thanks to the continuous cost reduction and efficiency improvement of mattresses, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s gross margin has consistently performed well, stabilizing at around 60%, far exceeding its peers.

III. How to Endure Loneliness

Sleep occupies nearly one-third of the lives of the Chinese people, and transitioning from “being able to sleep” to “sleeping well” will undoubtedly provide significant growth space for the “sleep economy.” According to multiple surveys by the China Sleep Research Society, the prevalence of sleep disorders among adults in China has approached 48.5%, estimating that over 300 million people have varying degrees of sleep problems.

At this time, the ability to provide comprehensive high-quality smart sleep solutions will undoubtedly have considerable commercial potential. In fact, the penetration rate of smart beds in the global market remains low. According to reports from Economic Reference Network, China’s smart bed market has an overall penetration rate of less than 5%, leaving over five times the growth space compared to developed countries.

Since launching the “ALL in AI” strategy, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s AI progress in the first half of 2025 has been impressive, with related product revenue reaching 121 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of over three times, undoubtedly boosting the company’s confidence in its subsequent transformation.

Not only in AI, but in recent years, Mousse has also carved out a differentiated path around “soft and hard integration + ecological synergy.” For example, under its self-developed tidal algorithm, the company has been able to achieve “one bed for each person” through the integration of support algorithms, sleep report algorithms, and real-time sleep stage research results.

This may be the confidence behind Mousse’s bold claim of “Sleep well for 1/3 of every day, support life for 2/3,” providing the market with more imaginative space.

However, from a financial perspective, Mousse Co., Ltd.'s new business scale and R&D investment may still be somewhat insufficient. On one hand, in the first three quarters of 2025, the company’s revenue decreased by 3% year-on-year, and the downward pressure on traditional business remains. Moreover, the current proportion of revenue from AI products in the company’s total revenue is only 4.9%, which is still insufficient to take on a significant role.

On the other hand, the company’s annual R&D investment, which has been nearly below 200 million in recent years, forms a striking contrast with its over 1.4 billion in marketing expenses: from 2022 to 2024, Mousse’s R&D expenses only accounted for 2.7%, 3.3%, and 3.7% of revenue. In the future, as competition in the smart home track intensifies, more traditional enterprises, cross-industry companies, and emerging firms will compete fiercely to capture existing users, with competition intensity only increasing.

At this point, the early dividends of the AI mattress concept may no longer be exclusive to Mousse Co., Ltd. From this perspective, before waiting for AI to become a brilliant firework for Mousse Co., Ltd.'s future growth, how to transform its high marketing expenses into lasting product reputation and brand equity may, as previously stated by Mousse Co., Ltd.'s vice president Li Xiaofeng, require “endurance through loneliness, not pursuing short-term growth, to have the possibility of long-term explosive growth.”