Hong Kong schoolfriends become kings of online ‘mattress-in-a-box’ business
Having followed each other since school, the two now sell compressed mattresses in a box through an online site to avoid high shop rentals
Jason Da Rosa and Alex Ma Kin-heng are inseparable most of the time. They went to the same primary and high schools and got into banking together.
The duo, both 28, also quit their well-paid banking jobs around the same time to set up their own business, Skyler, which offers mattresses that are vacuum-packed into a box. They only take online orders.
Starting from scratch, Da Rosa and Ma spent a year visiting different mattress stores around Hong Kong, looking for manufacturers and talking to experts. Through these, they came up with the concept of compressing mattresses into a box.
“By utilising vacuum compression technology, we discovered that we could solve another Hong Kong-specific problem, which was getting a large-sized mattress into an apartment even if lifts are cramped and unaccommodating,” Ma said.
“All of our mattresses come packed in a compact box with wheels and handles that easily fit into any car or lift or up any staircase.”