Case Study: Tuft & Needle achieves streamlined mattress shopping and lean, scalable operations with Heroku

Delivering Comfort & Streamlined Mattress Shopping through Heroku-Powered App

Tuft & Needle is a direct‑to‑consumer mattress company founded in 2013 by two former software engineers who wanted to remove the confusion, high markups, and friction from mattress shopping. Their challenge was to deliver a premium, affordable product and a simple online shopping experience while keeping operations lean and scalable.

They built a lightweight Ruby/JavaScript app and in‑house operational systems on Heroku with Postgres, automating CRM, inventory, fulfillment, and supply‑chain integrations so non‑developers can deploy and manage the site. The result: profitable since month three, a small 20‑person team (one quarter developers), low return rates supported by a 100‑night trial, and a platform that scales easily to handle traffic spikes while keeping costs and headcount down.

Tuft & Needle

JT Marino

Founder