When JT Marino and Daehee Park quit their engineering jobs in 2012 to create mattress startup Tuft & Needle, they decided to do so with no venture funding. That makes the startup a rarity in the now highly competitive bed-in-a-box industry.
Even so, the co-founders managed to grow their company to $100 million in revenue last year.
Now Tuft & Needle, one of the most popular mattress makers on Amazon, is making a splash in physical retail — with the help of Amazon.
This summer it began outfitting its fourth physical store with Amazon technology, including Alexa-powered Echo devices programmed to answer customer questions, one-click purchasing through the Amazon app and one-day shipping with Amazon Prime membership. The startup also hopes to partner with Amazon for two-hour deliveries through Prime Now.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.