A new vertical in the business of Zissou, a mid-sized company specializing in mattresses and high-end bedding and bath products, surprises its CEO and co-founder, Ilan Vasserman. About to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2026, the brand opened its first physical store in a shopping center, Villa-Lobos, in São Paulo in November. “It is common to find mattress stores, with attendants in white coats who will assess back pain, in an experience that takes us back to the 1960s, or simple bedding and bath stores. What we have done is an intersection, taking into account our experience in the seven street stores with private spaces for customers to try our mattresses and products. In two months, the Villa-Lobos store is already our second largest in terms of turnover”, Vasserman explains.
The Brazilian mattress market forecasts net sales of 7.67 billion reais for 2025, according to the Brazilian Mattress Industry Association (ABICOL), a growth of 6.5% from the previous year. In this scenario, Zissou’s plan is to reach 10 new stores in shopping centers in 2026. The price of high-end mattresses is between R$7,000 and R$20,000 and represents 70% of the brand’s revenue. But it is a proportion that has decreased in recent years.
Bamboo pulp and Turkish bath line
“We are working on a product with high added value, with very strong sales, influenced and suggested by architects. Our goal is to balance the bed and the bathroom, with our new collection of layettes signed by designer Luisa Moysés, made from bamboo pulp, in addition to products from the Spanish brand Voucler, with a bath line imported from Turkey and cotton sheets from 300 to 800 thread count,” explains Vasserman. The brand has partnerships with luxury hotels in Brazil such as those of the Fasano chain, the Belmond Hotel das Cataratas, in Foz do Iguaçu, and the Botanique Hotel & Spa, in Campos do Jordão, recognized among the 21 Brazilian hotels of Chaves Michelin 2025.
The experience gained in these places as well as the brand’s mission to “redefine people’s relationship with sleep” led Zissou to create its first spa in July in the Moema store, in São Paulo. “With this we want to translate the brand into a service. We offer relaxation sessions, massages, aromatherapy, spice foot baths and a guided nap,” explains the CEO of the 60-minute sessions, priced at R$351, created in partnership with spa consultancy Amman. For those who purchase products over R$2,000 in store, the experience is free, with a voucher. “We want to extend this to other high street stores, which usually have around 120 square meters and space for that, but not to shopping centers. It’s an interesting activity, but peripheral in our strategy.”
Vivara Model
For four years, the brand has counted among its partners Paulo Kruglensky, former CEO of Vivara from 2021 to 2024. He was one of the factors that brought Zissou to shopping centers. “Kruglensky experienced the whole trajectory that tripled Vivara’s installed base in shopping centers, so we built this idea together based on the parameters of our street stores. They showed that the Pinheiros area, for example, was very strong in our online sales, with consolidated brand recognition. So Shopping Villa-Lobos, in the neighborhood, was very suitable for this expansion, in which we invested BRL 700,000,” explains Vasserman.
Today, Zissou’s sales are distributed 60% via one of its seven stores and 40% via e-commerce. “We have a very high recurrence, between 30 and 40%, depending on the harvest – always keeping in mind that a mattress is something that is changed every seven or ten years. Yet we have a high recurrence of the product,” he says.
Lack of sleep
Zissou started as a startup in 2016 and since 2019 it is a medium-sized company, with an annual turnover of 50 million reais. Vasserman came from the financial market, with a parallel desire for a career in film production, abandoned along the way. The other two founders of Zissou, Amit Eisler and Andreas Burmeister, were working on the Chinese time zone at Xiaomi at the time. “In the capital markets, there is a culture that you can only fall asleep when you die, and Amit and Andreas shared with me this loss of sleep. At the time, a study by the Rand Corporation showed that developed countries were losing about $680 billion due to lack of sleep among their workers, so we addressed that topic.”
The trio started with a mattress imported from the United States. “Instead of saying the guy needed one with NASA foam, when the customer had no idea what that was, we realized that what he really wanted was a mattress that didn’t heat up on the surface, didn’t transmit motion waves, and offered a mix of support and comfort. So we imported and launched the so-called ‘mattress in a box,'” the executive says of the product, which comes compressed in a much box. smaller than the mattress when deployed. The secret actually lies in a machine with a 16-ton plate that “kneads” the product, which is then folded into its final shape. Today, the Zissou mattress is 100% nationalized, with 20% imported raw materials.
Price war or brand building?
Shortly after, in 2019, the German brand Emma arrived in Brazil with similar packaging and an aggressive internet strategy, using the Zissou name, aligning its prices and also offering discounts of 40 to 60%. “It was a time when we had to stop and rethink our strategy: either we engage in a price war or we maintain our trajectory of building brand and value. We opted for the latter, instead of volume and a broader market. We have become more niche and with a plan to expand into physical channels.” According to Vasserman, this type of “in a box” mattress saves 25% of logistics costs – the difference is that Zissou offers initial installation of the product, instead of simple shipping and unpacking at the customer’s expense.
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