Sleep and bedding
Manufacturers and retailers of beds, mattresses and sleep systems. The category we know best and the one where the gap between what a product costs and what it is worth to someone is widest.
Lunesta.one
We buy and build companies that help people rest.
Rest is not a product category. It is the condition everything else depends on — health, judgement, work, the patience to be decent to the people around you. We acquire businesses that serve it well, and we run them for the long term.
What we do
Operators, not investors passing through.
We come out of the bedding trade. We have stood on shop floors, carried mattresses up staircases, and watched what happens to a good brand when it is sold on price for long enough.
Lunesta acquires companies in sleep, wellbeing and premium retail — usually from founders and families looking for a successor rather than an exit multiple. We buy few things, we buy them outright, and we keep them. There is no fund behind us with a clock on it.
That changes what we can do with a business. We can spend the first year fixing what needs fixing instead of dressing it for resale, and we can take a decision that costs money this year because it is obviously right for the next ten.
Where we look
Three kinds of business, one common thread.
01
02
Premium retail
Single stores and small groups where the product is considered, the purchase is infrequent, and the shop itself is part of what is being bought. Businesses that reward being run properly.
03
Wellbeing and lifestyle
Companies whose product measurably improves how someone feels day to day, and whose owners care more about that than about the fastest route to scale.
A brand is worth what people would pay before they see the price.
Our working definition of brand equity
Most struggling premium businesses are not struggling because the product got worse. They are struggling because the price got negotiable, the distribution got wide, and the discount became the reason to buy.
Recovering from that is slow and unglamorous work. Fewer points of sale. Fewer promotions. A cost base that fits the revenue you actually have rather than the one you keep hoping for. It is the work we are interested in.
Read our approach →For owners
If you built it, you get to ask where it goes.
Selling a company you started is not a transaction. It is a handover, and the questions that matter are rarely about price.
What happens to the people. Whether the name stays. Whether the thing you spent thirty years making good will still be good in five. We are happy to have that conversation long before anyone talks about numbers, and to keep it entirely private if it goes nowhere.
What a conversation with us looks like →Approach
Fewer things, owned longer, run properly.
We have no thesis deck and no target return. We have a short list of things we believe about premium businesses, and we buy the ones where those beliefs would make a difference.
What we believe
Six principles we would not trade away.
01
Scarcity is a feature of value, not a marketing tactic
A handcrafted product loses its meaning when it is available everywhere and always slightly on offer. Restoring value usually means reducing availability before it means anything else — and accepting a smaller, better business on the way through.
02
Demand is built nationally, converted locally
A single shop cannot make a country want something. That is the manufacturer's work, and it is measured in years of consistent presence. What a shop can do is convert the person who already walked in wanting it, and do it well enough that they tell someone.
03
Discounting is borrowing from next year
Every promotion trains a customer to wait. The revenue arrives early and the margin never comes back. We would rather sell fewer units at the price the product is worth than manage a business that only moves when it is cheap.
04
The cost base should fit the revenue you have
Most failing retail is not failing on the top line. It is carrying a floor, a payroll and a lease sized for a year that is not coming back. Fixing that first is what buys the time to fix everything else.
05
We buy to keep
No fund, no fixed horizon, no obligation to sell to anyone at a particular time. That is not a virtue in itself — it simply means we can make decisions on a ten-year view, and we can tell a seller honestly what we intend to do.
06
Say the number out loud
We work from open models rather than from positions. If we think a business is worth less than the seller does, we would rather show the arithmetic and be argued out of it than negotiate by assertion. It makes for shorter conversations and better deals.
How a deal runs
Four stages, and you can stop at any of them.
First
A conversation
No adviser, no non-disclosure agreement, no obligation. Usually an hour, usually about what you want to happen to the business rather than what it is worth.
Then
An open model
We build the numbers together from your actual accounts, and you see every assumption we make. If the model says the business does not work, we will say so rather than bid low and find out later.
Finally
A short agreement
Terms you can read without a lawyer translating them, a handover on a timescale that suits you, and a plan for the people who work there that exists before signing rather than after.
For owners
Handing over a business you built.
If you are thinking about stepping back — this year, or in three — it costs nothing to have the conversation early, and it is far easier to do well with time in hand.
Who we are for
You might recognise some of this.
You built something good and you are tired in a way that a holiday does not fix. Or the next generation looked at it honestly and said no. Or the business needs an investment you no longer want to make personally, and standing still is quietly becoming the expensive option.
You do not want it broken up, renamed, or run by someone who has never sold anything to a customer standing in front of them. You would like the people who work there to still work there.
And you would prefer to find out where you stand without it becoming public, without a process, and without paying anyone for the privilege of the first conversation.
What we commit to
Four things, from the first email.
01
Discretion, by default and in writing
Nothing leaves the two of us. No adviser network, no market soundings, no mention to anyone in the trade. If you would like that in writing before you tell us anything, ask and it is done the same day.
02
A straight answer, quickly
If it is not for us you will know within two weeks and you will know why. We would rather give a clear no than keep an option open at your expense.
03
You see the whole model
Every assumption behind our number is visible and editable, and you are welcome to pull it apart. We have changed our own view more than once because a seller knew something the accounts did not show.
04
The people come up first
Before terms, before price. Who stays, what changes for them, and what they are told and when. It is the part that goes wrong most often and it is the cheapest part to get right.
Start here
One email is enough.
You do not need figures, an adviser or a decision. A sentence about the business and a good time to call will do.
Contact
Two people, one inbox.
There is no team of associates to get past. Write to us and one of us answers.
Details
Lunesta.one
- Registered
- The Netherlands · Chamber of Commerce no. to be added
- Address
- to be added
- Enquiries from owners
- Start here
We reply to everything, usually the same week. If you are an owner weighing up a sale and would prefer a signed confidentiality undertaking before you write anything down, say so in one line and we will send one.
Private
Deal room.
A working area for live transactions. Access is by invitation and is granted per transaction, to named people only.
Enter the deal room
Access is protected at the hosting layer, before any page is delivered. If you have been invited, the sign-in details came with the invitation.