Ecomatelas: the next impact unicorn that circularizes the mattress industry

At the Universités de l'Economie de Demain in Montpellier, 3 future impact unicorns were unveiled: 3 companies from Occitania spearheading the economy of tomorrow. The Tech for Good France community's goal is to help impact nuggets emerge throughout France. This approach is accompanied by a vast study conducted with BCG to identify and accelerate these impact unicorns.

Discover the portrait and the testimony of Jérémie Adjedj, founder and manager ofEcomatelas.

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Introduce us to Ecomatelas

Ecomatelas is the first manufacturer of reconditioned mattresses made in France: an innovative and patented industrial process to offer high-end and durable mattresses at half the price.

Because of the more than 5 million mattresses thrown away each year in France, only 30% are recycled with a degradation of the material, it is urgent to circularize an oil-intensive sector. With our solution, we multiply by 3 the average life of a mattress and prevent 10,000 mattresses per year from being incinerated or buried, with the objective of reconditioning more than 50,000 mattresses in 2025.

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What is your impact?

Ecomatelas is a circular economy solution that could put an end to the burial or incineration of an everyday product whose raw material is oil. If generalized, our solution would allow to divide by 3 the number of mattresses produced each year. Our impact is therefore directly linked to the limitation of extraction of raw materials, and mainly oil. An impact also if we prolong the chain: an incinerated mattress rejects this oil, or releases more than 250 kilos of greenhouse gases into the ground during the 100 necessary to its degradation if it is buried.

ADEMEn has allowed us to quantify that since the beginning of our activity, 10,000 tons of GHG have not been emitted or rejected.

For Ecomatelas, the next steps in development are to increase the number of mattresses that leave our factories each month, which is currently 400, a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly 6 million mattresses sold each year.

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How do you define sobriety?

First and foremost, our core business is to reduce the quantity of egg mattresses produced. Internally, we have also worked with the Montpellier Chamber of Commerce and Industry to obtain the Envol label, which is a prerequisite for ISO 14000 certification. With this label, we have put in place better waste and energy management practices, as well as employee training on these issues.

Above all, we have reviewed our production process by dividing the amount of energy required by 3 and by finding new outlets to circularize other aspects of our value chain, particularly for mattress fabrics.

A unicorn with impact, does that speak to you?

We need to rethink what tomorrow's unicorn is, do we continue to value these companies that make a lot of cash burn while only creating value late in the game? Or do we identify new metrics that integrate social, employment and environmental impact, the development of a local fabric and the implementation of an economic and organizational model that maximizes impact while creating triple value, social, environmental and economic?

We know that human activity cannot continue on the same model. To change it, we must start by revising our ways of consuming, producing and growing.

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Is Ecomatress the next impact unicorn?

Ecomatelas responds to a challenge of our time, that of sobriety, we check a lot of boxes to be a sober unicorn, but it is not an everyday issue. We are still in a growth phase that must be supported to create jobs and to support the territory of Montpellier.

It is a shared success to be identified as a Sober Unicorn, an approach that concerns all our employees, who have been trained and who, every day, are our ambassadors of sobriety by testing new methods and by creating our business model together.

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A message to entrepreneurs and political leaders

An impactful unicorn is first and foremost an organization that is lived by its stakeholders: an impactful project cannot develop if the awareness and will to have an impact is not shared by all the employees and the ecosystem. This means setting up a more participative governance and involving its employees in a common project.

As far as the public authorities are concerned, there is a huge challenge to choose the model towards which to converge, the direction to give to our economy and to companies. This is why we are defending a green VAT, which would provide a clear framework by giving green consumption a competitive price.