Tuft & Needle® is part of Daehee and Tyler’s professional history. Boring is a separate, independent company and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Tuft & Needle.

2012

May 2012: Daehee Park and JT Marino were Penn State classmates working together in Silicon Valley. They quit their jobs and founded Tuft & Needle with $6,000 in combined personal savings to make mattress shopping simpler.

July 2012: After struggling to find a manufacturer willing to work with a new business and an unfamiliar direct-to-consumer model, the founders found a Southern California factory willing to make their mattresses.

August 2012: Daehee moved the business into a workspace inside a transmission shop in Tempe, Arizona, where lower costs made it possible to keep building with the founders’ savings.

September 2012: Tyler Marino joined as T&N’s first employee.

October 2012: Daehee, JT, and Tyler launched T&N with one universally comfortable mattress sold directly to customers, helping pioneer buying a mattress online and having it arrive in a box at your door.

November 2012: T&N introduced a sleep trial so customers could decide at home, with easy returns and a customer service team to help.

2013

January 2013: Instead of the traditional industry approach of releasing new mattress models every year, JT and Tyler began rapidly iterating on the mattress based on customer feedback, with the team following up after delivery to learn what needed to change.

December 2013: As one of the earliest mattress brands on the platform, T&N became the highest customer-rated mattress on Amazon.

December 2013: T&N passed $1 million in sales in its first full year.

2014

March 2014: T&N built a network of charities across the country to collect trial returns, getting mattresses to people in need without shipping them back or sending them to landfills.

October 2014: Daehee and the T&N team moved out of the Tempe transmission shop and into their first standalone office, a 5,100-square-foot space in the Levine Machine Building in Downtown Phoenix. When customers kept showing up to try the mattress, the team also turned a conference room into a showroom.

2015

By 2015: At T&N, the team worked with Peterson Chemical to develop the proprietary foam sold as T&N Adaptive Foam, helping bring Energex to the mass market shopping online. Boring later chose Energex for its own mattresses.

April 2015: Consumer Reports ranked T&N third among 18 mattresses in its foam category.

December 2015: Three years after launching, T&N passed $40 million in annual sales without outside investors. Meanwhile, other mattress brands inspired by Tuft & Needle, such as Casper, had raised over $70 million in venture capital funding by this time.

2016

January 2016: T&N turned down venture funding and took a $500,000 loan from Bond Street, financing expansion while keeping control of the company.

By July 2016: T&N launched a nationwide ad campaign with “Mattress Stores Are Greedy” on billboards, connecting with people who felt that mattress shopping was a broken experience.

September 2016: Daehee and the team moved into the historic O.S. Stapley warehouse on Grand Avenue in Downtown Phoenix.

November 2016: Tyler designed the T&N Original Foam Pillow after customers asked for a pillow to go with their mattress.

2017

January 2017: Daehee and the team opened T&N’s first standalone Arizona store at 2730 N. Scottsdale Road, moving retail beyond the showroom inside its Phoenix office.

May 2017: By this time, T&N donated $3 million worth of mattresses, with 93% of returns going to charity and the remaining 7% recycled.

October 2017: Mattress Firm sued T&N over advertising that included the “Mattress Stores Are Greedy” campaign.

November 2017: Tyler designed the Mint Mattress, which sold 6,500 units over its Black Friday launch weekend against a forecast of 500, leaving the team scrambling to meet demand.

December 2017: By the end of 2017, the company Daehee, JT, and Tyler built reached $170 million in revenue and five stores across three states, still without outside investment.

2018

July 2018: T&N made the Mint available to try in 22 Crate & Barrel stores, reaching customers who still wanted to lie on a mattress before buying.

September 2018: More than one million people were sleeping on T&N mattresses.

September 2018: T&N merged with Serta Simmons Bedding, combining the direct-to-consumer business Daehee and Tyler had helped build with an established manufacturer’s supply chain and retail distribution.

2019

September 2019: T&N launched the Hybrid mattress, designed by Tyler with foam and springs.

2020

November 2020: While Tyler was leading product, T&N partnered with JetBlue to design the sleep experience for Mint passengers, including a convertible blanket, memory-foam pillow, and sleep kit.

2021

December 2021: Daehee and Tyler both left T&N after helping build the business over nearly a decade.

2023

January 2023: Under private equity ownership, Serta Simmons Bedding filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and dragged Tuft & Needle down along with it. The combined company's ownership changed hands to the banks that owned the debt.

March 2023: Daehee, Tyler, and Corben Leo started Boring as a new, founder-owned company, returning to the product philosophy and core values that had built T&N after online mattress shopping became complicated and expensive again.

2024

January 2024: Boring launched its first mattress, a foam-and-spring hybrid designed and assembled in Arizona.

2025

November 2025: Boring opened its first showroom at Culdesac Tempe, returning to the same city block where Daehee had started T&N.