Critics urge upgrades after numerous duck boat deaths Mattress business tossing, turning
BOSTON — With their festive, partylike ambience and ability to travel on land and in water, duck boats have long been tourist attractions for sightseers around the country.
But a string of deadly accidents has left the industry reeling, forced safety improvements and led some advocates to call for a ban on the vehicles.
In Seattle, after five college studentswere killed in a 2015 duck boat collision with a bus, the company pulled half its fleet out of service. In Philadelphia, a duck boat operator suspended its tours indefinitely after three people were killed in two separate crashes. And in Boston, new safety regulations are set to go into effect in April after a duck boat ran over and killed a 28-year-old woman last spring.
Boston has a special fondness for duck boats, which have become a mainstay of parades celebrating sports championships. Earlier this month, two dozen duck boats carried the New England Patriots through the streets of Boston for a “rolling rally” to celebrate the team’s Super Bowl win.
But duck boats have lost some of their appeal in Boston and other places where people have been seriously injured or killed.
“We believe that duck boats in their current design should be banned,” said Ivan Warmuth, the father of Allison Warmuth, who was killed April 30, 2016, when a duck boat ran her over on her motor scooter.
Duck boats were originally used by the U.S. military in World War II to transport troops and supplies over land and water, most famously during the invasion of Normandy in 1944. Theywere later modified for use as sightseeing vehicles. There are about 130 duck boats operating in more than a dozen U.S. cities, including Boston, Miami, San Diego, Seattle and Washington.
Critics say the 2 1/2-ton amphibious passenger vehicles are dangerous because their design creates numerous blind spots for drivers, who sit 10 to 12 feet behind the bow, making it difficult to see directly below and in front of them.
Allison Warmuth’s parents have pushed the industry to adopt new safety measures. They successfully lobbied for aMassachusetts lawthat requires duck boats to have blind spot cameras and proximity sensors. The new law also requires a second employee — separate from the driver — to narrate the tours.
Kevan Moniri, who was on the scooter with Warmuth, recalls seeing the duck boat accelerate behind them when a light turned green, then realizing the driver did not see them. Video examined by the National Transportation Safety Board showed the driver taking his eyes off the road and turning in his seat to point out landmarks during the tour.
“I hear again and again from Boston Duck Tours and any of these other companies that safety is theirNo. 1 priority, and if that’s the case, you can’t argue that the safest way to operate the vehicles is for the driver to also be giving the tour,” Moniri said.
Ten weeks after Warmuth was killed, a New Jersey woman was struck and injuredby a duck boat at anotherBoston intersection.
Boston Duck Tours CEO Cindy Brown said the company “places a premium on the safety of its passengers” and touted additional cameras, a second person to narrate tours and new backup sensors.
Safety advocates have sought improvements since 1999, when 13 people died after a duck boat sank near Hot Springs, Ark.
In the past seven years, a series of accidents have claimed lives, including a 2010 collision between a stalled duck boat in the Delaware River and a tug boat-guided barge, which killed two Hungarian tourists; a 2015 crash that killed a Texaswoman as she crossed a Philadelphia street; and the 2015 collision in Seattle.
Critics say part of the problem is that a myriad agencies regulate duck boats, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and cities and states with varying safety requirements.
Mattress man Scott Thompson may be missing some sleep these days. Tempur Sealy International Inc., which Thompson leads, posted a small increase in fourth-quarter sales announced lastweek, not enough to stave off a full-year decline in revenue at the company behind Tempur-Pedic, Sealy, and Stearns& Foster beds— its first annual decline since 2012.
The sales figures come just a couple ofweeks after Tempur Sealy’s divorce fromMattress Firm, its largestNorth American retail partner. The two companies split after contract negotiations broke down, closing a distribution channel with 3,500 stores thatmoved one in five Tempur Sealy mattresses. TheMattress Firm orders will stop by the end ofMarch.
Investors, nowtrulywoke, bailed out aswell, taking one-third of the company’s market value with them the day Mattress Firmwalked away. Tempur Sealy beat expectations by cutting costs and trimming its product line. Investorswere further cheered by news that the company snapped up $200 million of its stock, but the shares have a longway to go before they recover the ground they’ve lost.
It’s actually a pretty good time to be one of the big mattress companies. Bed sales tend to move in step with the economy, and lately the conditions have been kind of dreamy. The stock market is at record highs, the unemployment rate is below5 percent, and the housing market continues its steady climb out of the recession. Housing starts, or theMoving Out of Mom’s Basement indicator, are back at pre-recession levels.
The business is also getting a boost from a cultural obsession overwellness. As consumers plug in to an ecosystem ofwatches and wrist bands that track their sleep, they’re likelier to invest in the latest proprietary sandwich of cooling foam, organic cotton, andwell-tuned springs.
Tempur-Pedic’s new marketing slogan says it all: Sleep Is Power.
But many consumers are no longer setting foot in stores. The crowd of manufacturing startups selling mattresses online is almost laughably large at this point.
Besides Casper Sleep there are Saatva, Tuft& Needle, Leesa Sleep, Purple, Helix Sleep, and Eve. Though each has a slightly different product and price point, the general model is the same: Cut out the middleman to dangle a lower price and offer free shipping bothways and a no-risk trial of about 100 days.
These “disrupters” nowcommand about 5 percent of theU.S. mattress market, according to Tempur Sealy and Saatva, which expects to top $200 million in sales this year. Given the number of upstarts, none of them individually is likely to bother the incumbents too much.
In fact, Tempur Sealy has been shrugging off the scrappy competition for years. In July, Chief Financial Officer BarryHytinen told analysts that bed-in-a-boxwas a niche market, with startups overspending on customer acquisition.
“The vast majority of consumers continue to prefer testing beds in-store and buying fromretailers,” he said on a conference call. When analysts asked about the company buying one of those startups, Thompson scoffed. “I don’t knowwhatwewould be buying ifwe were buying an internet company that has aweb page,” he said.
Leaving aside the fact that every company is “an internet company” these days, 5 percent market share isn’t nothing, and the pace at which these startups gathered that business is alarming. “The industry is growing at 3 or 4 percent (a year), and almost all of that growth is going to the disrupters,” said Saatva co-founder Ricky Joshi.
Tempur Sealy can make a foam mattress and stuff it into a box aswell as anyone, probably better. So that’s what the company did, first discreetly and then explicitly. Punch “Casper” into a Google search these days and the third result is Cocoon by Sealy, a directto-consumer line of mattresses.
The manufacturing giant’s bed-in-abox brand looks and feels like its tiny rivals’, although its products are slightly more affordable.
It’s classic Clayton Christensen-style innovation: If anyone is going to disrupt your business, it ought to be you. Cocoon, however, is a little late to the internet party. Though the brand is growing at 100 percent a year, Tempur Sealy garnered 88 percent of its sales last quarter through traditional retail channels.