Be the mattress brand
AI recommends in New Zealand.

1. Executive summary

• Organic is your highest-value acquisition channel, and it is under-fed. It converts at 2.15%, ahead of Google paid at 1.63% and far ahead of paid social. Only email beats it, and email cannot bring new customers. Shopify + GA4
• You rank on the whole category but win almost none of it. Non-branded search is 96% of your impressions but only 48% of your clicks, because you rank page one to two, not top three. "mattress nz" alone sits on page two. GSC
• Mattresses, your growth engine, is invisible in AI. You are cited for "best bed frames NZ" and absent for "best mattress in a box NZ", where Ecosa and the review sites own the answer. AI already sends you sales with zero optimisation. Ahrefs + live SERP

Triangulated NZ search volume per category, July 2026. We have left bedroom furniture out of the model: at roughly 2% of sales it is not where you are pointed. Focus is mattresses and bed frames, with toppers and headboards folded in. GKP + Ahrefs + SEMrush

2. Where The Flatpack sits today

You started in 2019 as Otago students who could not find a decent, affordable bed that shipped flat and went together fast. Six years and 15,000-plus beds later you are a genuine NZ brand, doubling revenue two years running toward roughly $9M, with a 4.8 out of 5 rating across 569 reviews on your hero frame alone. The foundations are good. This is growth on a proven base, not a rescue.

Your Shopify attribution. Average order value sits around $1,100 (a mattress around $800 to $900, a bed frame $600 to $700, often bought together). Shopify

Non-branded category search is 96% of your impressions but only 48% of your clicks. You own your name and rank across the category, but sitting at position 8 to 20 converts almost none of that visibility into visits. AI already sends you buyers too: your analytics show an AI Assistant channel driving 19 orders and around $2,000 last quarter, with nothing optimised for it. GSC + GA4

3. The market you are missing: search and AI

Mattresses is a high-research, long-consideration purchase. Buyers do not know what makes a good mattress, the market is deliberately confusing, and they ask the same questions in two places now, a search box and an AI chat. Most of the demand is low difficulty.

Search volume triangulated across Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs and SEMrush (median of three), NZ. Your rank is your current average Google position from Search Console. The pattern: decent on the generic terms, page two or worse on the growth terms (toppers, queen, "best mattress"), and even your strong spots leave clicks on the table (position 3 on "mattress nz" at under 3% click-through, with shopping and AI answers taking the rest). AI Overviews already fire on "best mattress nz", live proof the AI layer answers these now. GKP + Ahrefs + SEMrush GSC

The validated core (34,800) grows to a full category of about 83,000 searches a month once you add the long tail, which is unusually deep for mattresses given how much people research. Strip out ads, shopping carousels, AI Overviews and pure-research queries, and roughly one search in five survives as a winnable organic click, a pool of about 16,500 a month. AI prompts (another ~7,000 to 14,000 a month) are counted separately so nothing is double-counted. Modelled

We mined 70 real questions Kiwis ask AI engines about your category, from Google's "People Also Ask", Reddit threads with hundreds of comments, and review language. Here is a sample of the actual questions, and roughly how often each comes up a month.

A sample of the 70-question library. Volume is a directional monthly estimate blending real search demand with the extra AI-chat demand behind each question, so treat it as a floor. Full library and method handed over separately. Directional

And here is who the AI answers name today, cluster by cluster, versus where you show up.

4. The opportunity, in dollars

We took the real demand in your categories, your validated 2.15% organic conversion and roughly $1,100 order value, and modelled you moving from today's small slice of the category to the share the leaders hold. Here is the one number that matters, and how it builds.

Your non-branded organic revenue over time. It starts at about $570K a year today, holds roughly flat while we build the foundations (the first few months), then compounds to about $1.05M a year at the mid case. That climb is around $480K of new organic revenue. Hover any point on the live version for the figure. Modelled, directional

Add that organic climb to what AI search brings as you start showing up in the mattress answers, and the mid case comes to about $735,000 a year in new revenue, on top of what you earn today. Roughly two-thirds of that is organic search, one-third is AI search.

New revenue on top of today's ~$570K organic baseline, at your real 2.15% conversion and $1,100 order value. The share of the category you win is the modelled part, directional at plus or minus 40%, and we tighten it once we are in the account. Repeat purchases and referrals sit on top as upside. GA4 + GSC Modelled share

5. Who you are up against, and the authority play

Ahrefs, NZ, July 2026, estimated organic traffic. Ecosa is the brand to catch in mattresses, on beatable content. Ahrefs Site Explorer

Our honest sequencing: the first six months build the technical and content foundations that get you cited on your own answers and lift you from page two to the top three. Authority, the digital PR, review-site placements and Reddit presence, is the engine that runs alongside and then compounds for years after. It is a core focus we are building deep, done-for-you capability in specifically for Shopify brands, and it is where most of the long-term share-of-voice sits.

6. How AI-ready you are today: the AEO scorecard

We score every brand out of 100 against our AEO Maturity Model: four pillars (Technical, Content, Authority, Measurement), each out of 25. Certified is 80 out of 100, Professional on all four, the standard we build clients to. You are at 50 today, with strong bones and a clear climb.

Here is what sits behind the score. It is content, authority and a few schema fixes, not a rebuild.

The single highest-leverage foundation fix is content: you have no blog and no buying guides, which is why you are invisible in mattresses. Building that engine is what turns the citation gaps above into revenue.

7. The six-month transformation

A done-for-you AI and Search transformation over six months. We build and run the whole thing on our side, so there is no platform subscription to learn and nothing for your small team to maintain. Over the six months your presence goes from winning bed frames to competing hard for mattresses.

Fix Core Web Vitals, add Organization schema and GTINs, tidy the sitemap, filter the student traffic out of measurement, and baseline your organic and AI visibility. Calibrate to your voice and positioning: mid-market affordable, not cheap.

Stand up the blog and buying-guide engine aimed at the mattress questions you are absent from, and lift your ranking pages from page two into the top three. Around 100 pieces sized to your catalogue over the six months. By day 90 you are AI-certified at 80 out of 100.

Turn on the authority engine: review-site placements, comparison round-ups, and a real Reddit presence in the mattress conversation, measured against your baseline. By month six you are transformed: cited across mattresses and bed frames, organic climbing.

Search volumes triangulated across Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs and SEMrush (NZ), July 2026. Conversion rate, order value and organic revenue from your Google Analytics, Search Console and Shopify. Competitor footprints from Ahrefs Site Explorer, estimated. Revenue figures are directional and not a guarantee of results. Pricing is set out separately in the proposal.