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As a journalist and investor, I’m always a little suspicious of single-product, super-niche companies; there are just so many things that can go wrong, and one of the ways that direct-to-consumer brands do well is having the ability to cross-sell to its customers. Morphée was one of those brands, starting with its frankly ludicrously over-designed (but stunningly beautiful) $99 non-digital sleep and meditation product. It added a product for kids, and at CES, it launched the Morphée Zen, a smaller, travel-focused relaxation pebble.
The Zen is an ultra-portable “pebble” that offers mental wellness training and sleep-focused relaxation sessions, including soothing sounds, music and voice therapies. It has 72 audio sessions based on six themes, including dynamic relaxation, deep relaxation, and breathing techniques. There’s a bunch of nature sounds, relaxing music and quick two-minute “instant relief” sessions to get your heart rate down to a more manageable rate.
Of course, the real question here is whether Morphée is trying to stretch its brand just a little bit too far. Taking the smartphone devices away from kids with the My Little Morphée might make sense and the original Morphée is a piece of art as much as a meditation device.
The Zen makes a lot less sense to me, in a world where $69.99 a year buys you a Calm subscription, and there’s an almost infinite supply of meditations, sleep sounds and focus music available from Spotify, YouTube and, well, pretty much everywhere else you can imagine. Do we really need another product that will — sooner or later — end up in a landfill somewhere, when a purely software solution would accomplish essentially the same thing?
The product will be available in Q3 2022, priced at $79.99
