Long story short (over last 5 years or so): -Huge hype due to military potential work followed by huge disappointment due to glacial speed that military things progress and also the fact that a lot of iffy stuff went on a few years ago (I do believe the people responsible for that reputation damage have long left the business, they now have an exclusive partnership with a major current US military supplier so it is progressing)
-Meanwhile they have been trying to make it profitable on bedding market alone
-They started selling a lot of low margin things which never made a profit and went through a couple rounds of "excluding low margin businesses" which brought it to the current revenue levels, the margins look much healthier now and they said they are about to improve considerably so make of that what you will
-After a few personnel changes they finally promoted current CEO who basically led the invention of most of the tech and is a major shareholder. He has an experienced team to help with things like commercialization, marketing etc which might not have been his forte. For example, they thought the environmentally friendly stuff would be a huge success straight way only to be hit with the fact that most of the industry will only move when regulations change.
-Over the last couple of years they signed an indirect exclusive supply agreement with Serta Simmons which is a multi-billion dollar business in US (through a company called Soft-Tex). They also have a supply agreement with Pegasus Pillows for which I've found pillows in all Wallmart stores in the US, so I do think the product offers value. It takes time to form these kinds of relationships in this industry, I do think that with the current trajectory they are on path to being a sustainable profitable business.
Obviously there is a lot more to it and a lot of HotCopper bickering, a lot of people will want to spend a lot more time on the iffy stuff and borderline mistreatment of shareholders, but like I said there's been a lot of personal changes and I support the current team.
Worth noting that Colinton Capital Partners invested heavily recently and have Simon Moore on the board of AJX now, worth reading their rational as well
