\n
The origin story of furniture brand Lovesac<\/strong> is one of those great \u201cstarted in the parents\u2019 garage\u201d sagas full of ingenuity, passion and luck. As in many of those tales, the company became a success, but in the case of Lovesac there\u2019s a lot more to the story. \u00a0<\/p>\nLovesac has reached the ripe age of 25<\/strong> at a moment of great upheaval in consumption culture, when consumers\u2019 wants are butting up against environmental and ethical needs.<\/strong> And somewhat by accident, through all the twists and turns in its evolution, Lovesac has landed on a product that meets the moment.<\/p>\n\n
One example of the Lovesac Sactional. \u201cWe kind of inadvertently invented a couch that could be with you the rest of your life,\u201d recounted Lovesac Founder and CEO Shawn Nelson, discussing the development of the \u201cSactional\u201d \u2014 the company\u2019s take on the classic sectional couch. \u201cIt\u2019s built to last a lifetime, because it\u2019s been designed to evolve as your life changes.<\/strong> Right now across from me, I\u2019m looking at a couch with pieces that are 17 <\/strong>years old. They\u2019re mated with brand-new pieces, they\u2019re mated with StealthTech [more on what that is later] and they\u2019re on their 10th<\/strong> set of covers, but they look new, they smell new \u2014 you\u2019d have no idea. There is no other couch in the world that can do that.<\/p>\n\u201cThat philosophy \u2014 things built to last a lifetime, designed to evolve \u2014 drives us now and gives us a path to compete with everyone else in a way that no one else is doing, or frankly, I think, willing to do, because it\u2019s difficult,\u201d<\/strong> Nelson added in an interview with Retail TouchPoints<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s costly to design this way, to retail this way. But if you can master it\u2026I mean, [based on our intel] the Sactional is the best-selling couch in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\nThe brand\u2019s \u201cDesigned for Life\u201d philosophy carries all the way from product design to how it builds and runs its stores. It\u2019s become Lovesac\u2019s driving force and what Nelson believes will propel his company into the next 25<\/strong> years. The story of how Lovesac arrived at this raison d\u2019\u00eatre <\/em>is full of twists and turns, but it\u2019s that very winding road that has made the company what it is today, so that is where we will start.<\/p>\nBack in 1995, a College Student Made a Really Big Beanbag\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n\u2026so big it could fill a room, or least make a sizeable dent in a den. It took three<\/strong> weeks to make and when Nelson ran out of bean bag beads, he filled the rest with pieces of foam camping mattresses chopped up with a paper cutter. He then took it everywhere with him, and \u201ceverywhere it goes, everyone wants one. That was my market research,\u201d Nelson said.<\/p>\nThree <\/strong>years later, Nelson created Lovesac to fill his first commission for a neighbor \u201cwho had seen it go up and down the street a bunch of times and wanted their own.\u201d He then took the concept on the road to boat shows, trade shows and the like, selling a few here and there but primarily funding the endeavor by waiting tables. When he graduated, better-paying employment awaited, but he gave it one last stab at a trade show and got his first real order, for 12,000<\/strong> units. \u201cThey didn\u2019t know it was just me, a buddy and a woodchipper, shredding this stuff in the back of a furniture factory that tolerated us.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nFor the unabridged version of Lovesac Founder and CEO Shawn Nelson\u2019s story, you can check out his book or new podcast series of the same name, \u201cLet Me Save You 25 Years.\u201d (Image courtesy Lovesac)It was clear that Lovesac needed a factory and more affordable textiles, so Nelson flew to China to source the fabric and filled the order using old farm equipment. He didn\u2019t make any money, but he broke even, and now the company had a factory. The next logical step was to go to retailers, but \u201cthey didn\u2019t want to sell our stuff and thought our name was stupid,\u201d so Nelson kept the name and opened his own store at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City with a product that was about one-eighth <\/strong>the size of the original, which meant it could be shipped.<\/p>\n\u201cThe store just ripped,\u201d said Nelson. \u201cWe were on track to do more than $1 million<\/strong> bucks in our first year, which in the mall was pretty good. We had a couch in the corner just [to make the store] look pretty, but people kept trying to buy the couch. It obviously got us thinking.\u201d<\/p>\nYears later, the Sactional entered the scene, \u201cwhich was really just our attempt at putting a couch in a shippable solution,\u201d said Nelson. In the middle of all that was a pretty eventful series of twists and turns that Nelson summarized succinctly: \u201cRaise venture capital. Raise private equity. Complete Chapter 11 reorg, venture capital wanted us to start over. Won $1 million<\/strong> on national TV with Richard Branson (he had a reality show that was kind of like Trump\u2019s Apprentice<\/em>), and then fought our way up in a very long, drawn out attempt to be a furniture brand with the name Lovesac,<\/strong> selling kind of expensive couches across the hall from Pottery Barn<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nThe DTC movement provided the final breakthrough, helped by the fact that the brand\u2019s products were already designed to be shippable. \u201cWe converted all of our stores to showrooms where you\u2019re just there to experience it, understand it, plan it. We\u2019ll check you out there or you can buy online, we don\u2019t care. It\u2019s truly an omnichannel direct model<\/strong>, and sales exploded,\u201d to the tune of a \u201c40%<\/strong> kegger since 2015,\u201d as Nelson put it, with the exception of the post-COVID period when furniture sales on the whole have slumped.<\/p>\nDespite that, Lovesac is eking out positive growth each year, and \u201c90%<\/strong> of it\u2019s on the back of Sactionals,\u201d said Nelson. Now the company has launched \u201cStealthTech\u201d \u2014 sound and charging systems designed to be integrated into existing or new Sactionals. The tech costs about $3,000<\/strong> extra on top of the couches, which can run anywhere from $5,000 <\/strong>to $15,000<\/strong> but \u201cthose kinds of metrics out of 800<\/strong> square feet with five<\/strong> employees ends up being $2, $5, $10 million <\/strong>[in annual sales at some stores],\u201d said Nelson. \u201cThis is good math, and it\u2019s allowed Lovesac to be radically competitive in this realm and afforded us the path toward a purpose that\u2019s really quite unique<\/strong> in this Designed for Life philosophy that came out of Sactionals.\u201d<\/p>\nStores Designed to be Sustainable Showrooms<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
Lovesac\u2019s latest innovation is StealthTech, sound and charging technology that can be added on to any existing or new Sactional. (Image courtesy Lovesac)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nToday Lovesac has 250<\/strong> stores and another 50<\/strong> shop-in-shops at Best Buy<\/strong> that are operated by the brand. \u201cThe StealthTech product makes it hyper relevant for Best Buy,\u201d explained Nelson. By the end of this year Lovesac will have opened approximately 30<\/strong> new locations, and Nelson believes the brand has a path to at least 400 <\/strong>stores in total.<\/p>\nThose stores carry through the Designed for Life principle with sustainable materials, LED lighting and energy-efficient systems, even in the build out process: \u201cRetail is gross; people just blow these places out to re-skin them with their own storefronts,\u201d said Nelson. \u201cWe have to do that to some degree because the centers demand it, but we try to use existing architecture, we try to do less demolition and we try to dispose of stuff responsibly.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlus, I won\u2019t say we pioneered it, but we are certainly on the cutting edge of small footprint, highly efficient retail spaces meant not to sell you stuff, but to allow you to experience the stuff and to plan to buy it<\/strong>,\u201d Nelson added. \u201cThis is a true omnichannel, no-channel-conflict execution, even in the way we pay our people. They\u2019re not on commission, but they are incented as a team to help you learn about the product. If you purchase through any platform, as long as they did their job right, they\u2019ll get credit for that, and they\u2019ll feel it financially. It creates both a highly effective sales environment and a low-pressure sales environment<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nIt also has led to incredibly low turnover among store staff. \u201cThis is a unique way to approach retail and it\u2019s been pretty successful,\u201d said Nelson. \u201cWe\u2019re doing many multiples of what most furniture stores do on a sales-per-square-foot basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brand racked up $700 million<\/strong> in sales last year and has seen 7X<\/strong> growth since it went public in 2018, and Nelson expects that growth to continue this year. \u201cWe\u2019re not huge, but we\u2019re not tiny,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to get really big, but stay small, and all of this comes back to an ethos, a purpose that can simultaneously generate strong business results and make the business sustainable so it can be around for another 25 years.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nOpposing the Idea of Planned Obsolescence<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n
The Lovesac PillowSac accent chair. (Image courtesy Lovesac)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThe products themselves are also produced sustainably, of course, although that\u2019s not a core selling point. \u201cEveryone\u2019s talking about water bottles; we\u2019ve recycled more plastic bottles into fabric than probably all the shoe and T-shirt companies combined because we\u2019re making giant couches and all the upholstery fabric is made from 100% plastic bottles<\/strong>,\u201d said Nelson. \u201cBut you wouldn\u2019t necessarily know that because we don\u2019t lead with that, because no one actually cares<\/strong>. They want to care, people kind of care, but what they really want is a product that meets their needs, whatever that is.<\/p>\n\u201cAnd honestly, the impact between recycling some bottles into your fabric or actually making a couch that could go 30, 50 years with you \u2014 that\u2019s what makes the real difference<\/strong>,\u201d Nelson added. \u201cA third<\/strong> of our landfills are furniture. Ikea<\/strong> is fantastic in the sense that they have more solar panels on the roofs of these massive buildings than anyone except Walmart<\/strong>, and they\u2019re building forests in Scandinavia, but meanwhile we all know what happens to that furniture. We\u2019re very proud of making stuff that actually sustains. For us, that<\/em> is the message.\u201d<\/p>\nWith a name like Lovesac it\u2019s a fair question to ask if Nelson considers himself a hippie, but he said he prefers to think of himself as a pragmatist. \u201cI think that\u2019s part of the reason this message works,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t want sustainable stuff, because they know it\u2019s going to be worse; they\u2019re going to pay a ton for it and maybe even get less. In our case, you\u2019re going to pay more and you\u2019re going to get more, a lot more.<\/strong> You may not even appreciate the Sactional until you\u2019re seven<\/strong> years in and your kids, pets and six<\/strong> relocations have helped you observe the reasons that this was the best thing you ever bought. That\u2019s the kind of brand we\u2019re hoping to build \u2014 a brand that can actually be trusted, that gives you more than you even thought you were getting in the beginning.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nOf course, one of the reasons many companies don\u2019t design products this way is because it cuts down on repeat purchases, but Nelson said that the adaptability of the Sactional, as well as new add-ons like StealthTech, keep customers coming back. \u201cWould it be better business, from a dollars and cents perspective, to just to sell them another $10,000<\/strong> couch? Sure, but that is not how we\u2019re doing things, and I\u2019m very open about that with our investors,\u201d said Nelson.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a conscious, targeted pushback against the now commonly acknowledged practice of \u201cplanned obsolescence,\u201d<\/strong> wherein products are designed to fail or break after a certain period of time in order to force consumers to buy a new version. \u201cIt is a crime against humanity and the biggest, best companies in the world are the perpetrators,\u201d said Nelson. \u201cOur stated purpose at Lovesac is to inspire humankind to buy better stuff so they can buy less stuff<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\u201cLook, you don\u2019t have to be a genius to imagine what a Designed for Life phone could look like, but to get a company to do it [is hard],\u201d added Nelson. \u201cSo what\u2019s the end result? You love Apple<\/strong> for all the reasons you love Apple but you also kind of hate them. I\u2019m trying to build a brand that you can love and love. It\u2019s hard, and it\u2019s going to take another 25<\/strong> years. I didn\u2019t start out with this vision, but because of the way things unfolded I\u2019m totally and completely committed to it. You\u2019re going to see Lovesac continue to tamper with other product categories over time with this same approach<\/strong>. It will be hard, we\u2019ll have to fight our way in, but we will slowly and steadily build a brand that can be loved and trusted. That is the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
The origin story of furniture brand Lovesac is one of those great \u201cstarted in the parents\u2019 garage\u201d sagas full of ingenuity, passion and luck. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Retail](\"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/RETAIL-ONLINE-TRAINING-728-X-90.png\")
<\/a><\/p>![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/LOVESAC_modular_sectional_recliner-1280x847.jpg\")
![\"For](\"http:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/The_Lovesac_Company-1280x1278.jpg\")
![\"Lovesac's](\"http:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/LOVESAC_XBOX_HolidaySactionals_StealthTech-1280x1280.jpg\")
![\"The](\"http:\/\/www.retailtouchpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Lovesac_PillowSac_AccentChair_WashableCover-1280x720.jpg\")