Shawn David Nelson is a creative, intelligent, savvy, determined entrepreneur. He’s also a crazy, impulsive, risk-taking, spike-haired rebel. It’s this dichotomy that’s helping Shawn—and his Original Oversized Sacs—defy generally accepted convention and make LoveSac the greatest brand for the world. He is establishing his name as the next-generation CEO.
First of all Shawn, I would like to thank you for taking the time to do this interview for YoungGoGetter.com.
Joey: We know you’re a “Young Go Getterâ€, but so our readers know, how old are you?
Shawn: 31 now. I started LoveSac, technically, when I was 18. Registered it officially as a business when I was 21.
Joey: Can you tell us the quick history on Love Sac and how it came from an idea to product?
Shawn: I thought it would be funny to make the biggest bean bag chair in the world when I was 18, and just graduated from High School. I actually got off the sofa, drove to the fabric store that day, bought 14 yards of vinyl fabric, cut out the biggest baseball pattern I could draw, and my girlfriend’s mom sewed it up. I spent 3 weeks trying to stuff it with every soft chunky thing I could find. Bean bag beads made a mess. Foam from our yellow camping mattresses worked the best. The Sac was born – and it was much better (and far larger) than a bean bag, no doubt.
Everybody wanted to buy one. Three years later, after abandoning the Sac for two years to become a missionary in Taiwan, I returned home and took the Sac out to the drive-in movies again. I had so many people trying to convince me to make them one, that I started the company, registered the name “LoveSac†in October, 1998, as the name seemed the best fit for a bean-bag like thing inspired by the love-piece-hippie generation. My friends and I made them in the basement, and sold them at home-shows, boat-shows, car-shows, and out of a van, as we finished college. We showed them at a trade show and secured and order for 12,000 small Sacs for a retailer’s Christmas merchandising. We had to build a real factory to make that many, so we credit-carded a lot of farm equipment for shredding foam, and built a factory in an old warehouse in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.
After completing our first large order, we had spent all of the money on inefficiency in the factory. We opened our first LoveSac store in a brand new shopping mall out of desperation—luckily the mall, at that time, was just as desperate to fill empty spaces. We had to pay for this factory somehow, and the big furniture stores just weren’t willing to stock gigantic oversized Sacs from us yet. The first store, at the Gateway Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, was a huge success! We sold far more than the Sac-a-day we had hoped for to pay the rent. Ten days into it people were asking about franchise opportunities. Six weeks into it, and we had sold every single Sac our little factory could produce before going home for Christmas on Christmas Eve.
Years later, LoveSac is still small, but growing fast with 25 company owned stores in high-end shopping centers, from Los Angeles to New York City. LoveSac.com is a major part of our business now too. In 2005 I won a reality TV show on FOX Network called “The Rebel Billionaire,†where the host, Sir Richard Branson of Virgin fame, took us around the world facing business and risk taking challenges. I won $1 Million which I invested in LoveSac, and Richard became a minor investor in LoveSac as well. LoveSac has had to completely re-organize, start over, and grow again because of mistakes made along the way, but somehow, not only are we still alive, we are about to explode!
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