I’m starting a vlog! Seems like the thing to do. Its called “Get Off the Couch” and its all about my personal business philosophy on entrepreneurship and making things happen! The Shawn Nelson, founder of Lovesac, way of doing business. Please subscribe on YouTube and show some love. I’d love to hear from you there. Comment, ask questions, and I’d be happy to address them.
Enjoy episode #1 – THROW ME IN THE LOVESAC
— Shawn
An email sent to all Lovesac employees (my weekly “Thursday Thought”):
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! Has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.— Calvin CoolidgeOne of our “permission to play” values at Lovesac is: Passion. I think that most of the time when people think of “passion,” they conjure up images of excitement, energy, and action. Enthusiasm is powerful, but can be short-lived, and is more of a symptom or a result, than it is a deep-rooted disposition. Passion is deep. Passion is persistent. Good days…bad days…everyday is conquered again and again by those who are truly passionate. Those who can just dig it out. Lovesac people are passionate. Lovesac people are persistent. Lovesac people are persistent.
With all my pieces together, I can build this monster…
…But when it came time to move and keep it light, I kept it light
Lovesac partnered with Emmy nominated professional dancer, choreographer and seven-time Dancing with the Stars star Chelsie Hightower at Dwell On Design in LA where Chelsie and her team of dancers performed a dance with Lovesac Sactionals, the world’s first and only modular, infinitely changeable couch system. Through dance, we told the story of Sactionals growing with a man through his life, love, and family as it evolves—with Sactionals not as a prop—but as a co-star.
I landed at LAX at 2am on Thursday morning only to wake a few hours later for an all-day rehearsal in a loft space across the street from the biggest design show in America, “Dwell On Design.” Each year in May, Dwell Magazine invites the best design houses to showcase their products to interior designers and fine furniture buyers. We have walked the show for many years, but this is the first time Lovesac has ever attended. We always said, “If we’re going to go, we’re going to go big.” Well, check out what we did…
Stay tuned next week to see a video of the whole dance that was choreographed and featuring Chelsie Hightower, of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars Fame DWTS, and So You Think You Can Dance. But for now, let me know what you think about our crazy idea! We definitely turned ALL heads and hopefully shook some dust off of this somewhat sleepy industry called furniture.
— Shawn
Do you remember the couch you grew up on?
On every interview we go on, that single question stirs a feeling that is easily visible on the face of our guests. Think about it yourself- I bet you can remember the couch you sat on as a child. Do you remember the feel? Was it itchy? Did it smell a certain way? Stories about watching Sportscenter with a father, or playing hide-and-seek with sisters…these are the tales woven into the fabric of our couches- and into the minds of those who sat on them.
We recently sat down with Blake Freeman at his condo in Los Angeles to ask him about his life on a couch. Blake has directed, starred in, and produced numerous films with some big names on the Hollywood scene including Eddie Griffin and Danny Trejo. Not that many people would be able to say that, and to think that Freeman is one of the best out there would be an understatement. He definitely is. But it wouldn’t have been easy to get to where he is today. A lot of hard work, dedication, and maybe even the help of a film school like Friends in Film may have all had a part to play in his success. Everyone has to start somewhere, but it’s what you do with that starting point that determines your career path, and Freeman definitely made the most of his opportunities. Even after all of the celebrity and recognition, he still cracked a smile when we asked him about his childhood couch.
Thanks for hanging out with us Blake!
At the end of the day, we all share this one thing in life. From entrepreneurs in Atlanta, to struggling workers in the Gobi desert, to Hollywood film producers- everyone looks forward to the end of the day when they can go home to their happy place and stretch out with their feet up. We’ll continue to draw the line that connects us all to a life on a couch.
–Shawny Nelson
Founder, Lovesac & Life on a Couch
Anyone who has had the pleasure (read: sarcasm) of visiting our original Stamford Lovesac offices on Canal Street could never accuse us of being frivolous. That Lovesac HQ was a space meant for 20, that held about 50 of us in the end. Having holed up in our first Stamford Lovesac office since 2007, our recent move to downtown Stamford was long overdue.
Welcome to Lovesac HQ!
To celebrate, let’s just say we tipped our hat to one of our favorite cult classic films, “Office Space,” and “took care of ” any equipment that we loved to hate in my backyard.
Ode to “Office Space.” Pick your weapon, say goodbye to the old Lovesac HQ.
This incredibly dedicated Lovesac crew deserves only the best and they’ve put up with a lot as we’ve built this together from scraps. As a furniture and design brand, we did our best to consciously create a space that would be not only Lovesac-comfortable, but inspiring, and uplifting.
As a growing company that bootstrapped its way into existence, we did it for a fraction of the cost for offices of the same capabilities. And as masochists we endeavored to do much of it ourselves. We designed and built every seat, every the table, all of the AV systems, and ultimately created a very non-traditional office plan all with our in-house talent.
We’d love to know what you think about our concept, so please “reply” and let us know what you think in the comments below!
The Landing Pad: This comfy spot will change each season along with our stores. Take a seat–we’ll be right with you! Floor-to-ceiling seasonal high-rez graphic, Supersac, Sactionals, on-season paint and even fully merchandised store-shelves. (Truth is, this entry makes a great place to go get some work done, or even have a team meeting). Welcome to Lovesac!
No receptionist here. Answer your own damn phone!
Customer Love: Call us. Live-chat us. Invite us to come out and help you re-cover your Sactionals if necessary-this is the team whose only goal is to become your new best friend.
Our truly open seating plan–no offices for anyone–but lots of nooks to go take a call.
Fabric Library: The Lovesac Customer Love crew will gladly send you any requested samples from our massive Lovesac cover fabric swatch library with hundreds to choose from. They’ll even help you design your room!
Express yourself.
Changing the Workplace Game: Humans have worked from proper desks for thousands of years. Laptops and mobile phones have only been with us for a few of those. Realizing that we often get more done at home, working from a laptop on a couch, than we do at the office for the new Lovesac HQ we chose to challenge the entire notion of how we work-let’s live and work on the couch!
Most of us don’t even need a landline anymore–there’s one in every meeting room.
Sactionals Workstations: These are the same Sactionals Base Pieces we sell but they are clamped to a tall Side in back, for privacy, and custom wingback Sides to aid in noise reduction (no–you can’t buy them yet). They’re all washable and changeable covers, and just like we offer to our customers, everyone at Lovesac chooses their own custom fabric combination as an expression of their own individuality.
The Functional Coffee Table: The coffee-table-desk aligns perfectly with the height of our custom wingback Sactionals Sides for stability in multiple working positions. Each has a locking file-drawer, removable pencil trays and convenient power supply with multiple cord pass-through cavities-another Lovesac original design.
Super functional.
The Great Room: Coffee bars at the window double as standing desks. Our counter-high 12′ long table was a real joy to get into the building, and is another Lovesac original design, with massive tuck-under benches making it as much of a standing big-project table as a place to eat for a crew of ten. And what great room is complete without Sactionals and a furry Moviesac to escape to. This office encourages you to leave your “spot,” go mobile, work by the window, on a Sac, in a quiet nook, or in a group. Change your seat, change your perspective.
Most offices have a kitchen, we have a great room.
Mission Control: Twice a week everyone at HQ gathers for a mid-day “rally” where we meet new faces, recognize outsized effort, collaborate and coordinate. The DJ table spins real vinyl from our growing collection, and is complete with open Spotify and Pandora accounts on the iPad for all to change as they like. The Nintendo Wii, karaoke capabilities and the 10′ pull-down screen behind it facilitates any kind of meeting, party, screening or impromptu dance-off that needs to happen.
Wireless laptop control. 10′ screen. CD. DVD. Pandora. Spotify. Netflix. Nintendo Wii. Karaoke mic. 1500 watts.
The War Room: Comfort is king at Lovesac, but Lovesac offices need to also be extremely functional. Glass boards are incredibly useful and far more durable than typical whiteboards–but also way more expensive. Here’s a good hack: Find a local glass shop and order 1/4″ tempered glass with drilled holes for stainless steel “standoffs.” = Sexy looking glass boards at a fraction of the cost!
No offices! Get a room.
The Panic Room: Not only is each room cleverly named to make calling meetings there fun, but each is functionally designed to be both comfy, productive, and most of all: usable! Too many offices have complicated AV systems that require IT to come over every time you want to hold a meeting. Each of our rooms has a bluetooth soundbar, playable right from your phone or computer. We worked hard to find the best soundbar under £100 so we could afford to put one in every room. And each flatscreen includes a wireless USB device that allows any laptop to zap its screen and sound right to the big screen and sounder–no wires necessary. We even went so far as to put a remote control caddy in every room so those pesky remotes wouldn’t end up lost–and useless. Good design is in the details.
Super, ultra high-tech
The Vault: Nobody at Lovesac HQ has an office. From the CEO on down, we all have our spot on the floor, but we also all have access to a dozen rooms, large to tiny, where we can take a call, hold a meeting, or just go shut the door and do some work.
Our office-less office.
Grand Central: Lovesac’s version of a board room. Most of our big meetings (even board meetings) happen here. Have a seat and get comfy!
The right room for the right meeting.
Can I just live here?: No–but if you visit Lovesac HQ on any given weeknight, you’re likely to find a few people lingering long after hours tapping the keg, throwing some darts, or playing a little Mario Kart. Its all in the details.
All work and no play makes any office lame.
The Floor: We’ve all got our spot and we all move around a lot. Moving around, trading spaces, and getting out of your comfort zone (only to get into another) encourages interaction and collaboration.
Love thy neighbor – or move to a different seat.
The Studio: This is where all of our product designers, graphic designers, architects, industrial designers, UX designers, web designers, copywriters, visual merchandisers and anyone else with a creative bone collaborate to create the future of furniture.
Get creative @Lovesac
The Library: Take a book. Leave a book. Borrow a book. We have stacks of many of our “required readings” here and we all have a desire to improve.
“Desire to improve” is one of our “permission-to-play values” at Lovesac.
Sign in: Everyone who visits Lovesac HQ must sign in on our massive brand canvas. Take a minute to color-in the Lovesac logo using nothing but black pens. It may take years–but this is the brand we are building together.
This is the brand we are building together
Magnet fetish: Someday we’ll have a whole wall of these. Bring us one! Add to the collection. Represent.
If you visit us at Lovesac HQ, bring us a refrigerator magnet!
A living history: Get your face on the wall of Sac’rs! Anyone at Lovesac can send an email to that electronic frame on the wall and add to our living history, in real time!
We are Lovesac
The Values: Rather than just writing words on the wall we try to live them. All of our Lovesac core values are embedded into this “Where’s Waldo” inspired graphic. Can you find them all?
This poster will live in the back of every Lovesac store–its who we are.
The Culture: Every company has a culture, but many evolve by default. We’re trying our best to build a culture by design–not by default at the new Lovesac HQ–and it all starts with our values. You’ll find them on every door.
We do our best to integrate and live to our values at Lovesac HQ
The vibe: Lovesac is more than foam and fabric. Lovesac is a lifestyle. We cannot expect to have a happy friendly vibe in our stores, or even on our website, if we don’t have it in our office. I believe that customers can just smell authenticity. I believe that culture needs to leak out of the seams and penetrate all areas of the company, our products, and our people. That starts here. It’s up to us to keep the vibe alive.
Sadly, we often spend more time at work than with our own families. It might as well not suck.
And the cherry on top: Plenty of beverages available to pour over the 170 pounds of chewable, crunchable, nugget ice that our in-house ice machine is able to crank out every day. I love it so much I take some home in a plastic bag at night. Game changer.
Nugget ice — game changer.
Lovesac Headquarters Team
I hope you enjoyed our tour of the new Lovesac HQ. You are welcome to come visit us–share a treat at the bar, challenge someone to a game of darts, run the DJ table, or simply add to our ridiculous collection of refrigerator magnets. But before you go, don’t forget to color in the collaborative logo, sign your name to prove you were here, and wish us well. Where we’re going, we need all the help and support we can get. #BigThingsInStore #Lovesac
— Shawny
PRESS / ARTICLES ABOUT THE NEW LOVESAC HQ:
http://m.stamfordadvocate.com/business/article/Lovesac-kicks-back-in-new-HQ-5976611.php
Gallery of Lovesac HQ and our launch party. Wish you were here!
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Each season Lovesac puts out a new seasonal collection of fabrics, in the form of changeable covers for Sacs and Sactionals. I am, of course, very proud of each collection. From futuristic robots to mid-century suits, every line is inspired from design elements both current and classic. This year the collection is called, “Woodsy.” It is the best we’ve ever created.
Our best line yet.
So what?
Who cares?
Who’s watching?
Who even “gets” the idea that you can change not just your décor, but actually change your couch or sectional each season just by changing some covers? The Woodsy line even offers some REVERSIBLE Phur Covers, so you just need to flip your covers for a whole new couch! But even if they do “get” it, who actually behaves this way?
Lovesac Sactionals with Carmel Chenille Covers
The exciting part is: someone does! The evidence of this is not only found in the obvious fact that Lovesac sells far more Sactionals Covers than it does Sactionals Pieces (and we sell a lot of pieces). I believe that people are really “getting it” more and more, as by the fact that they’re buying furry couches!
What other company even offers a furry couch? None. Lovesac sells thousands of furry couches. The reason, I believe, is pretty obvious: Because couches are a big investment and in most people’s minds, they need to last and last, and (hopefully) still be in-style even years later. With Sactionals, you are freed from this constraint. Get whatever covers you like—better, get the ones you LOVE—the ones that make you want to climb on, curl up, and take a nap.
An entire room decked out in Wolf Phur.
This is a quiet, but meaningful revolution in furniture design and also consumer behavior. There will come a day where an unchangeable couch is just old news—in fact, an unchangeable couch will someday even seem a little gross.
While it is may be unlikely that most people will go to the trouble or expense to change their furniture with us each season, I can speak from experience and say that it is shocking how, with a new set of covers, it doesn’t just feel like a new couch again—it feels like a new life.
Woodsy Phur Blankets and Slippers
I do realize that I’m kind of biased—so if you haven’t seen Woodsy, check it out for yourself. You be the judge. Comment here and let me know what you think!
— Shawny
Founder, Lovesac & Life on a Couch
Imagine for a second that you only had one set of clothes. You woke up every single day and you had one pair of pants and one shirt. No matter the weather outside, you just had that one set of clothing. During the 90 degree days of August, you had this one shirt. During the 20 degree days of January, you still had this one shirt.
Lucky feeling bored about another season with these covers
As you got older and your pants stopped fitting so well, or they lost color or shape, you still only had this one pair to wear. As the times around you changed- and so did popular style and design, you still had only this one outfit. And eventually as the fabric weakened and the pants and shirt wore through and were filled with holes, they were still the only clothing you had.
Pretty hard to imagine, right? Now think about your couch for a second. As the weather outside changes, can you change your couch with it? Imagine how nice it would be to have a cozy, furry couch to warm up in the winter- and then have a cool, breathable fabric to stay cool during the dog days of summer. Or imagine that when your tastes in style changed, you could change your couch along with them. Your couch is the place you can go to when you want to relax and watch tv on your high gloss tv unit. It’s your go to place, so why not change it up a bit every now and then? Why not get yourself a brand spanking new leather couch, maybe even in white? While we all love a white leather couch, cleaning white leather can turn out to be more difficult than first imagined, but it can certainly be managed.
Changing the covers
A few years back, this would have sounded crazy. People approached the couch-buying scenario with extreme caution, knowing that whatever they bought would live with them for the next 10 or 20 or 30…or 50 years. Now that Sactionals exist, everything has changed. When my wife and I had our fourth child Valentine this past month, we needed some extra couch space so we just simply added some on. But while we were doing it, she decided she also wanted to change up the “feeling” of the room a little for the summer. So just like that, we changed the clothes on our couch! …The same Sactionals pieces we’ve had now for nearly 8 years look new, smell new, and amazingly feel completely new again. (And they’ve seen some abuse!) Every time we change our Sactionals I wonder the same thing: What do people with normal couches do? I guess they just live with it. I guess they just hide that stain under a throw pillow. I guess they just try to get a few more years out of it until they can justify spending the money to get an all new one.
Pepper feeling excited about the new covers
You know, this blog isn’t meant to be an advertisement for my company, Lovesac or Sactionals. This blog is however, a reflection of my own real life and the things I find to be changing the way we look at our life on a couch–and real life in general. I have devoted my life to creating products that disrupt the staleness of classic furniture. The feedback I’m seeing from people who truly LOVE their Sactionals is a confirmation that we really have created something special that is shaping the way people live their life on a couch. What do you think?
WATCH THE CHANGING PROCESS IN JUST 20 SECONDS…
— Shawny
During a recent Lovesac business trip to Las Vegas, I happened upon a new friend by the name of Cathy Bunney. Cathy was kind enough to invite me into her home and tell me a little bit about her life on a couch. Surprisingly she also let me in on some stories from her past as a race car driver- and a little bit about an accident that changed the course of her life forever. One thing I must add, most people nowadays are fortunate enough to have access to specialist attorneys if they are involved in a car accident. But, when you’re racing, you’re putting yourself on the line, and it’s unlikely that you would be able to find a lawyer suited to your case, purely because of the risk racing involves. So, it’s fair to say, this accident really was life changing! Thankfully, like how a friend had a springfield car accident attorney to help them, we had support from those around us.
Accidents can leave people with injuries that stay with them for the rest of their lives so you can imagine how serious it can be if you become the victim of a negligent driver on the road. That is why it is important to have vehicle emergency kits within the car to help anyone that may be injured, slowing down the possibility of a potential fatality. Those who find themselves in this unfortunate position may want to consider reaching out to a car accident attorney Houston for legal assistance.
In the time I spent with Cathy on her couch in her modest Nevada home, I was once again reminded of the unifying lifestyle we all share on a couch. She told me about how her couch acted as a place of healing after her surgeries and how her family congregated there to watch television together. We sat around on that same couch as she showed me pictures of the cars that she raced to victory- and the trophies she now holds as a result.
Cathy Bunney and I on her couch in Las Vegas.
Cathy’s story, like the other episodes in this series, is uniquely different and strikingly similar at the same time. Although everyone’s life on a couch is unique when looked at on its own, all of the stories share a common theme of love and togetherness, solace and relaxation. As Cathy says at the end of the interview “There’s nothing like a comfortable couch to come home to.” I couldn’t agree more.
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–Shawny
‘Tis the season for design shows! The most innovative furniture designs and advances in interior design and architecture practices can be found each year at Neocon at the Chicago Merchandise Mart. With a particular focus on commercial design–from hotels to office space–Neocon is where the big launches in fabric, upholstery, seating, tables, desks and beyond are unveiled to the public. Its like the CES of furniture!
Here are my personal top 10 couch, chair, or seating design picks from Neocon 2014…
The Convo Dome (my name) by Steelcase
Not sure how to feel about this one–but it is certainly a conversation piece. Call it the “Wheeled Wingback” !?
Long and slender–couldn’t help but look
The possibilities for functional accessories along with the proportions of this piece from Haworth make it a standout
Ready for takeoff – Haworth
Love the height, love the fabric, love the color, love the design
One of those rooms that just makes you want to sit down there
I could get some work done in here
Just add Lovesacs to this 16″ high conference table by Keilhaur (Their low chairs weren’t very comfortable)
Inspiration for our new Sactionals rich Lovesac HQ, coming fall of 2014
I love a good design show. Neocon is as good as it gets. Let me know which one is your favorite in the comments, below.
— Shawny