One summer day in 1995 a highly creative, overly impulsive, and un-dyingly determined 18-year-old thought to himself, "I want to take a beanbag and Oversize it." So he did.
Shawn David Nelson's huge Sac was seven feet across and took three weeks to stuff. He tried bean bag beads, but they made a mess, and were really not that soft. He then filled it with everything he could find, from packing peanuts to pillows to foam from those yellow camping mattresses, chopped up on a paper cutter. Now all Shawn needed was a name for his Sac. Harnessing the retro spirit of the 1970's and combining it with the idea of a "bag" gave birth to the name "LoveSac."
Shawn D couldn't help but take his Sac everywhere. It was perfect at parties and dangerous at drive-in movies. He became known as "the kid with the big Sac"--not a bad reputation for a kid at his station in life . Word spread as fast as a rumor in a small town, and soon neighbors and friends were desperate to get their hands on their own Sac. But Shawn D took off to Taiwan for 2 years as a missionary for his Church, becoming fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and forgetting entirely about his big Sac. Upon returning, he remembered that he had this “thing” under the deck out back. He dragged it out, dusted it off, and took it to dates at the drive-in movies once again…the response was overwhelming.
Shawn sewed the first five Sacs on his mother's sewing machine. The machine gave up way before Shawn did. He continued to roll out the 10 yards of fabric for each Sac in his parent's basement, cut it into figure-8 shapes, and hand deliver them to a neighborhood seamstress for sewing. Using labor supplied by close friends and young business partners, Shawn finally registered the name LoveSac as a Utah company October 31, 1998. While buying scrap (new) foam from a Sofa factory one day, Shawn discovered that they had an old grain-grinder, converted to a foam shredder in their back room that was out of use for decades. They soon let him use it to shred foam and stuff his Sacs, in return for disposing of their leftover sofa foam—and they thought these Sac kids were kind of funny.
LoveSac first appeared at local home shows, boat shows, car shows, beer fests, October fests, and events at Shawn's school festivals at the University of Utah. The Sacs finally caught the attention of a buyer at Red Bull and LoveSac had its first official order--Red Bull gave them wings. Red Bull found that having Sacs at their various promotional tents and events would encourage people to hang around and drink more…the Sac had actually found a commercial purpose…but how to exploit it?
While the friends made Sacs, Shawn D was nearly finished with his degrees in Chinese and Asian Studies with Business at the University of Utah. Having never really made any money slinging Sacs, Shawn D felt it was time to get a "real job" and took an internship in China, secretly hoping his foam-shredding days at LoveSac would be replaced with a great salary. Eight months later Shawn returned to the US and found the crew in his parents' basement still working to complete the order for Red Bull. Slow and steady may win the race, but it won't sell a lot of Sacs.
After finally completing the order Shawn D had another thought. Perhaps they could sell Sacs as a promotional item for other companies. He had four more months of school to wrap up, before returning to his steady gig in Asia, and he heard about an ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute) tradeshow where other companies, like Red Bull, go looking for products like his to brand with their logos for promotional use—selling 50 Sacs at a time seemed way easier than selling them one at a time. So using one of many soon-to-be-maxed-out credit cards, he immediately flew to Chicago, bought a display booth, and shared a hotel room with his friends. He arrived without any experience and left without any sales. But a couple weeks later, April, 2001, Shawn D received a phone call from a large retailer who wanted to order 12,000 little LoveSacs to sell through their stores during Christmas. Could Shawn do an order like this? "Of course," he told them, "LoveSac is the greatest not-a-beanbag company in the world." (They had no need to know that it was really just 3 un-paid college buddies in a basement making it happen).
