Lovesac, known for its large, foamy beanbag chairs, is elevating its super comfy set of offerings by adding nearly 25,000 crystals to at least some of them for its 25th anniversary. Yep, 25,000!
The furniture company struck up a collaboration with Swarovski, which gets the credit for the shiny crystals that come embedded on a limited-edition set of one Squattoman and one MovieSac. The 25 sacs (we told you they were limited) are currently available both online and in stores for a whopping $10,000.
While a handful of the bedazzled beanbags have already been sold, more are up for grabs (while supplies last) for the remainder of Lovesac’s 25th year. “It really is a collectors’ item, and something—who knows?— 25 years from now [that] might be quite valuable,” Shawn Nelson, Lovesac CEO and founder, told Retail Brew.
The brand has been in talks with Swarovski for a couple of years, and each Swarovski studded product was months in the making. In an exclusive chat with Retail Brew, Nelson spills the crystals…um, tea…on how the partnership came together and who the brand is targeting.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How did this collaboration come together?
The first mandate is it has to be comfortable, it has to be useful—not just a sack layered with stones—but still suitable. It’s a lot of fun to sit in a Swarovski Sac. The typical behavior when you sit down in a Lovesac is to hopefully kick up your feet. In this case, on a Swarovski-studded Squattoman and, but also kind of rub your hands on the sides of the sack. It’s just natural to do that. And there you’ll find a million crystals. And it’s just such a cool tactile experience, still washable, still maintainable, still useful. It’s not meant to just be obviously a decoration.
We specifically collaborated with them to identify the right fabric where we felt confident that the crystals would stay fast and not accidentally be somehow brushed off or deteriorate. We’ve achieved that; to come up with something that’s equally comfortable, useful, and of course, ridiculously cool, dripping with Swarovski crystals was something that we’re very proud of.
What was the process like?
We went back and forth with Swarovski for four or five months, and then, doing trial and error with different fabrics, and different designs. We’ve had a few different designs, some radically different than the one you’re looking at. But we feel really good about the final output. To see it under the lights at the event was a lot of fun, each one of them is signed, and numbered by me personally, on the back of the logo. They’re truly collectors’ items that we hope over time might punch above their weight in terms of the value, because there will never be another one like it ever again.
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The manufacturing itself, I had to go back and forth between our shop and Swarovski to get it done, and the labels [were] signed individually after being Swarovski studded. It’s been a back and forth process—very involved, much more involved than your typical Lovesac production.
Who are you selling these super expensive Sacs to? Who is the customer?
Clearly, we don’t expect to sell a large volume of Swarovski Sacs. But therein lies the intrigue. We’ve never put out a Sac this expensive, and look, it’s for the true collector: whether it be sneakerheads, who pay way too much for a pair of shoes because of what it means or the limited-edition nature of it; whether it be celebrities, high earners who are interested in having only the best—these are the customers that might be interested in something as ridiculous as Swarovski Limited Edition 25th anniversary Sac.
It speaks to the breadth and the livability of our brand. Lovesac is often misinterpreted as a luxury brand. We love that association. We’d love to be associated with high quality, high end, but we were a meat-and-potatoes brand, really. When it comes down to it, our customer is America; enjoying their life at home with their family, with their partners, whatever their lifestyle is—it’s a very diverse customer base. We are grateful to them for their investment. They’re investing in something that’s going to be within their whole life…Hopefully, it also says to our core customer who may not afford the Swarovski Sac that we’re going to be here for the next 25; your lifetime warranty for your sac, for your sectionals we sell you is totally valid here. That’s the underlying message that we don’t say overtly, but we hope that our core customers have the ears to hear.