Kelly Anderson blogged about her lunch visit with Shawn Nelson of LoveSac and his wife Tiffany who owns a shoe boutique at the Gateway in Salt Lake City. Shawn gave her advice about retail and brand building.
Kelly has an excellent blog. I love how she gets so many other women entrepreneurs to guest blog on her site. One example is the guest blog from my friend Erika Wilde of StopDirt.com, who post some excellent advice about finding products to sell online.
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11 thoughts on “Advice from Shawn Nelson”
Paul,
Thank you for your kind words and link! I have learned a great deal from your blog these past couple of months since I’ve entered the world of blogging…
I wanted to mention that I am looking for a team for the BYU business plan competition for Start Up Princess. If anyone wants to help or be involved, please contact me. We are creating a company that supports women/mom entrepreneurs with networking events online/locally/nationally. We had our first conference call with Janet Meiners, internet marketing specialist a couple of weeks ago and recorded it as a podcast. Lots of great plans in the works! The site will be redesigned soon. Please contact me, kelly at princess sweet.com
Thanks for the post about Kelly Anderson, she has some great stuff on that blog of hers. Too bad I am not women or I might be able to be a guest blogger for her too.
Why are you faeturing advice from Shawn Nelson? His company filed for bankruptcy because he couldn’t manage his debt. He seems like he had a great idea that was killed by poor management.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,635181250,00.html
I agree with Russell. Shawn Nelson is a brilliant guy who has created an amazing brand. It will survive. And he will find great success in the future as he picks himself up from this short-term setback. Notice I didn’t use the word “failure”. How could I possibly use that word when he is still slugging it out?
“who do a lot of good that provides a lot to the economy in terms of jobs, dollar exchange and more”. Tell that to the manufacturers who LoveSac didn’t pay and ended up holding the bag. Bankruptcy might seem like the only option to some people but I think it shows a huge lack of financial management that will have ramifications on the entire economy.
That said, Lovesac is quite the brand so his advice is still valuable. I just don’t think you can ever justify bankruptcy because it effects a lot more people than just the company filing.
As with any transaction with millions of dollars and many parties involved, it is much more complicated that what you might read in the news. Being forced into bankruptcy by a lender acting somewhat arbitrarily on inaccurate and insufficient information is different than abusing the system just to get out of debt etc. Not to mention the fact that while LoveSac became unable to pay some suppliers, LoveSac supplied plenty of businesses and re-sellers who did first not pay LoveSac–causing a chain reaction with LoveSac in the fulcrum.
LoveSac’s case had more intrigue and complexities than anyone on the outside could ever imagine–who knows, maybe I’ll write a book about it someday–it’s actually pretty interesting–sad, but interesting. What we/I have been through is very difficult on many levels, and I care deeply for ALL of those affected at ALL levels more than I can express in words. The only way out is up, however, and it is best for all if we can be successful and profitable again, thereby providing go-forward profitable opportunities for ALL parties involved, or who may be involved with us again.
In the mean time, we are doing our best to create value for all of those involved–both within the company and without. We are now emerged, totally from the re-organization, a brand new company–same special brand. The brand thrives on, and, believe it or not, while bruised and slowed by the re-org, the company is stabilizing, the new products coming out are world-class (truly uniqe and influential), and LoveSac STILL has the potential of becoming a truly “legendary” brand–founded in Utah. I am grateful to Utah, and the entrepreneurial community for all of its support and influence. Stay tuned. We’re not done.
Shawn
[…] Paul Allen blogged about my friend Kelly’s lunch with Love Sac founder Shawn Nelson. At first a lot of comments were attacking Shawn. Then several people defended him. Shawn himself made a great comment. As a blogger I love it when I blog about a person or company who comments on what I wrote about them. […]
AMEN!
[…] Jason read about Start Up Princess a little while ago from Paul Allen’s post last month and then introduced himself to me at the First Friday’s meeting in Sandy a couple of weeks ago and we were instant friends. We’ve emailed, shared contacts and ideas for one another, we’re champions of one another. This morning we chatted on the phone about how blogging helps to propel business perhaps better than formal forms of PR. However, for Jason, it has been a combination of the two. He launched Jibber Jobber in May with a press release about how they offer a special for Military personel and it was noticed by a podcaster and then several other national companies have taken notice of his growing company. […]
The problem with Lovesac is that they grew faster than they could afford to grow. You can blame it on a lot of different things if you like, but when someone comes to collect money that you owe them, there is really nothing arbitrary about that. That was their plan from the beginning. If you owe someone money, they are going to collect on it.
Lovesac closed down over 50 locations! That says that those 50 locations probably should have never been open in the first place or at the very least, should not have been opened in the timeframe. I feel like Shawn is genuinely remorseful for the damage caused to people’s lives by Lovesac’s collapse, but it would nice to hear him take some credit for it at some point. Part of learning from failure is admitting that you did something wrong so you don’t repeat it. Continually pushing the blame on to other people (i.e. Lovesac was in the fulcrum) just makes it seem like he doesn’t get it.
Probably for the same reason people feature advice from Donald Trump (who has filed bankruptcy himself). They are smart people who do a lot of good that provides a lot to the economy in terms of jobs, dollar exchange and more. Stuff happens sometimes. And guess what? They don’t crawl into a cave. They go on.