• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, March 12, 2025

Sectional couch brand Lovesac is expanding and introducing a recliner that works with all previous Lovesac modules. And with a campaign themed 'The Recline of Civilization," the company is poking a little bit of fun at America’s growing willingness to "manifest" a little more R&R. The campaign, created by the Travel Agency, stars wellness guru Jay Shetty and influencers Funny Marco and Kathy Hilton. Shawn Nelson, founder and CEO of the Connecticut-based company, tells Retail Insider more about the effort and why the 26-year-old company* decided that now is the time to shake things up.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Retail Insider: You’ve been selling nothing but “Sactionals” since 2001. Why change now?

Shawn Nelson: Yes, we’re a brand that sells only a few things, but we do it in a way that dominates the entire category. We leave all the other furniture products to the traditional home brands. And we’ve always been a digital marketing brand, able to do what we do at scale because we figured out early on how to suck all the air out of our products and ship them, and we figured all that out while the internet was still embryonic.

We’ve got about $700 million in annual sales, primarily because people value our brand for how long it lasts. I’ve had my Sactional for 17 years, but it doesn’t seem old because we offer many ways to change covers and shapes. We wanted to add the recliner to increase the versatility.

Retail Insider: I guess the recliner mechanism has to be invisible because so many people think recliners are hideous. I’m guessing that includes many of your customers. Is that a risk?

Nelson: It took us three years and about 80,000 design and engineering hours to get it right, but we did it. This recliner works with every Sactional we’ve ever sold. You can drop them in place, and arrange and rearrange them infinitely.

And it does it in ways that are relevant to our culture and the way people are living. This recliner fits into all rooms -- even great rooms and TV rooms -- and its mechanism is entirely invisible, unlike a stand-alone recliner. It looks as sleek and modern as our sectionals.

It adds to our “design for life” philosophy. It can adapt, change, grow, shrink -- you can give half away in a divorce. And it all still works.

Retail Insider: Why this campaign?

Nelson: We wanted to bring these unlikely and incongruous players -- Jay Shetty, Funny Marco and Kathy Hilton -- in a way that makes fun of what people call “the hustle culture." We wanted to have fun with the idea of not trying so hard.

Retail Insider: La-Z-Boy uses the same advertising approach and has been running a “Long Live the Lazy” campaign for some time. But let’s be honest: Recliners have a slightly geriatric persona.

Nelson: Yep. We enjoy being cousins in this "Put your feet up and chill out" movement. That’s why we think it’s fun to partner with high-energy influencers, like snowboarder Shaun White, and we’ve partnered with the X Games for a long time. We think of our core customer as a lover of life. The campaign doesn’t say, "Become a couch potato," it says, "We all need the license to kick back." We want to broaden our customers’ point of view and offer people who want to have a recliner a way to have one that maximizes their investment in the brand. And we want to continue to reduce ambient stress.

Retail Insider: How so?

Nelson: That is the promise of our product, and it’s implied in all our marketing. You don’t have to try to keep the dog off the couch or tell the kids not to eat pizza there. You can pack it up every time you move and still have it work in your next place. This recliner has 500 different parts and multiple patents but requires no tools to put together. It’s built like a brick and guaranteed for life.

Retail Insider: Your sales are down a bit, 2.7% in the last quarter, and like all home companies, hampered by fewer people moving house. How is that affecting your stores?

Nelson: Like everyone else, we grew like crazy during COVID. Then, the pullback we’ve seen in these last three years has been the most significant consumer pullback in the home category ever -- even worse than the housing-led recession of 2008 through 2010. We’re just a part of that. I have a strong stomach, and we’re profitable, cash-flow positive and very proud of the business we built. We'll be fine.

Retail Insider: What role do physical stores play in total sales?

Nelson: We’ve always been the biggest thing in the mall, sold out of the smallest store. We don’t have to carry any inventory. We ship it to your door. We’re an efficient business that way. And over the years, we’ve been able to exploit the strengths of that omnichannel business model. We don’t have the big stores, big staff and enormous catalogs of other furniture companies. We don’t mind where you make your purchase. We just want you to experience the product.

You can come in and see our products and buy them right away, standing in the store, or go home and buy them from your phone two months later. And yes, most people who buy from us have visited a showroom to test the product.

Retail Insider: Does this mean you will expand into other new categories?

Nelson: Yes. We will get into other businesses within the home that exploit those strengths. I can’t say more yet, but stay tuned. We won’t be selling inexpensive, meaningless stuff -- we want to sell the stuff that matters. You won’t see us selling flatware or table runners.

*An earlier version misstated the company's age.