Sustain-Ability: Beyond Recycled or Renewable Inputs

Recycled cardboard, recycled clothing, recycled plastic bottles, organic, certified fair-trade, made with renewable energy—all of these and their cousins are praiseworthy attributes. But their aim is to make better the secondary effects of a throw away society.

They make the inputs and manufacturing process for our products better from an environmental or social perspective, but we’re still tearing through resources and products. Can they actually sustain? Who is talking about that? Who is designing for that? Who is making things anymore that are truly sustain-able.

True sustainability goes beyond recycled or renewable inputs or the ability to recycle or compost a product when you're done with it; it goes back to the definition of the root word ‘sustain.’

“Sustain” means to be able to last, something that has the strength to keep itself going. It has to do with a product’s durability, quality, longevity, design, everything. A product has value for a lifetime only if it can sustain a lifetime of use. We need to design products that can last and are actually Sustain-able.

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and other thought leaders in this space, extending the useful life of a product and making it sustainable is a key element in the move to a circular economy. It’s how we get to a more sustainable economic model for the planet.

At Lovesac, we did not set out to make sustain-able seating solutions. We started back in our college years making and selling gigantic beanbags that had no beans to spill out or go flat—only foam that was shredded from the leftovers of the sofa industry—scraps that would have otherwise gone to waste. This was a form of recycling.

Now decades later—what is perhaps more noteworthy than the bits of recycled foam we successfully diverted from the landfill is the fact that many of the durable fabric, double-stitched seam Sacs we sold to people back in the late '90s and early 2000s are still in service. True sustain-ability.

The same is true with our Sactionals sofas. Their extremely modular and spare-no-expense durable design allows them to stay in service for decades. Change the covers, rotate them deep-ways or long-ways depending on your changing needs, add more pieces as you go, and add in the latest accessories or technologies as Lovesac continues to manufacture reverse-compatible additions to the platform year after year. It really is a couch that grows with you and changes with you as your life changes. This is true sustain-ability.

It was a happy accident that by following our own design instincts and penchant for survival in business that we designed good, strong, durable products from the outset and then expanded that approach to other categories like our Sactionals couch platform.

But over time, this way of doing things has been distilled into an overt approach to product development and design. We call it Designed For Life. Our ambition now is to build not only sustain-able products, but a sustain-able company represented by a sustain-able brand. This demands great patience.

Planned obsolescence and a hundred other learned business practices and norms created over the past two and a half centuries have created a system where both the customers and the companies are numb to so much waste—all in the name of growth and convenience. If we are to change this, we must take a long view to product development and brand development to not only change minds—but change behaviors—those of the customer as well as those of corporate leadership.

We aim to lead by example.

To commit to this sustain-able way of doing business and making business decisions and investments that will drive a more sustain-able future for ourselves, this brand, and our customers, no matter how long it takes … versus a quarter-by-quarter approach to maximizing personal wealth or profitability only in the near term.

But profits are a necessary component of a sustain-able business—or how can that business last the test of time? Keeping all of this in balance is the challenge. Product development to this end is harder, it takes longer, and requires greater investment—compressing profitability in the near term.

As we simultaneously operate the business in this way, and advocate to educate and enlighten our customers and consumers broadly along the way, I think we can be successful….maybe someday the most successful sustain-able brand on the planet.

That is our ambition—and we’re committed for as long as it takes.