Shawn Nelson
Analyst · Thomas Forte with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your questions
Yes, thanks, Tom. I would agree, there are many trends afoot that are good for the home and we believe that we are good for the home. We will continue to innovate on things in our own unique way, our Designed for Life way. And that continues to be extremely rare in the landscape. And so the trends you mentioned, I think are all spot on. There is a lot of money washing around. There are a lot of savings as we all know now, that have accumulated throughout the pandemic. Clearly people will go out and revenge spend and get back to their normal lives, we accept that. At the same time, if Lovesac is a microcosm and some kind of typical American company, we are now primarily remote. And in fact, much of our headquarters staff has chosen to relocate, some far, some close, some just a little closer to maybe grandma’s house, not across the street from the office necessarily. And as that movement happens, not of course amongst our own crew, but much more broadly, and it may be a few more years of those kind of policies unfolding as some companies choose to be more advanced in their reaction to this change, and some choose to be slower. Market forces will drive it there, because people will want to live where they want to live and work for companies they want to work for. And so we believe that that is extremely positive, particularly as we know, for the couch category. The number one driver, the number one outside driver of couch purchases is people moving and that’s going to be going on for years, as we’ve acknowledged before. And so, we would agree with you we’re very optimistic and bullish on our own prospects. Let’s call it a super cycle. I think that’s a nice characterization. And if we’re wrong, that’s okay too, because the other side of the coin is what you mentioned in your question. Lovesac, I believe, can continue to grow and grow rapidly. Again, in part due to its stage and stake in the world. We are still a small company. We have captured very small, captured a very small piece of market share in a category that has no dominant leader. And so, couches are sold at every home furnishings retailer. Most of our competitors as it were play, we're operating from the same playbook. It’s a merchandising model, new collections, new seasons, vast collections, 16 different couch profiles. And while that may sound on its face like an advantage, if you look at what’s happening to the pandemic, if you look at what’s happening on the supply chain side, while we’re facing headwinds in sheer costs, we’re in stock now, and we can ship in just days, and we intend to be on the long-term because of how we are able to operate from this Designed for Life playbook, which the selling proposition is just very different. It’s not about merchandising as much as it’s about putting better products into the world that are both less left hand designed to evolve and compel people to buy them. And so that said, we’ve got a lot more market share to capture. By the way, we have other products that will come out and allow us to compete in other categories. And because we’re so small, there’s a lot of growth and market share to be gained ahead whether or not we’re in some kind of super cycle. And so we’re grateful for the tailwinds if you want to call them that, we’re grateful. I think it shows in our marketing and advertising spend, which has come down a bit, but sales have been stronger than ever. Our sales growth, this is growth on top of growth, dating three, four years back, and I think it exhibits this, the traction that our brand is gaining in this age and stage that we’re at. And so, I think we have the right product at the right time and we can call it luck, but we’ve been building the company to get to this point for a lot of years and we’re going to hopefully be able to enjoy that ride and continue to drive growth.