From Deseret News archives:

Fast-growing firms honored

LoveSac founder tops list of Utah 100 Awards

Published: Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005 11:14 p.m. MDT
 |  E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
Five years ago, Shawn Nelson was $50,000 in debt and struggling to start a business from the basement of his mother's Millcreek home.

Today, Nelson is king of the world.

Well, at least when it comes to Utah's fastest-growing companies.

On Thursday, the 28-year-old entrepreneur, who founded The LoveSac Corp., a furniture and fashion chain, was named the winner of the Utah 100 awards, a ranking of the state's fastest revenue growth companies.

In 2005, LoveSac will top $30 million in sales.

This is a bang-up year for Nelson. In January, he came away with $1 million from billionaire Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways, after winning Fox's TV reality show "The Rebel Billionaire."

Nelson said he handed his winnings over to his chief financial officer to further grow his Salt Lake-based company, which now has 74 stores and roughly 700 employees.

"Virgin is now a partner in LoveSac," Nelson told the Deseret Morning News. "We now have a Times Square store. We're launching new products that are revolutionary that will change the whole furniture industry."

Five years from now, Nelson hopes the LoveSac brand will be internationally recognized, he said, "every bit as well known as Nike or McDonald's."

Story continues below
"We're a funky lifestyle brand that touts hard-core leisure," Nelson said. "We are really serious about how people waste their time."

Devin Thorpe, chairman of the MountainWest Capital Network, responsible for the Utah 100 rankings, called LoveSac's growth phenomenal.

"Shawn is perhaps the smartest person I've ever known," Thorpe said. "He has this great persona of exuding all of this youthful exuberance and enthusiasm. He is a genius musician and is phenomenally smart. I've seen him work spreadsheets and do very analytical number crunching things better than people who are CFOs."

Rounding out the top five fastest growing companies were South Jordan-based Innovative Staffing, Orem-based Bright Builders, Ogden-based Edge Products and Salt Lake-based Eliot Management Group.

The 100 fastest growing companies must be Utah-based, have reported a minimum of $50,000 in revenue in 2000 and have five years of operating history.

MountainWest Capital Network also recognized 15 of the state's top revenue companies, which were measured in actual dollars rather than percentage growth.

Topping that list was Salt Lake-based Questar Corp., which was greeted with some jeers and laughter from the audience. Earlier this week, Questar Gas Co., a subsidiary of Questar Corp., announced plans to raise Utah natural gas rates 20.3 percent.

Comments

You can be the first to comment on this story.

Image
Deseret Morning News graphic

previousnext

Latest comments

this is so nice for us RSL fans and for the state of utah and SLC. The media...

TCU creams U.

Air Force is the second best team in the MWC. They're the only team that has...

Erosion is happening and it is all due to global warming! Someone should...

Hawaii's beaches shrinking

Not trying to downplay the loss of beach sand, but historical research will...

Good luck at nationals!!

Same old story for Jazz

Anyone one that competes knows at the time when you have to bare down, when...

can say believe us don't believe your eyes and ears, they can twist and...

Get used to it. Unless we can get to a real conference TCU will rule the MWC...

I agree with much of what has been said. Both the Democratic party and the...

Why in the world should anyone pummel you for having a different point of...

Advertisements
Advertisement