New Notables
Falling for Lovepop
Two entrepreneurs look to fill a gap in the greeting card industry. Keith Loria
designed on cutting edge software and then hand-crafted in the Asian art form of sliceform kirigami.
A
friendly argument between longtime friends Wombi Rose and John Wise led to the creation of Lovepop, a business centering on intricate 3-D paper sculptures
“We were in Vietnam and saw these hand-crafted paper
cards and were both blown away by it. We were fighting over who could use it for their own personal stationary,” Rose says. “It was super cool and we realized we could make a lot of cool things with it and we understood intuitively what could be done because we studied 3-D design and shop design.” You see, Rose and Wise had studied naval architecture
together in ship design school on Long Island about a decade ago, and crossed paths again in 2013 at business school, re-cementing their friendship. After the trip to Vietnam, the two gave cards to friends
and family, and saw that to a person they all had the same reaction—they fell in love with the paper sculpture inside! “People everywhere have someone special in their lives
they want to give one of these to. That was the genesis,” Rose says. “To this day, everyone from the team gets their energy from the reactions that customers have to the product; and being a part of the personal connection that people want to share with others in their life. That was the impetus for it all.”
Getting off the ground In 2013, the friends initiated a KickStarter campaign, and raised $23,000 from 450 investors to help get the company started. “In the very beginning of any business, people are super
scrappy, and the first thing to understand is: if there is a market and if people really want that? We got that answer very quickly with the Kickstarter campaign,” Rose says. “We worked directly with our customers and got in front of people any way we possibly could.”
28 Specialty Retail Report n Winter 2017
SpecialtyRetail.com
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