Lovepop: from the streets of Vietnam to the worlds #1 rated card company

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In this week’s edition of Startup Vagabond we are talking about Lovepop. The world’s number 1 rated card company, with a reported valuation of somewhere between $100-500 million USD.

I recently had the pleasure of taking an impromptu tour of Lovepop’s Da Nang HQ, where the majority of their design and distribution takes place. In the Startup world we’re so often hyper-focussed on Tech, so it was so refreshing for once to explore a Physical product Business that’s scaling rapidly and still putting up numbers that would put most Software companies to shame.

Moreover, it’s a fascinating story of how even the simplest of ideas done well can make for a highly successful and profitable business and how the two cultures can come together to make magic happen.

I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Dickie

One Billion Magic Moments.

This is Lovepop’s North Star metric and the first thing you see as you walk through the front doors of their Da Nang Headquarters in Central Vietnam. 

“We’re at 55 million so far, so still a long way to go. Though I have no doubt that we’ll make it” Lovepop Co-Founder Ha Trinh Quoc Bao tells me with a wry smile.

It’s hard to bet against the 3D card behemoth, once you’ve heard the story about their meteoric rise from the markets of Vietnam to a business that now counts global megabrands like Disney, Marvel and Star Wars as its Partners.

Lovepop was born in 2014 off the back of a Harvard Business School trip to Vietnam. Co-Founders John Wise and Wombi Rose, two Naval Engineers, who had originally become friends during their studies at the Webb Institute, were inspired by the local Asian art form of Kirigami and after meeting their third Co-Founder Bao, spun up the business in the Harvard Innovation Lab.

Kirigami is similar to origami in that it is a form of paper art. The major difference is that in origami, you fold paper whereas in kirigami, you fold and cut paper.

The duo took their engineering background and combined this ancient art with the sliceform structure used in ship design to develop Slicegami™, and Lovepop was born.  

Somewhat serendipitously the term “Kirigami” much like Lovepop is also of Asian-American origin. Having been coined by American Florence Temko in her 1962 book the Creative Art of Papercutting.

Although of Japanese origin, take a walk down the streets of Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi and you’ll see markets full of Kirigami designs and cards sold by the Vietnamese locals who have adopted the design as their own.

What makes the story behind Lovepop such a magical moment in itself, is how a product you'd expect to find at your local craft market has been scaled into a business that’s well on the way to unicorn status.

A big part of this rapid success was a 2015 appearance on the US edition of Shark Tank. 

Where Lovepop received $300,000 of seed funding from serial Investor Kevin O'Leary for a 15% stake in the business. 

Not to mention the show catapulted it’s funky range of products, which include 3D bouquets of Flowers, Advent Calendars and pop up Halloween greetings cards, firmly into the public eye.

Fast forward 9 years and Lovepop is now home to 300 employees (30 based in the US), a raft of Physical stores in the US and recent collaborations with the Billboard Music Award, where it provided cards for the winners, Canadian pop legend Drake and K-pop sensation BTS.

Lovepop currently only delivers to the US, UK and Australia.

Meaning sadly the Vietnamese people who work so diligently to bring Lovepop to life (I’m told their record product output is 43,000 units in one day) nor the people who inspired the business can enjoy their own magical moments.

It’s easy to see this with an elitist or extractive lens, but that’s far from the impression I get when talking to the local people behind Lovepop.

Jobs are being created and this is having a positive effect on the local economy in Da Nang. Their employees also seem extremely proud of the work they do and that it has an international impact and allows them to demonstrate the creativity found in their country.

Beyond the magical moments that Lovepop creates for its customers and employees, the business is also investing heavily in their community. Including the building of a school for low-income workers in the industrial zone where it operates. 

In my travels, I’ve come to learn that ultimately that is what international collaboration is all about. 

Businesses like Lovepop would have struggled to break through that initial 0-1 stage of Startup growth had they been founded solely in a developing economy like Vietnam.

So long as the partnership is ethical and not extractive and there’s efforts to contribute to the local economy of the nation with the lesser infrastructure, then it’s a win/win for both countries.

Let’s hope that in the perfect utopian future, this is something we no longer have to consider and we can just enjoy Lovepop for what it is. An awesome business with stellar products.

The next time you want to celebrate someone, check out Lovepop and help them get one step closer to that target 1 billion magical moments.

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In the next edition we’ll be featuring the story of the Boatmen of Pagsanjan Falls in the Laguna province of Luzon, Philippines. Who have innovated through necessity, creating a mode of transport that defies logic and defines the Famed Filipino resilience.

See you on the next adventure!

Dickie