Let Me Count the Ways: Entrepreneurs Capitalize on the Business of Love

All you need is love. Or perhaps a better, more unique and personalized way to show it.

It’s estimated that “consumers will spend $17.6 billion for Valentine’s Day this year, or $126 per person, up 8.5 percent from 2011,” according to The National Retail Federation.

Several years ago, Chris Sonjeow and a few of his friends were among those ‘big spenders’ – prepared to dole out hard earned cash for gifts that could possibly be soon forgotten. Convinced that they should forgo traditional “jewelry and chocolate” gifts, the young hopeless romantics set out to make love more meaningful for all.

“One guy pulls out a little notebook with stick-figure drawings and a list of reasons why he loved his wife. Being a Web developer, one of our friends said, ‘This needs to be available for everyone,'” said Sonjeow. Months later, the co-founders launched, Michigan-based Lovebook LLC, an online platform where users can create unique personalized gift books listing all of the reasons they love someone.

Learn how Chris Sonjeow and co-founders, (Rob, John and Kevin) have sold over 1.4 million LoveBooks since their launch in 2010 and why you should attempt to do something you’ve never done before.

How We Got Started:

It all started one day at lunch as a group of us were talking about Christmas gift ideas for our wives and girlfriends. The idea was so simple. The concept? A book that lists all the reasons why you love someone. It definitely falls under one of those, “why didn’t I think of that” moments.

As an illustrator, I created the first prototype. Lo and behold, it was a huge success. We all agreed that we needed to build a website that would allows others to utilize the idea as well. Soon after, we researched the concept to see if it was currently being done. It wasn’t. We were shocked.

We then started to investigate the technology that the site would required. Some of it we knew, most of it we had to learn. From there, we created a system that hosts thousands of user-generated “Love Pages” and illustrations to create the books.

The final product was a LoveBook™ the only personalized gift book listing all of the reasons you love someone. We print it, bind it and ship it.