Our Story

John and I met nine years ago at Webb Institute, training to become naval architects and marine engineers.  Reunited last year in graduate school, we found ourselves on a school project in Vietnam, we fell in love with the unique art form of beautiful, hand-crafted, paper cards.  Our inner engineers came to life with the world of possibilities – we wanted to create everything as a delicate paper sculpture!

Upon returning to Boston, we shared our new finds with friends, family, and the community, and were touched by the incredibly powerful reactions they elicited.  We believe people draw their strength and passion from close personal human relationships.  We unlock this energy by expressing our care for other people – and those expressions of care are most powerful when they are unexpected, deeply personal, and real.  By happy accident, LovePop cards are all three.

After a summer of selling cards at fairs and seeing how discovering the cards set off so many strong emotions and desires to connect with other people, we knew that we would need to build something bigger based on the strength of personal relationships and human emotion.  Here’s just a small example of what gives us the passion and energy to build LovePop into a movement that encourages each of us to take the extra effort to acknowledge and express our care for the people around us, the people whose love keeps us going every day.

We met Kyle in the Public Gardens and asked her what she would do with her LovePop. Here’s what she said:
“I would give it to my mom, and I would give it to her today. It’s her anniversary with my dad today. He passed away five years ago, and I know that this would just make her day.”

Celebrate the unexpected
When is the last time you got something in the mail that wasn’t junk, or from the bank? Just receiving a LovePop from someone you care about is a surprise. But the second surprise is the intricate and delicate paper sculpture that emerges from every LovePop card as it’s opened.

A personal connection
A gift means so much more when it comes it’s deeply personal and embodies the relationship between two people. And we believe there’s nothing more personal than a hand-written note. Most of all, we commit to never reduce the process of selecting a card to the multiple choice selection you’ll find at your local drugstore’s greeting card stand. Instead, our cards are blank, and it’s up to you to make them the special connection they deserve to be.

In a digital world, we’re losing something about reality
In today’s hectic, digital world, a lot of connections are superficial, but we believe in the power of real, tangible messages. This philosophy is embodied in a LovePop, which is made of beautiful paper and put together by hand. And a LovePop sticks around. It ends up displayed on the mantle, the corner of your desk, or on the dining room table. It becomes an every day reminder of the person who gave it to you and the special relationship it signifies. And sharing it with your friends, gives you that little emotional boost day after day.

The passion in design
We put all the care that you want to express to the closest people in your life into the design and creation of these cards. Everywhere we go, we listen to what people want us to design next and put it into our design pipeline, which is 100s of cards long.

Mantra
We measure the success of our team meetings by the fraction of time spent laughing.