Founder: Abigail Holtz
Abigail left her job as a Product Manager at Google towards the end of 2013 to start working on an idea that she had in the fashion personalization space. Since then, Abigail's startup has gone through a few business model iterations and a name change. The company began as Affinity and sent customers personalized dress recommendations straight to their inbox. In 2018, Affinity relaunched as The Lobby, which provided customers with customized boxes of clothes to try on (like Stitch Fix), but the boxes only included items from direct-to-consumer brands (such as Cuyana) and only delivered to office buildings and businesses (to help generate word-of-mouth buzz). Fall 2020, The Lobby relaunched again, aiming to improve the digital shopping experience.
The Lobby is an online marketplace where influencers post shoppable videos reviewing clothes and accessories. Abigail describes it as "QVC meets TikTok" and true to its past product partnerships, The Lobby currently offers 30 buzzy direct-to-consumer brands, including Solid and Striped, Lunya, and Girlfriend Collective. On the site, shoppers watch short videos of influencers trying on products, during which they can immediately add to their shopping cart without disrupting the viewing experience. Through doing this, Abigail is hoping that The Lobby can bring the benefits of shopping in person to ecommerce.
"It's kind of the closest that you can get to the real-life shopping experience, shopping in a store with friends, in today's world. Video is becoming more important and everything is on Zoom. Since we're not able to be there in person, video is the next best thing." - Abigail
Sources: Business Insider, Morning Brew, Medium, Glossy, crunchbase, The Lobby website