Andrew Lissimore has been working the audio attire website Headphones.com for almost a decade now. Whereas audiophiles have a excessive affinity in the direction of their gear and wish to check out new devices, Lissimore wasn’t happy with repeatedly spending cash on platforms like Meta and Google to accumulate new clients; he needed to discover a solution to higher retain the purchasers he already had.
The founder began to search for options inside the Shopify ecosystem that may assist the enterprise with loyalty applications. However most of what he discovered supplied solely spend and tier-based options. So he determined to construct his personal system.
What began as a challenge to resolve loyalty for Headphones.com is now a startup known as Lantern, which different corporations can use to simply combine loyalty options into their very own companies.
Initially, the corporate wired collectively completely different apps to have a wide range of loyalty factors primarily based on stamps, spend, factors, and referrals, nevertheless it was arduous to handle. Plus, bringing collectively completely different apps launched challenges with person expertise flows and model identification.
“We thought it would be great to have a Shopify native system for loyalty that is easy to customize and integrate,” Lissimore mentioned. “I managed to convince Shopify designers Kyle Peatt and Dominic McPhee, who built their Polaris design system, to work on this.”
Later, each joined Lantern as co-founders. Peatt at present works because the chief design and product officer, and McPhee works because the chief know-how officer. In complete, the corporate at present has eight full-time workers.
Lantern can deal with buyer account creation and administration, loyalty, and referrals for any vendor engaged on Shopify. Web sites can reward returning or new clients, and award them factors for actions like taking part in boards, as nicely. The corporate defined that the sellers can simply combine their resolution and don’t want so as to add any further code to take action.
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Lissimore mentioned that working Headphones.com offered the proper testing floor for Lantern to grasp the ache factors of being a vendor and getting higher retention.
“I think we were in the perfect spot to come up with something like Lantern because we [headphones.com] were so desperate to increase the repurchase rate. A lot of businesses like clothing brands or makeup brands have naturally built in repurchase, but for us, it was existential,” he advised TechCrunch.
After Headphones.com adopted Lantern, its buy charge for repeat guests elevated from 30% to 50%. The interval for getting a second pair of headphones has additionally lowered from 198 days to 98 days.
The corporate now has purchasers like skincare website Counter, which rakes in over $200 million a yr, and footwear model Vessi. It has additionally constructed instruments to measure retention successfully to point out Lantern’s worth to its purchasers.
To additional develop its enterprise, Lantern raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Sidekick Companions, Day One Ventures, and particular person buyers like Vessi’s Tony Yi. The corporate instantly competes with present startups corresponding to LoyaltyLion and Yotpo.
Rob Keith, a accomplice at Salesforce Ventures, mentioned that Lantern stood out to the agency as a result of the startup is approaching retention by signifies that transcend point-based loyalty with a versatile method.
“Lantern brings together something unique—Andrew built and scaled Headphones.com and lived these retention challenges as a merchant, while Kyle and Dominic come from Shopify, where they built the Polaris design system that thousands of developers use today. That combination means they understand both what merchants actually need and how to build solutions that feel native to the platform rather than bolted on,” he mentioned.
Kieth added that Lantern’s options, like pockets performance, instantly showing in checkout with none pop-ups or redirects, assist each shoppers and types.
In its product roadmap, the corporate plans to leverage AI and supply clients with insights and suggestions round retention.
