Andrew Lissimore runs the sonic clothing site Headphones.com for almost a decade now. While audiophiles are very attached to their gear and want to try out new gadgets, Lissimore wasn’t satisfied with constantly spending money on platforms like Meta and Google to get new customers. he wanted to find a way to better retain the customers he already had.
The founder started looking for solutions within the Shopify ecosystem that would help the business with loyalty programs. But most of what he found only offered cost and tier solutions. So he decided to build his own system.
What started as a project to solve engagement for Headphones.com is now a startup called Lampwhich other companies can use to easily integrate engagement solutions into their own businesses.
Initially, the company linked different apps to have a variety of loyalty points based on stamps, spend, points and referrals, but it was difficult to manage. Additionally, bringing together different applications introduced challenges with user experience flows and brand identity.
“We thought it would be great to have a native Shopify system for engagement that is easy to customize and integrate,” said Lissimore. “I was able to get Shopify designers Kyle Peatt and Dominic McPhee, who built their own Polaris design system, to work on it.”
Later, both joined Lantern as co-founders. Peatt currently serves as head of design and product, and McPhee as chief technology officer. In total, the company currently has eight full-time employees.
Lantern can handle customer account creation and management, loyalty and referrals for any vendor working on Shopify. Websites can reward returning or new customers and award them points for activities such as participating in forums. The company explained that vendors can easily integrate their solution and don’t need to add additional code to do so.
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Lissimore said the Headphones.com operation provided the perfect testing ground for Lantern to understand the problems of being a retailer and getting better retention.
“I think we were in the perfect spot to come up with something like Lantern because we [headphones.com] they were so desperate to increase the repurchase rate. A lot of businesses like clothing brands or makeup brands have naturally built repurchase, but for us it was existential,” he told TechCrunch.
After Headphones.com adopted Lantern, their repeat visitor purchase rate increased from 30% to 50%. The period to buy a second pair of headphones was also reduced from 198 days to 98 days.
The company now has clients such as skincare website Counter, which earns more than $200 million a year, and footwear brand Vessi. It has also created tools to measure retention effectively to demonstrate Lantern’s value to its customers.
To further grow its business, Lantern has raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Sidekick Partners, Day One Ventures and individual investors such as Vessi’s Tony Yu. The company competes directly with existing startups such as LoyaltyLion and Yotpo.
Rob Keith, partner at Salesforce Ventures, said Lantern stood out to the company because the startup approaches retention through means that go beyond points-based loyalty with an agile approach.
“Lantern brings together something unique—Andrew built and scaled Headphones.com and lived through 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. This combination means they understand what merchants really need and how to create solutions that feel native to the platform,” he said.
Keith added that Lantern’s features, such as wallet functionality that appears directly at checkout without pop-ups or redirects, help both consumers and brands.
In its product roadmap, the company plans to leverage artificial intelligence and provide customers with conservation information and recommendations.
