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 told TechCrunch.
After Headphones.com adopted Lantern, its purchase rate for repeat visitors increased from 30% to 50%. The period for buying a second pair of headphones has also reduced from 198 days to 98 days.
The company now has clients like skincare site Counter, which rakes in over $200 million a year, and footwear brand Vessi. It has also built tools to measure retention effectively to show Lantern’s value to its clients.
To further grow its business, Lantern raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Sidekick Partners, Day One Ventures, and individual investors like Vessi’s Tony Yu. The company directly competes with existing startups such as LoyaltyLion and Yotpo.
Rob Keith, a partner at Salesforce Ventures, said that Lantern stood out to the firm because the startup is approaching retention through means that go beyond point-based loyalty with a flexible approach.
“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 said.
Keith added that Lantern’s features, like wallet functionality, directly appearing in checkout without any pop-ups or redirects, help both consumers and brands.
In its product roadmap, the company plans to leverage AI and provide customers with insights and recommendations around retention.
