LoLo: Locals Supporting Locals

Good relationships change everything — especially for a business. Clark Harris knows that first hand. In 2013, Harris and Matthew Simpson co-founded LoLo, a company on a mission to build thriving local communities by empowering local businesses. Once realty companies sign up, LoLo curates monthly gifts from local vendors, automatically sends them to new homeowners, and then tracks customer engagement in an easy-to-use portal.

They decided on Asheville as the company headquarters, because it’s always been a place that embraced the unique culture of local independent businesses. So four years later, when Jon Jones introduced Harris to Hatch Innovation Hub, a local place designed for businesses to thrive, he knew this was where LoLo’s headquarters needed to be. Though, that wasn’t the first relationship that helped LoLo find its footing.

“Beverly-Hanks took a chance on us early on,” shared Harris. “We presented them with the Lolo engagement concept, and they were like, yeah, let’s do a pilot.”

LoLo piloted with 1,000 Beverly-Hanks agents for one year. Then, took it to market and immediately saw interest from other real estate companies. Today, Lolo sends more than 250,000 gifts every month and is partnered with over 3,200 independent local businesses across the country.

Scaling a business that quickly doesn’t happen often. Hatch supported LoLo’s journey by bringing it the right mixture of place, people, and programming along the way.

The Place

Before their first Hatch office in 2017, they were in a private office tucked away in the basement of a different coworking space. They joined Hatch as part of the inaugural group of three private office holders in the building and loved it! When they outgrew the office, they transferred the company into the yellow house behind the Hatch building. 

“We got along great with both companies. I’d grab Jon Jones for lunch and we’d talk tech, or I’d talk to Meg from Plum Print about co-founder stuff. I really saw the benefit,” shared Harris. “We even co-hosted outdoor cookouts almost monthly.”

However, when COVID hit they, like many companies, needed to downsize their offices, so they moved out of Hatch.

“It’s kinda like you don’t know how good you have it till you leave,” reflected Harris. 

When they left Hatch they moved between multiple spaces, but none of their landlord relationships were a match.

“One of the building owners left notes on the door all the time,” recalled Harris. “It’d be silly things like ‘the blinds weren’t just right when you left’ or something, but always something.”

Then at their next office, the owner could never be found. “There was just nothing that you could get from him,” Harris commented. 

However, Harris says he found the right partner in Charlie Ball, a Hatch founding board member and owner of the building Hatch calls home.

“I mean, he is the easiest landlord I’ve ever interacted with in my life,” commented Harris. “He was just always so accommodating, because he believed we had a long-term story here.”

As LoLo scaled its services throughout the country the needs of the business continued to evolve. For example, when the company was smaller they could get away with being in an open concept space, because there was less need for privacy and frequent phone calls. Now that they’re sending over 250,000 gifts a month, being in a shared open space would be unsustainable. But the space alone isn’t what’s kept LoLo coming back to Hatch. 

“It was crucial to have someone that understood the story and the needs of an evolving business,” commented Harris. Startup businesses often put little thought into the impact of finding not just the right location, but the right building partner can have.

The People

LoLo is a remote-first company, employees aren’t required to come into the office. So, in their last office, few did.

“Our team always had the option to come into our old office, but it’d be basically one or two of us all week,” said Harris. “Now it’s different. Our employees want to come in every day and that can only speak to Hatch being a better fit.”

He credits that fit to the people at Hatch Coworking. “Walking through all this flurry of activity every morning brings the energy you need to get excited about the day ahead. You can feel the brain power at work,” said Harris.

Though, with any coworking space comes the risk of being unable to protect your focus time. In a space filled with so much energy, it’s natural to want to stop by your neighbor’s desk and kick around ideas with people. However, in Harris’ experience that risk doesn’t exist when you’re surrounded by professionals who are actively working in their businesses.

“I feel like here there’s almost this unspoken rule. There are shared spaces like the kitchen for collaboration. People really respect the boundaries of the working space,” said Harris.

The programming

With their smashing success from the Beverly-Hanks pilot in WNC, it made sense to begin scaling the product to new partners in other regions. Harris needed to fine tune the program with some price experimentation, so he turned to Hatch for help. He joined an early iteration of Hatch’s Pressure Test, a 90-day sprint pairing entrepreneurs with experienced mentors who root out their companies’ potential weaknesses and fortify their competitive strengths.

Partnering with his Hatch mentors George Blackley and Jon Jones, he was able to workshop the viability of various pricing models and experiment with the decisions in real time.

After a successful run at being a Hatch mentee, Harris became a mentor in the first Hatch This event. Hatch This challenged founders to build and pitch a business plan in one weekend. During Hatch This, mentors worked with their mentees to explore business problems like market fit and traction. “Being a mentor was really fun, and it gave me the opportunity to tap into those ‘start-up skills’ you don’t get to do so much when you’re in the growth phase of business,” recalled Harris. 

LoLo’s headquarters at Hatch lets the whole team enjoy programming like Pitch Parties and 1 Million Cups too. Since LoLo is a business centered in community, being in the Hatch ecosystem gives their employees natural opportunities to network and meet other local businesses that could fit into the LoLo community.

It’s the people who make the vibrant energy at Hatch the transformative resource it continues to be. The right relationships, environment, and support does indeed change everything for a business on a mission to empower local communities.