From Anchorage to Austin: What Community Means Today
Lauren Haber Jonas isn’t building a plus sized fashion company. Lauren is building a community. Lauren is creating confidence in women who have been overlooked, underserved, and systematically disenfranchised by society. Lauren is the founder & CEO of Part & Parcel, a newly launched and fast-growing social commerce community (and, yes, clothing brand) for plus women.
Nicole Quinn isn’t here to provide lip service. Nicole is hellbent that actions speak louder than words when it comes to her investments. Nicole is creating community not only for herself, but she knows the potential in funding deep, intentional communities for women and has done so time and again. Nicole is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and counts Goop, Girlboss, and Calm among her investments.
And me, I’m not out here to build a giant co-working company. I’m the co-founder and CEO of The Assembly and building community is in my bones. I’m on a mission to help people unlock their fullest potential by creating healthy habits. I know that healthy habits are created within communities — and I want to take what we’ve created with The Assembly so far and bring it to everyone, everywhere. In pursuit of that, I’m talking to as many people as possible who are out there devoting their time, energy, money, and lives to building communities.
So community. What does that even mean? A few weeks ago, I sat down with Lauren and Nicole in the new Lightspeed Lounge at The Assembly to talk about all things community: how to build them, how to support them, how to break free of what has become a startup buzzword and create something real.
Get Very Personal
The greatest communities come from need. No one knows that better than Lauren Haber Jonas, who truly understands her customer because she has been plus her entire life. For Lauren, the emotional side of things is not adjacent to the clothing — it’s intrinsic. It, quite literally, is the fabric of the whole company. “I felt all of the things that I’m trying to mitigate for her. And it’s the mitigation of loneliness.” Lauren went on, “and it’s finding folks that understand you and understand who you are and the experiences that you’ve been through.”
Lauren started a Facebook group, which she says isn’t peer to peer, it’s “plus to plus” where women talk about the Part & Parcel clothes, but also give each other support and advice on other aspects of their lives — other brands, restaurants, airlines to try or avoid. For many of these women, it’s the first time ever that she’s talked to someone else who gets it. With both her digital community and IRL selling experiences, these are women that are finally meeting someone “that’s been where she is and understands her emotional reality as a human being around clothing, around intimacy, around athleticism or on whatever that may be.”
Vulnerability goes hand-in-hand with community. Deep connections to communities come when the sharing goes beyond the superficial. There has to be a sense of trust and safety, which often comes from shared experiences
As a community leader, this also has to come from the top; you can’t expect people to do this on their own. At every event, Lauren will stand up and share her own story of having to buy mens and maternity clothing as a child. Once she does this, the floodgates open and every woman she talks to has 15 stories of her own to share. At The Assembly our motto is #permissiongranted. What we’ve seen is that the opening for connection can be as simple as asking someone how they are doing when the come in the door for class — and actually listening to the answer.
Go Where She Is
No longer are we living in the world of if you build it, they will come. With all of us able to do more and more from the comfort of home, community has returned to being locally-driven. For exactly this reason, Part & Parcel launched in Alaska first. “Alaska is majority plus, it’s been in a three year long recession, and it’s a clothing desert for women broadly. Big box retailers are shutting down. Amazon Prime is 27 days to ship to Alaska. And so, quite literally, she’s wearing men’s clothing.” When a community of women reached out to Lauren and said they needed Part & Parcel in Alaska, she answered the call and showed up. “It was absolutely amazing. There was crying. There was shouting. There was hugging.”
From Nicole Quinn’s perspective, Lightspeed is changing their perspective as they look at new community-driven businesses, “Part & Parcel is really driving this change of a big trend that we see, which is to go to where the customer is. Gone are the days where a founder should always come to the VCs. Now, we at Lightspeed believe that we go to the founders and same with [the companies themselves]. It’s not like, OK, we’ve got the store in Manhattan. You have to come to our store. No, no. Go to where the customer is. Maybe that’s online. Maybe that’s off line. Maybe that’s some combination of the two.”
Repeat Repeat Repeat
A one-time event is not community. Community is created through shared habits and consistency. This is why both Part & Parcel and The Assembly think about expansion into new markets by empowering local partners. For Part & Parcel, Lauren and her team are on a road show launching in new markets (keep an eye out for an SF event at The Assembly this Fall) and training women in the plus community through their direct selling program. Lauren has embraced social commerce and built a digital playbook for her on the ground partners to maintain community well beyond the first connection point. In the 13 weeks since launch, not only has she seen some of her partners making enough money to cover their mortgages (and then some), but new friendships being built around so much more than clothing.
At The Assembly, we’ve always lived by the “80% routine, 20% magic” rule of programming. Every week, our community knows which classes, services, hikes, happy hour events they can join us for so they can work it into their lives. We don’t expect deep connections to be made through one experience, which is why instead of leading with splashy events or locations in new cities, we are starting with building community through our Scout Program. By activating local women passionate about connecting and sharing the instructors, classes, practitioners, and brands that they love and finding a local scout leader empowered by our programming guidelines and editorial vision, we can create consistency of The Assembly experience with the passion and enthusiasm of on-the-ground momentum.
Don’t Just Say Community, Be Community
In the end, community comes down to taking care of each other. It is not ephemeral or fleeting. It has to be something that people are actually seeking — even if they don’t know how to say it.
With Part & Parcel, they have tapped into a need so deep that when Lauren launched her first boot for plus women on Kickstarter and Poshmark (where she worked at the time) she sold $45k of presales in 30 days. But Lauren didn’t want to build a DTC shoe company for plus women. She knows that her mission is to give a voice and confidence to women who have been silenced and shamed. To allow plus women to share their experiences with each other every day while building a business that they truly love.
At The Assembly, we know that the endless cycle of working out and dieting, falling off and feeling guilty, and then starting again doesn’t actually make you feel any better. Wellbeing can’t be done alone. Biking in your basement, even with consistency, isn’t the key to feeling good or living a long, high-quality life. Science shows that wellbeing comes from moving naturally, having a community, having a moment to downshift your energy to recover, eating well and having wine, and waking up everyday with a purpose. Put simply, wellbeing isn’t just working out — it’s caring for yourself and connecting with other people. Want to feel better today? You should go for a long walk in nature, followed by a glass of red wine and a big salad with your friends. That’s just what we are here for.
Finally: Be The Best Supporter You Can
A big part of community is supporting the ones around you, even if they’re not yours. Though her investments, Nicole lives this truth. Her own investments are 70–80% female founders and Lightspeed overall has made a huge commitment to bringing on 9 female investment partners and looking at female-led companies. “I’m a believer that actions speak louder than words.” In an industry of a lot of lip service around diversity, Nicole challenges herself to do better. “Actions represent what you want to be in this world. I’m trying to continue to make change, because that’s really what’s most important.”
As I say, when it’s not your turn to be the creator be the best damn supporter. And when a thriving, important community isn’t your own — make sure everyone who needs it knows about it.
I look forward to going deep, learning more, and being a lifelong student of community. I absolutely loved talking to Nicole and Lauren about their passion for community. I can’t wait to see what Lightspeed and Part & Parcel do next — I know it will be exciting.
