Q&A With Lemonade Fashion: A Merger of Tech, Shopping and Entertainment

By Noel Oduory

Operating in the MENA region, Lemonade Fashion is changing the way we think about online shopping by seamlessly blending the worlds of technology, retail, and entertainment. The company’s platform transforms the traditional e-commerce experience into an engaging, video-first journey where consumers can discover and purchase products directly through the content they enjoy. It  is not just a marketplace but a vibrant community that empowers content creators and brands to connect with their audience in a meaningful way.

The FutureList had a conversion with Arthur Bizdikian, the Co-Founder and CEO, to learn more about the Lemonade Fashion’s innovation.

The FutureList: Provide a brief overview of Lemonade Fashion’s primary innovation or product offering.

Arthur: Lemonade is a retail tech company. We are at the intersection between technology, retail and entertainment, with a very big focus on fashion and now also a lot of consumer products. The platform is built to have a video-first experience platform, so it feels like you’re on Instagram or TikTok. You can watch videos as if it’s Instagram or TikTok, and while you’re scrolling through content, you can actually buy any product that you like, directly from the content itself. You don’t need to go to a third-party website, a different application, or do the checkout anywhere else. It’s a full solution. We have live shopping, live streaming, and a lot of different technologies that are also integrated into it. So the heart of the platform is built like an e-commerce. And we added all of the social technologies around it so that we can actually build communities around brands, products, and content creators that are focused on retail.

The FutureList: What is the inspiration behind the development of the Lemonade platform?

Arthur: Social media is not built for commerce, and everyone is paying the price. Brands usually lose about 60% of their audience when they’re trying to send someone from one platform to another. So a user sees content on Instagram, and then Instagram sends them to another website for them to see the product. 60% of people stop the journey, and 90% of people who continue that journey also end up dropping out because they want a continuously interactive and fun experience. So the experience is completely broken when redirected to another website. What we decided to do, and at this point, we used to be a marketplace that had hundreds of brands, and we used to work with influencers that had 100 million followers combined. So we decided to integrate the two industries. The funny thing is that we did that at the perfect time. A month later after we launched the prototype, Spotify announced that they were going to start doing a video first experience, then TickTock after a couple of months, announced that they were going do a TickTock marketplace as well. At the same time, Instagram announced that they were going to start doing an Instagram shop. It was the perfect timing because we are currently at the front line of this new movement, which is the combination of entertainment and retail. The whole aim of our company is to give the best experience to the brands and to the creators that are focused on retail.

The FutureList: Elaborate on how Lemonade is supporting the creator economy

Arthur: We call ourselves more of a next-generation market space, not a marketplace. The reason is that every single user on Lemonade is also their own shop. As a user, I can create content and tag products of shops or brands in my content. Then my followers can buy what I’m wearing or using, and I take a direct commission that Lemonade pays. The user doesn’t need an agreement with brands. The fact that these products are on Lemonade means that any user can monetise them. So it’s a model that closes that gap.

The FutureList: How is Lemonade different from social media platforms?

Arthur: Our aim when we built Lemonade was not to create another social media platform. We did not want to add the toxicity that comes with social media, which means we do not want this to be another platform where users are competing and bragging about who has more followers, who has more views, and who has more likes for social validation. We disabled all of that. So you can follow people, you can like and comment, but you will not see the numbers. As the owner of the account, I can see it in my insights, but other people do not see it. Because for us, what matters the most is are these people actually selling? Are they making money? It doesn’t really matter how many views they’re getting, or how high the engagement is, if it’s not actually converting. Another thing is that we’re promoting values, which means instead of us giving the generic blue batch verification for the brands and the creators, we verify by value. So as a brand, you can be verified as a sustainable business, an eco-friendly business, a woman-owned brand, upcycled brands, and other different values. And that is important because today, people couldn’t care less about the brands and more about the values that the brand stands for. But it’s very hard today to find those brands because you don’t have a platform for them, and we built it in a way that is so interactive, and so gamified that it makes it easy for people to connect with these brands. Also since our technology is very good, even TikTok is trying to integrate some of its technologies on the Lemonade Fashion platform, because while TickTock is doing their marketplace, TickTock will always be an entertainment-first platform. Lemonade is an e-commerce-first platform.

The FutureList: In what ways have you integrated AI into your innovation process, and what outcomes do you envision?

Arthur: We have two big AI projects. The first is creating an advanced AI stylist companion, where users can chat with the platform as if talking to a stylist, and it helps build the right products based on their parameters like events, gender, weather, style, budget, etc. Like if you say, hey, this is where I am right now, I have an event next week, then the AI would be able to determine what items you should be looking at. The second one that I am excited about is AI for vendors/brands. Since we collect a lot of data, we should be able to determine, when brands upload a product, what their orders will look like based on price and images. This means we can help pre-plan inventory. For example, if I’m a designer launching in 6 months, the platform should tell me the supplies I’ll need to meet demand, and how changing prices impacts that.

The FutureList: Looking ahead, where do you envision taking Lemonade Fashion in the next 5-10 years?

Arthur: Lemonade wants to be the go-to platform for retail in the future because it’s not just retail, it’s taking any action through content. Today, product discovery, awareness, consideration, and conversion are all on different platforms. Lemonade evolves as the first full-funnel platform. We want to be the platform where you go to complete that journey – discover trends, see how professionals use products, connect with stylists – and purchase, all in one place. The vision is to be the most innovative retail tech company, making people’s lives easier by finding the right products and connecting to that story, while promoting conscious consumption.

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