Melanie Marsden on scaling Lounge: 10 years, six stores and a wider wardrobe

Melanie Marsden co-founded Lounge in a spare bedroom in 2016 with 1,000 pounds and a conviction that comfortable underwear could still feel luxurious. A decade and more than 100 million pounds in annual sales later, she is applying the same argument to blazers, trousers and athleisure.

The British brand, which Marsden runs with her husband Dan as chief brand officer to his chief executive, has spent the past few years extending past the logo underwear it became known for. The latest lingerie drop, Love Affair With Lounge, sits alongside a growing ready-to-wear and athleisure business — and the founder is clear about which came first.

"Lingerie will always be at the heart of Lounge and very much at the forefront of our offering, but we've listened to our community and knew they wanted more from us," Marsden told FashionUnited. "We knew we could bring the contour expertise, comfort and attention to detail we've built in lingerie into a wider wardrobe. What makes Lounge recognisable doesn't change, our signature comfort, considered design, quality and finishing touches remain at the core of everything we create."

The pitch rests on the idea that designing for the body is harder than designing for the rail, and that a brand which has done the first can do the second. Marsden points to the team as the mechanism.

"Our all-female design team understands the female form like no other, so every piece is designed with that in mind. We take the same contour expertise we've built in lingerie and apply it across the wardrobe," she said.

In practice that means construction borrowed from underwear. "Our ContourSoft athleisure, for example, uses our trademarked fabric to smooth, sculpt and flatter the body, while our clothing is thoughtfully tailored with sculpting corsetry and boning through blazers and tops, to adjustable waistbands and considered silhouettes through trousers. Every detail has a purpose to make women feel confident, comfortable and incredible."

What the shop floor taught them

Lounge began as a pure e-tailer and now operates six high-street stores, with a recent concession launch at KaDeWe in Berlin. Marsden frames physical retail as filling a gap the site cannot.

"High street presence has always been important to us as a way of connecting with our customers and creating a sense of community, bringing that personal touch that our website and socials can't replicate," she said. "Our products are incredibly considered and detailed, and there's something about seeing and feeling them in person that you simply can't experience online. But our stores are more than just shopping, they're an opportunity to immerse yourself in Lounge as a brand. Our retail teams bring that important human connection, from an intimate bra-fitting experience to helping customers discover the right pieces for them."

Asked what stores revealed that a decade of e-commerce data had not, she is direct about the limits of the numbers. "Data can tell you what people buy, but being in store lets you see how they shop, what they respond to and how they feel about the brand. It reinforced for us that Lounge is more than a product, there's a real community around the brand that exists beyond our socials."

Germany, France and the Netherlands are the brand's priority European markets. Marsden describes an approach that holds the brand steady while flexing the commercial detail.

"Our core Lounge brand and values never change, but we're very conscious of the nuances within each market. We adapt our approach around things like hero products, seasonality, customer behaviours, competitor landscapes and the local retail and marketing calendar. It's about finding the right balance between staying true to who we are while making sure we're relevant to each customer and market."

Influencer marketing, 10 years on

Lounge was among the first brands built on influencer seeding, at a point when the tactic barely had a name. Marsden's read on the decade since is that the industry has looped back to where it started.

"Influencer marketing has almost gone full circle, from being new and authentic, to becoming highly commercialised and saturated, and now moving back towards genuine, relatable content," she said. "For us, it's about working with people who genuinely love Lounge and would naturally wear and talk about the brand, rather than simply choosing someone because of their following. We've now scaled that approach across our wider markets, but the principle remains the same…authentic advocacy will always resonate."

For a business that has added categories steadily, the stated next phase is consolidation rather than expansion. "Our category offering is already pretty extensive, so the focus now is on continuing to build, learn and hone our craft across these wider categories, developing our core offering with more considered, relevant products year-round and building on the seasonal launches we've introduced," Marsden said. "And globally, the ambition is to continue scaling Lounge and deepening our presence in the markets we're already in."

A full menswear line is not ruled out, but it is not imminent either. "Never say never. Our men's boxers perform incredibly well, and we're always listening to what our community wants, but for now, we're focused on honing what we already do and making those categories the best they can be."

The founding instinct, she said, has not moved. "From the very beginning, we believed that everyday comfort didn't have to mean compromising on how elevated, beautiful or sexy you feel. We wanted to prove that your everyday could still feel luxurious."