LeMieux Insiders App: Redefining Community-Led Commerce

LeMieux Insiders App: Redefining Community-Led Commerce

A Q&A with Jakub Halva, LeMieux
(Interview by Tom&Co)

Earlier this week, LeMieux — one of the UK's most loved equestrian brands — launched the LeMieux Insiders app, a first-of-its-kind platform combining e-commerce, community and rewards. Developed in partnership with Tom&Co, the app represents a bold step forward in how brands can connect with their audiences beyond traditional retail.

Within the two weeks, more than 30,000 people downloaded the app and joined the loyalty programme, with over 7,000 becoming active members of the community and writing over 9,000 posts. Following the release, the app has climbed to #19 in the UK App Store's Shopping category, ranking above eBay, John Lewis and M&S.

We sat down with Jakub Halva, our Head of Operations, to discuss the vision behind the app, how the design and implementation came together, and what's next for this ambitious digital ecosystem.

Vision and Strategy: Defining a Digital Ecosystem

Q: What inspired LeMieux to create the Insiders app, and what did you hope to achieve by bringing e-commerce, community, and rewards together in one place?

The LeMieux Insiders App wasn't born out of a simple technical brief - it was inspired by a desire to formalise a phenomenon. As Jakub explains, LeMieux is truly a "love brand," boasting a quasi-cult following with tens of thousands of passionate customers already discussing products, collections, and their horses on self-moderated Facebook groups.

'They thought, 'Okay, clearly people are passionate about our brand. We have a community currently doing nothing for us... What if we, as a brand, took ownership of that?"

This led to the "really, really bold" ambition: to create an ecosystem that brings all key customer touchpoints into one controlled, official space.

The decision to build a mobile app was strategic, making sense because LeMieux offers content - the community - that customers would want to access daily, encouraging deep, habitual engagement.

Design & Experience: Blending Commerce and Community

Q: The app brings together shopping, community, and loyalty — three very different experiences. How did the team approach designing something that feels seamless for users?

The challenge of melding shopping, loyalty, and community, three very distinct digital experiences, was a core focus. The key to the solution was achieving true seamlessness.

"The overarching thing was everything happens in the app," Jakub noted. "It's completely seamless, meaning there's a lot of technical magic in the background to ensure that you log in for the website, also you log in for the loyalty scheme, and also you log in for the community scheme."

Tom&Co's approach was a true partnership, leveraging LeMieux's deep brand expertise. We handled the UX and UI for the app, while the LeMieux team, who "live and breathe their brand," supplied all the emotional, branded assets and the commercial framework for the loyalty scheme.

Q: Were there any design or UX features that have proved particularly successful in driving engagement or keeping users active within the app?

Driving Excitement Through Gamification. To keep users coming back, the team built a sophisticated engine centred on gamification. The loyalty program uses six secret tiers, motivating users by clearly showing them the perks of their current level while teasing the benefits of the next.

Engagement is driven by a series of missions:

• Data Capture Missions: Simple tasks like filling out their horse's profile.
• Community Missions: Getting points for logging in, saying hello, and contributing comments and posts.

Commercial Incentive: A smart structure ensures that to progress to the highest tiers within a realistic timeframe, users need to make purchases, perfectly fusing loyalty with commerce.

This experience is amplified by a clever omni-channel strategy, which relies on push notifications and emails, powered by Klayio, to alert users to new missions, rewards, and events, ensuring they are always immersed in the LeMieux world.

Implementation & Delivery: A Technical Tour de Force

Q: This was the most technically ambitious app Tom&Co has built to date. From your perspective, what were the biggest challenges during implementation — and how did the teams work together to overcome them?

The LeMieux Insiders App was technically the most ambitious app Tom&Co had built, largely due to the unique combination of features. Everything from integrating camera access for profile pictures to handling push notifications across Android and iOS presented complex challenges.

A significant hurdle was navigating the App Store approval process, which was quite stringent due to the community aspect.

Q: Were there any pivotal moments during the build where you felt the project took a major leap forward creatively or technically?

The Power of Partnership

The project's forward momentum was secured early on through the selection of world-class technology partners:

For Loyalty, we chose Antavo. We loved their headless loyalty scheme approach, which provides an extremely flexible backend "engine" to manage rules while giving us complete freedom over the front-end user experience. Antavo's system, which uses "Rosettes" (tier points) and "Coins" (redeemable currency), proved robust enough for LeMieux's complicated scheme.

For Community, we partnered with InVision. This choice was validated by their success powering the communities of major brands like Lego and Mattel, giving us confidence in the platform's flexibility and potential for future growth.

Performance & Impact: Launching a Love Brand

Q: Within 48 hours of launch, over 5,000 people downloaded the app and 3,000 joined the community. What do you think drove that extraordinary early response?

The extraordinary launch success was a perfect storm of brand love and strategic marketing.

"LeMieux did a really good job of teasing things," Jakub explained. "They didn't really divulge that much. So if you really wanted to know what was going on, you had to download it."

This curiosity, combined with organic viral sharing in existing Facebook groups, instantly validated the app's purpose.

Q: LeMieux quickly became the #19 shopping app in the UK App Store — above brands like eBay, John Lewis and M&S. What does that ranking mean for the business and for the customers?

The app's dramatic rise to become the #19 shopping app in the UK App Store, surpassing names like eBay and John Lewis, was a huge point of pride. It was a powerful moment for the entire team.

It's a really proud moment because it shows you that it makes a difference. It's one of those moments when even the founders of the company acknowledge what a big milestone it is for the brand, which is really exciting to be a part of.

Q: What are the plans for the next phase of the app — are there any new features, partnerships or innovations already on the roadmap?

Looking ahead, while it's too early to measure the app's full impact on purchasing behaviour due to the holiday season launch, the plan is to formalise the long-term relationship with the community: creating a safe, structured, and free-to-use space where equestrians from all over the world can connect and discuss their passion.

✨ Reflection: Advice for Future Innovators

When asked for advice for other brands considering a project of this magnitude, Jakub offered a piece of strategic wisdom:

"Understand why you're doing this first. Critically assess whether this is the right thing for your brand... Don't focus on tech first. Don't shape your strategy around tech. Develop proper business strategy, business and brand strategy, and then find tech solutions which work for it, not the other way around."

He also stressed the need for realism. The project took Tom&Co and LeMieux 12 months to deliver because key individuals were also running the day-to-day business. While a dedicated team could move faster, brands must be realistic about the timelines and budget required for a project of this scale.

The success of the collaboration with Tom&Co was cemented by our flexible technology partnership, particularly highlighting the power of Klaviyo, whose robust and easily integrated capabilities made the entire omni-channel marketing and notification stack seamless.

The LeMieux Insiders App is more than just a loyalty scheme; it's a blueprint for the future of community-led commerce, demonstrating the power of fusing passion with platform.

Closing Thoughts

The LeMieux Insiders app represents a major step in the evolution of community-driven retail — one where brand experience, loyalty and commerce truly converge. By combining LeMieux's deep understanding of its audience with Tom&Co's expertise in digital experience design, the result is more than just an app; it's a thriving ecosystem for customers to connect, engage, and shop in a way that feels uniquely LeMieux.

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