Lori's Shoes


When I’m in a conversation with Lori, I get the feeling that her mind is on a high speed chase with a gazillion other things. Lori is a serial entrepreneur  with a degree from the Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science. Her first company was Promgirl. Later she started an organic cleaning products company and a wholesale pet products business. Now she owns Neighborhoodies. While Neighborhoodies isn’t her baby, it’s become her shoes. “Taking over someone’s business is like walking in someone else’s shoes. Eventually, they become your own shoes,” says Lori.

When she took over Neighborhoodies, the place was a mess. Literally. She emptied it of three dumpsters of trash, replaced the single phone line with a complete system and revamped the website. When customers drop in off the street, instead of stopping everything there’s a streamlined process to handle requests. Start-ups operate very differently from established businesses. Still, Neighborhoodies is a dynamic company and with Lori at the helm I can’t imagine it getting stale.

Lori’s challenge is to transform her brick and mortar business into an e-commerce enterprise while remaining true to its roots. Neighborhoodies offers a highly specialized service; customizing apparel with appliqué, embroidery and printing. The hoodies themselves are made of organic, recycled material and the inks are non-toxic. Customers include Rachael Ray, Questlove, and Eli Manning as well as the BBC, MTV and Yelp!.

In addition to the DUMBO storefront, now you can design your own hoodie on the Neighborhoodies website with the new Hoodie-O-Matic application. While widening service offerings with options like custom monograms, Lori is progressing on her mission to e-commercialize her business by offering live chat for custom collaborations online. Today Neighborhoodies is Lori’s own pair of highly customized shoes and she wears them well.