Zola is an online wedding registry, wedding planner, and retailer. It is a female-led
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...
company that allows couples to register for gifts, experiences, and cash funds as well as add gifts from other stores. Zola has also expanded into wedding planning with free wedding websites, invitations, and items for the wedding day. There is no cost or fee to register with Zola, with the company generating revenue by selling wedding gifts and wedding-related items.
History
Zola was founded in New York City in 2013 by Shan-Lyn Ma and Nobu Nakaguchi. It was launched as an online wedding registry which for the first time allowed couples to register for gifts, experiences, and cash funds as well as add gifts from other stores, all in one place. The registry allows couples to choose when their gifts ship and exchange gifts digitally before they ship.
The company has received $140 million in funding, the most recent being $100 million in 2018.
In 2017, Zola expanded from being a wedding registry to also offering wedding planning services through Zola Weddings. The free service includes wedding websites, guest lists, RSVP tracking, and customizable checklists. The company introduced customized wedding invitations and save the dates in 2018 from investors including Comcast and Goldman Sachs.
In October 2018, home decor retailer
Crate & Barrel
Euromarket Designs Inc., doing business as Crate & Barrel (stylized as Crate&Barrel), is an international furniture and home décor retail store headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois. They employ 8200 employees across over 100 stores in the Uni ...
and Zola initiated a partnership which allows Zola users to register for more than 3,500 Crate & Barrel products.
In January 2019, Zola opened its first brick-and-mortar location, a
pop-up shop
Pop-up retail, also known as pop-up store (pop-up shop in the UK, Australia and Ireland) or flash retailing, is a trend of opening short-term sales spaces that last for days to weeks before closing down, often to catch onto a fad or scheduled e ...
in the
Flatiron District
The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally, the Flatiron District is bounded by 14th Street, Union Square and Gre ...
of New York City.
With a valuation of $600 million as of February 2019, Zola is on the path to being a
unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.
In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years o ...
(a privately held
startup company
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'', "Zola is one of three companies on the list of 0potential next unicorns that have been fueled by millennials' spending."
Services
Registry
Business Insider cited several pros of the Zola registry, including the ability to aggregate gifts from multiple websites, a clean user interface, the ability to select delivery time and location for each gift, simple logging of thank you cards, experiential gifts like AirBnB, and group gifting. However, they cite a lack of physical retail space and shipping costs for large gifts amongst the challenging of using the Zola Registry.
In addition to traditional gift registry options, Zola has a feature for cash giving that allows users to set up funds of their choice.
In 2019, Vox.com wrote, "Registries may be adapting, but there’s no indication that they’re going anywhere..." citing Zola as a major source of change in the wedding registry space.
Paper Goods
In 2020, Zola added the option to send Change the Dates to guests, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
.
Other Services
* Wedding Website
* Guest List Planning
* Wedding Attire
* Decor & Favors
* Hotel Blocks
* Wedding Vendors
Controversy
In early December 2019, Zola was among several wedding planning sites who announced they would remove from their listings wedding locations that once were slave
plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...
s. The move was a response to the civil rights advocacy group
Color of Change
Color of Change is a progressive nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization in the United States. It was formed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to use online resources to strengthen the political voice of African Amer ...
, who contend that the use and marketing of plantations, namely those in the Antebellum South, as venues for weddings hides their history as sites of
slave labor
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. Though Zola initially indicated that Color of Change's concerns didn't violate their anti-discrimination policies, the company indicated they would work with the organization to ensure their policies promote inclusiveness.
Later in December 2019, a Zola advertising campaign was the subject of controversy due to its airing on, and being pulled from air by,
Hallmark Channel
The Hallmark Channel is an American television channel owned by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., which in turn is owned by Hallmark Cards, Inc. The channel's programming is primarily targeted at families, and features a mix of television movies a ...
. The six-ad series featured couples of various assortments at the altar voicing vow-like regrets about not using Zola to plan their nuptials. One of the couples featured was a lesbian couple that appeared in three of the ads briefly and one 30-second spot exclusively (they are shown kissing at the altar in the latter). That couple's inclusion raised the ire of
One Million Moms
The American Family Association (AFA) is a Christian fundamentalist 501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) organization based in the United States.Crown Media Family Networks, obliged and announced on December 13 they would pull from air the four Zola ads that featured the couple, citing network policy that forbids its airing of controversial content, namely the women kissing. After being roundly criticized by LGBTQ figures, allies, and rights groups ( GLAAD president Sara Kate Ellis called the move "discriminatory"), Crown Media reversed course on December 15 and reinstated the pulled ads. In response, Zola, who had severed ties with Hallmark Channel, announced they would reach out to the network to consider further advertising."In reversal, Hallmark will reinstate same-sex marriage ads," from Associated Press, 12/16/2019