This Brand Hosts a Live Show for Its Customers Every Week—and Sees Sales Spike Up to 50 Percent

Parker Thatch founders Irene Chen and Matt Grenby have struck gold with Parker Thatch TV.

BY ANNABEL BURBA, EDITORIAL ASSISTANT @ANNIEBURBA

Matthew Grenby and Irene Chen, co-founders of Parker Thatch. Photos: Courtesy company

Every Friday, Irene Chen and Matt Grenby, the co-founders of handbag and accessories brand Parker Thatch, go live on several social-media platforms to host a shopping show they call Parker Thatch TV, or simply PTTV.

Like any live broadcast, PTTV features plenty of mishaps. Products fall off tables, people flub their words, mics stop working. Although the husband-and-wife duo say these moments no longer phase them after doing upwards of 100 livestreams, they’ve come a long way. 

When mourning the death of their friend Kate Spade in 2018, Chen and Grenby were looking for little ways to bring joy back to their lives. “One day I was really sad,” Chen says. “I got dressed, and Matt’s like, ‘Let’s shoot a video. What are you wearing today?’”

At the time, the Orinda, California-based brand’s Instagram was just for “pretty pictures,” Chen says. But they decided to post the video on the platform—then another, and another. Customers began interacting with the content by complimenting Chen’s style and asking questions about the handbags Parker Thatch—which launched in 2002 as an online stationery business—was best known for.

After spending the next four years posting behind-the-scenes videos on social media, the founders decided to take this strategy one step further in late 2022 by launching PTTV. 

Chen recalls feeling nervous that things would go wrong during their first livestream—and it was a bit of a disaster, she admits, but she quickly realized that it didn’t matter because they had already forged such a strong relationship with their customers. 

Grenby, in fact, thinks mishaps work in their favor: “It humanizes what we’re doing. We’re not QVC or not some professional high production value thing—we’re us.”

PTTV is now a weekly occurrence. Grenby operates the livestreams—which currently take place on Instagram, YouTube, and sometimes Substack—and monitors comment sections. Chen stands in front of the camera, displaying Parker Thatch products to the audience, demonstrating how she’d style them, and answering questions as they roll in. The show typically lasts about an hour, but Chen says it “feels like five minutes.”

About 20,000 people are signed up to receive text notifications to remind them when Parker Thatch is about to livestream, and a few hundred people view PTTV live through each platform the brand uses—and 50 percent of them are repeat viewers, according to the founders. 

Initially, Chen and Grenby say, their sole goal with PTTV was to answer customers’ questions. But as their audience grew—Parker Thatch’s YouTube channel had less than 500 subscribers in late 2022 and now has more than 125,000—the show started to drive sales. “Now, we’re like, ‘OK, this is an important part of our business,’” Chen adds. “We do this every Friday.” 

In 2025, Parker Thatch made eight figures in revenue. The couple reports that sales can spike up to 50 percent during their livestreams. The brand’s products currently range in cost from about $500 to $1,200.

Other founders may want to follow suit. “Put the camera on a tripod and go for it,” Chen says. “It’s OK. It doesn’t matter if you’re not lit perfectly.”

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