A startup built around the work of hosting.

Coterie is a New York party-supplies brand that sells directly to the people throwing the party. It should not be confused with other businesses that share the name, including an American nappy brand; the party company trades online at its own address and describes itself as a “one stop party shop”. Its founders are Linden Ellis and Sara Raffa, and the company’s own About page introduces them simply as “friends who love to party”.

The two met at work. TechCrunch reported in February 2019 that Ellis and Raffa had been early employees at Daily Harvest, the New York food-delivery brand, and that they were friends determined to start a company of their own. The same report said they developed the idea for Coterie with partners at Female Founders Fund, which helped incubate the business, and it described Coterie at the time as about nine months old, which places its start in 2018.

The premise was practical rather than decorative. TechCrunch framed the problem plainly: party planning can be fun if you have the time and know what you are doing, and many hosts have neither. Coterie’s answer was a kit. Instead of buying plates in one shop, napkins in another and lights somewhere else, a host could order a complete themed set for a single occasion and have it delivered. The service launched that February, and Fortune later reported, in November 2019, that it had launched earlier that year.

Laura Chau of Canaan Partners, an early investor quoted by TechCrunch, said the company wanted to offer a “frictionless, elevated and more beautiful experience”. Fortune reported that Female Founders Fund backed the company’s pre-seed round and that Canaan Partners led its seed round, with Global Founders Capital and Female Founders Fund taking part.

Kits, colour and paper.

The product was built around the guest list. TechCrunch explained in February 2019 that customers entered the number of guests, from ten to fifty or more, and then chose a kit for the occasion: a birthday, a baby shower or what the report called a “friendversary” get-together. Its example was the more lavish version of a kit called Shine On, which brought glittery plates, metallic flatware, string lights, gold paper straws and gold paper fans together in one delivery. The same report said customers would soon be able to pick individual products as well as complete kits.

The look was defined early. Fortune described Coterie’s collection in November 2019 as primarily paper-based, designed to be easy to prepare and easy to clear away, and characterised its designs as dreamy, geometric and abstract, and always colourful. It named brushstroke napkins, watercolour-adorned plates and confetti balloons among the pieces, and listed kits including Shine On, Amalfi and a Friendsgiving set called Talk Turkey to Me.

That November the founders also tried something closer to a service than a product. Fortune reported that Coterie ran a free Holiday Hotline by text message from 14 to 28 November 2019, in late-afternoon hours on weekdays, so that hosts could ask Ellis and Raffa for entertaining ideas, help in the middle of a party or advice on cleaning up. The company told Fortune the idea grew out of questions customers had been sending it on Instagram.

The kits have since been joined by a broader shop. The company’s website groups products by occasion — birthday, bridal, baby shower and kids’ parties — and by named themes such as Amalfi Blues, English Garden, Candy, Dinosaurs and Elevated Basics, alongside a range of bamboo tableware sets.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make or sell the things people buy for a celebration: paper plates and napkins, balloons, banners, tableware, decorations and the catalogues and shops that bring them together. Party-supply brands sit at many different points in the trade, from small design studios that print their own papers to wholesale makers and national retail chains, and a single name can turn up on a supermarket shelf, in a mail-order catalogue and on a party table at home.

A party brand’s identity is usually carried less by one product than by colour, pattern and a recognisable name, because the company behind it may have changed hands, moved its production or widened its range far beyond where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its goods are actually designed and made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its goods are made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A slogan, a mission and a partner.

Coterie’s voice does a lot of the brand’s work. Its About page states the mission in three words, “More good times”, and turns the phrase into a hashtag, #Moregoodtimes. The page describes a party as three or more friends in a room with a bottle of bubbly, and it tells hosts that spills, smudges and imperfections are the mark of a party well thrown. Its stated preference is that guests spend more time on the guest list than on the napkins. The site’s short description carries the same idea: it is “time to get together better”.

That tone is consistent with how the founders first pitched the business. In the TechCrunch report, the selling point was the removal of effort: the host chooses a theme and a number of guests, and the rest arrives at the door. In the Fortune report, the same promise was expressed through the materials, with a collection kept mostly to paper so that clearing up is quick. The hotline extended the idea from the box to the conversation.

The company also ties its message to a cause. Its About page says Coterie partners with The Confetti Foundation, a nonprofit that throws parties for children in hospital, and presents the partnership under the heading “Spread joy”. The page links the work back to the brand’s own calendar of birthdays, baby showers and Halloween parties, and says the company wants to bring the same kind of celebration to families who are not able to have one.

Visually, the documented constants are colour and pattern rather than a fixed mark. Fortune’s description of brushstrokes, watercolour and geometric abstraction, set against the metallic and glitter pieces in TechCrunch’s Shine On example and the named themes on the website, describe the range in the words of its sources.

For a design guide, Coterie shows how a party brand can be organised around the host’s problem rather than the single product: a theme, a guest count and a delivery, with a short mission line repeated across the site. Compare a California party-goods brand in our Meri Meri brand guidelines and a London tableware label in our Talking Tables brand guidelines. For this guide we use berry, confetti gold and Amalfi blue with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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