Meet the Dumbo agency behind mobile apps for SoulCycle, Saks, Lilly Pulitzer

When Prolific Interactive reached out to me via email, the first thing they said was, “You don’t know us, but you probably know our work.”
They were right. The Dumbo agency has been in the business of building mobile products for some of the most well-known lifestyle brands around: companies like SoulCycle, American Express, Saks Fifth Avenue and David’s Bridal.
Prolific was also the only Brooklyn-based agency on Inc.’s list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies of 2016. According to the list, they did $10.2 million dollars in revenue last year.
Prolific Interactive started seven years ago by two friends, Eric Weber and Bobak Emamian. They opened their first office in Connecticut (the pair met while playing baseball at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.) but it didn’t take long for them to relocate.
“Bobak and Eric had an advisor when they were first starting the company that said to them, ‘Do you want to be the best in Connecticut or the best in the world?’” said Dan Healy, the agency’s 3o-year-old COO. “They took that challenge seriously and put all of their savings into the first New York City  office we had in Dumbo.”

Prolific Interactive, Healy said, has experienced so much growth over the years that the company has had to move offices a total of three times. Currently, most of the 100-person Prolific Interactive staff, which has imported talent from the Midwest and France, occupies an 18,000 sqft. office on the 10th floor of a building in Dumbo. Their previous digs were a 7,000 square foot space at 45 Main Street.
The crew has always wanted to be in Brooklyn (which is home to many a creative agency).
Said Healy about the company’s philosophy: “Agencies in Manhattan have a chip on their shoulders. We view ourselves as the underdogs and want to recreate what an agency can be. We always felt that Brooklyn was the perfect place to do that. We didn’t need to be a Madison Avenue agency. We wanted to be a product company in Brooklyn.”
The company does have an office in San Francisco to support West Coast clients and Healy said that even though they take their growth seriously and are looking for new markets and new opportunities, they always want to keep Brooklyn as their main hub.