Ashlee Margolis and the business of a good introduction

Before Ashlee Margolis had a showroom, she had Coach bags in the trunk of her car. She kept some at home, too. A friend at the brand wanted them to reach her actress friends, and Margolis was well placed to make the introductions. There was something appealingly literal about the arrangement: the merchandise needed to move, and she knew people who might carry it. The business arrived a bag at a time. ↗

Her intended next act had been television. After leaving Harrison & Shriftman, she was pursuing a reality-and-talk-show hybrid produced by Fred Durst, while taking freelance talent-outreach assignments. Then the Coach work grew. She brought actresses into stores; eventually, a showroom followed. Express became her second client. The television project lost ground to the people asking her to do things she already knew how to do. ↗

A trunk full of introductions

The A List, founded in 2001, made a business out of that proximity. Margolis was already inside a circle of friendships that brands wanted to reach. Her early work gave those brands a practical route into it. There was a product to show, someone who might like it, and a person who could bring the two together. The scale was small enough for the work to sit in a car. ↗

She has described the move into her own space as a response to increasingly disruptive store visits. A private showroom gave the activity a home. It also gave her a more deliberate way to host people. A request that began with a few handbags was producing appointments, repeat business and a place to put the next delivery. Entrepreneurship sometimes needs a lease before it gets a grand theory. ↗

The daughter in the warehouse

Margolis grew up in Los Angeles, with fashion already present in the family. Her father worked in the clothing business, and she spent time around his warehouse and designers. What stayed with her was his insistence on work: she had retail jobs in high school and was expected to have employment lined up when she returned from college. The glamorous end of the industry came with an early view of the stockroom. ↗

She graduated from the University of Wisconsin and later worked at Harrison & Shriftman, helping open its Los Angeles office and handling event PR and talent outreach. The apprenticeship joined two activities that would remain central to her company: organizing an occasion and understanding the people who might attend. A red carpet requires someone to think about arrivals long before anyone photographs them. ↗

For all her later travel, Los Angeles remained home. In 2016 she described herself as born and raised there, apart from college in Wisconsin, a semester at sea and six months in New York. Asked where she preferred a business meeting, she chose her office. Asked about a romantic date, she chose the Hollywood Bowl. The answers suggest someone who knows which room suits which conversation. ↗

A room with moving parts

Watch Margolis show visitors around her workplace and the business becomes easier to picture. There is a living-room area where people talk, try on shoes and linger. She jokes that colleagues are paid actors brought in to make the office look busy. Then she gets back to explaining the work: dressing, gifting, campaigns, partnerships and events. The welcome has a running commentary. ↗

The showroom sits at the center of that activity. In her 2025 tour, Margolis described roughly 25 brands and a stream of actors, creators, tastemakers and stylists. Clothing shares the agency’s attention with beauty, home and food-and-beverage products. Gifts also travel beyond the people who visit. The physical room is a starting point for relationships that carry on elsewhere. ↗

That mix required a change in her own habits. Margolis remembers asking her friend Raina Penchansky whether she had to start working with influencers. The answer was yes. She credits the decision to adapt as a major turn in the business. Someone whose early advantage was knowing actresses had to widen her understanding of who could get an audience to pay attention. ↗

Her account of the shift is refreshingly practical. Brands were telling her that social tags could bring sales. She pointed to Shay Mitchell as an example of the reach that a familiar face could have online. The audience was shopping through a different set of windows, and the agency needed to work with the people standing in them. ↗

An invitation for the people sending invitations

One of her recurring events makes the logic of the business especially visible. The A List hosts a mixer for talent assistants, people whose working lives involve making other people’s arrangements. At the third annual edition, more than 250 attended, drawn from over 60 talent agencies. For an afternoon, the appointment was theirs. ↗

The welcome had some engineering behind it. Peoplehood ran short, face-to-face introductions in groups of 28 during the first hour. Afterwards came drinks, pizza and the chance to experience a showroom appointment themselves. A party can leave strangers marooned beside the refreshments. This one gave them a way to begin talking before asking them to mingle. ↗

Margolis’s hiring preferences fit that approach. She talks about warmth, a good attitude and attention to how words make another person feel. The work can be intense, with events followed by travel and another working morning. Hospitality has to survive the schedule. Her concern is that the people handling the welcome know how to offer one. ↗

“When I’m interviewing people, I look for warmth.”

Ashlee Margolis, 2025

The choices behind the guest list

A larger agency also needs people who can organize the founder’s instincts. Jenine Leigh-Pollard joined in early 2021; Margolis credits her with bringing structure to an already profitable company. By December 2025, reporting described about 45 employees and roughly 20,000 square feet across four Beverly Hills buildings. The A List had also acquired Shana Honeyman’s luxury showroom agency, adding its stylist relationships to the wider business. ↗

Those details describe a particular moment in the company’s expansion. They also show how far the operation had traveled from bags at home. A founder could once handle an introduction herself; a team spread across buildings needs ways to coordinate the work. Margolis has spoken about wanting a larger presence in Europe, Miami and Chicago. Those are ambitions, with the next chapter still to be written. ↗

The decisions about access have also drawn scrutiny. In June 2024, an internal email became public in which Margolis instructed staff to pause work with celebrities, influencers or tastemakers posting against Israel. The reported instruction included people describing Israel’s military operations in Gaza as genocide. The episode put a political boundary around her professional network and raised a difficult question for a business built on relationships: who gets excluded, and on whose terms? ↗

Making room for another purpose

Her network has another use when it brings attention to community organizations. Step Up named her an executive honoree at its 2024 Inspiration Awards, recognizing a longtime advocate. She has described giving the organization a presence in the showroom, so that visitors encountering brands can also encounter a cause and hear how to get involved. An introduction can lead somewhere other than a wardrobe. ↗

In 2025, the agency ran a fire-relief effort that Margolis said lasted three months. The program had public routes for appointments, volunteering and donations. It put the company’s ability to gather people and products to a different purpose. The work she usually describes in terms of clients and guests became a way to connect displaced families with practical help. ↗

The company itself describes social, environmental and human-rights issues as part of its mission. That language matters most when attached to an actual activity: a charity introduced to a visitor, a relief appointment arranged, an offer of goods matched with somebody who needs them. In those moments, the ordinary skills of an agency have an application beyond the next launch. ↗

The party planner, off the clock

At home, Margolis has a husband and three sons. During the period she worked from her bedroom in 2020, she enjoyed having meals with her family and taking an evening walk without her phone. She also learned to use the oven, which she said astonished her mother. Even someone accustomed to organizing complicated occasions can discover a household appliance rather late in the proceedings. ↗

Music supplies another recurring thread. She loves R&B, soul and hip-hop, and has admitted to suggesting a dance party when clients ask for dinner. It is a small, funny expression of her interest in the energy of a gathering. The person planning the seating would quite like everyone to stand up. ↗

By January 2026, her working day was moving among showroom appointments, departmental meetings, new business and an upcoming F1 project. Away from that calendar, she singled out Burning Man for its spontaneity and time off her phone. She spends her professional life arranging encounters. One of her pleasures is leaving enough space for an encounter she has not arranged. ↗

The thread through her story remains the act of bringing people together. The early bags needed recipients. The growing agency needed colleagues and collaborators. The assistants needed a chance to meet each other. Each occasion asks a slightly different question of the host. Margolis has made those questions her working life. And, whenever the brief allows it, she would still like a dance floor.