Pinterest took another step toward its goal of becoming more commerce-focused Thursday (June 2) with the acquisition of THE YES, an online fashion shopping platform, according to a press release.
“With hundreds of brand merchants on its platform, the team at THE YES has built an extensive fashion taxonomy that uses human expertise and machine learning to power a comprehensive algorithm in fashion,” the social media platform said on its website. “THE YES’s brand relationships and shopping expertise can potentially be applied to other categories on Pinterest such as home, beauty and food.”
Read more: Pinterest Makes Itself More Shoppable
Founded in 2018 by CEO Julie Bornstein and CTO Amit Aggarwal, THE YES has scaled over the years to offer users personalized daily shopping feeds that learns their tastes as they buy from merchants.
When the transaction closes later this year, Bornstein will report to Pinterest CEO and Co-founder Ben Silbermann, and will lead the company’s shopping vision and strategy, with the rest of the YES team joining Pinterest.
After closing, Pinterest said it will “sunset” the THE YES app and website to allow the merged teams to focus on technology integration and evolving our shopping vision.”
During an end-of-quarter earrings call in April, Silbermann outlined the company’s strategy to make Pinterest more shoppable, a trend other social media platforms have embraced to recoup ad dollars lost when Apple changed its iOS data privacy rules.
Silbermann said the company’s strategy began with a verified merchant program before moving to more advanced product upload catalog capabilities.
“This quarter, we expanded that to include a Pinterest API for shopping, as well as a partnership with WooCommerce that gives millions of merchants the power to turn their product catalogs into shoppable, product pins,” he said.
See also: Diversification Key to Online Retailers’ Future
Pinterest’s move comes at a time when a majority online sellers are relying on social media to do business. As PYMNTS research has found, two-thirds of marketplace sellers use social media to promote products, while 49% of marketplace-reliant companies say they plan to use social media to grow their brand.
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