Pinterest has acquired The |Yes, an AI-powered shopping service focused on fashion, although terms of the deal were not disclosed. Pinterest has ambitious commercial shopping ambitions
Swati Bhat
Pic Courtesy: Pinterest x The Yes
The Yes was founded by former Stitch Fix COO Julie Bornstein and co-founder, Amit Aggarwal, and is honed on providing users a personalised shopping feed whereby technology 'learns' a user’s style as they shop across hundreds of online fashion platforms and websites. Its AI will fast-track Pinterest’s shopping ambitions and establish a new strategic organisation.
While Pinterest is an image-sharing service and source of discovery, The Yes’s brand relationships and shopping expertise can potentially be applied to other categories on Pinterest such as home, beauty and food.
The acquisition will see Ms Bornstein report to Pinterest’s co-founder and CEO, Ben Silbermann, who will lead shopping vision and strategy across Pinterest. The new management team will create a new and strategic organisation dedicated to Pinterest’s taste-driven shopping efforts to help steer the evolution of features for Pinners and merchants on Pinterest, a press release stated.
“I’ve spent my career at the intersection of shopping, fashion and technology and have seen firsthand the valuable impact of building technology that enables brands to join a platform with ease while enabling customers to share their preferences,” Bornstein said. “Joining forces with Pinterest to broaden our reach utilizing such an inspirational platform is an exciting and ideal next step for our team and technology.”
As a result of the acquisition, The Yes will shut down its app and site and will focus solely on Pinterest.
Ben Silbermann commented: “The Yes team are experts in building an end-to-end shopping experience. They share our vision of making it simple to find the right products that are personalized for you based on your taste and style. We’re very excited about The Yes’s talented team and technology as we build dedicated shopping experiences on Pinterest.