Whereas creators’ commissions may very well be minimize due to the brand new cut up mannequin, ShopMy is pitching its procuring platform to manufacturers and creators as further publicity and gross sales conversion by time — shoppers can wishlist merchandise and purchase later, which the startup says helps creators seize fee that they’d in any other case lose in the event that they weren’t the final individual to submit the hyperlink.
“In some methods, ShopMy has at all times been invisible,” Lopinsky says. “So now we’re rolling out a brand-new option to uncover merchandise out of your favorite tastemakers’ suggestions, with out having to sift by a lot content material.”
Verified product critiques are additionally built-in into the brand new platform, following ShopMy’s acquisition of brand name evaluate platform Thingtesting earlier this 12 months. ShopMy’s procuring platform will initially be web-only, however Rein says it plans to roll out an app by early 2026.
Curation over algorithm
ShopMy isn’t the primary affiliate platform to launch a shopper procuring platform. LTK launched its consumer-facing procuring app in 2017, earlier than relaunching it this 12 months to concentrate on video-first content material, to try to preserve tempo with social media platforms’ consistently altering algorithms.
However ShopMy’s co-founders say its strategy diverges from that of rivals as it’s pitching the platform as curation-first, in addition to a everlasting archive of creators’ suggestions, quite than trying to consistently keep on the entrance foot of algorithm updates. It’s because of this that ShopMy’s co-founders additionally consider their DTC platform holds extra promise than in-app shopping has for social media platforms.
“These platforms are at their core leisure platforms, and ours is totally not leisure, it’s purely procuring,” Rein says. “It’s very onerous to have these in the identical platform. You solely have a specific amount of tabs and surfaces you’ll be able to present by default, so when a social platform rolls out procuring because the fourth tab, with all of the content material creation instruments, it feels slightly muddled.”
That mentioned, ShopMy isn’t attempting to bypass the social media platforms upon which the complete affiliate trade depends — creators received’t submit immediately on its platform, however they are going to proceed posting on their socials. As an alternative, it’s aiming to be a “device within the background”, to assist creators give their social content material an extended shelf life by cataloguing their suggestions by time.
This might include its personal challenges. ShopMy has grown quick due to the demonstrable ROI and quantifiable insights it provides manufacturers, in addition to the bridge it supplies to creators to succeed in extra model companions. However attracting and changing shoppers on to yet one more procuring platform — the place multi-brand e-commerce websites have struggled to keep up buyer loyalty — is a mammoth job. It additionally locations the startup in competitors with tech firms like OpenAI and Google, who’re inserting billions of {dollars} behind their race to change into shoppers’ go-to procuring funnel immediately by AI search.
Nonetheless, ShopMy is betting on the belief that the industrial energy of the influencer isn’t disappearing any time quickly, and is hoping that its personalised, curatorial strategy will win shoppers by serving to to chop by the algorithm’s noise.
“The brand new platform multiplies creators’ suggestions on social, in order that they earn much more and it’s extra everlasting,” Rein says.
The place a creator’s viewers could have missed their story submit of a jacket on Saturday, for instance, a client can now discover that advice by ShopMy’s commerce platform on Monday, and even the following month, once they’re particularly trying to find a jacket.
It’s this perception that the fleeting nature of social media posts is limiting from a client standpoint, which underpins ShopMy’s new shopper play.
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