The Glossy 50 honors the year’s biggest changemakers across fashion and beauty. More from the series →
In five years, ShopMy has gone from idea to industry darling, becoming a leader in creator-led marketing and garnering a $1.5 billion valuation in October during its third fund raise.
“[The $1.5 billion valuation] felt like a huge milestone for us,” said Tiffany Lopinsky, co-founder and president of ShopMy. “It’s a culmination of a lot of different things, but definitely the biggest headline [of our year].”
ShopMy sells itself as the foil to the social media algorithm. Instead of consumers sifting through shopping recommendations spread across social channels like TikTok or Instagram, ShopMy allows them to purchase products specifically curated by creators, stylists, brand founders and celebrities. It connects these creators with brands to monetize product recommendations with affiliate links and partnerships.
In layman’s terms, with ShopMy, shoppers got a new way to find more thoughtful recommendations, and creators got a new way to generate and track commissions from brands for driving online sales.
“We saw a white space and felt like the whole concept of affiliate was so underutilized,” Lopinsky told Glossy. “It’s something that brands love — the idea that you’re paying per sale [instead of] just kind of flying blind.”
ShopMy launched in 2020 and provides competition for companies like LTK, previously called RewardStyle, which was a pioneer in the space when it launched in 2011.
So far, ShopMy has generated more than $1 billion in sales volume from 45,000 brand partnerships with more than 185,000 creators.
In January, the team raised $77.5 million at a $410 million valuation, led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Then, in October, the company raised an additional $70 million in funding at a $1.5 billion valuation.
Investors for its recent round include those who use the platform, like Sofia Richie Grainge and Aimee Song, plus Revolve’s Raissa Gerona and Beautycounter founder Gregg Renfrew. The round was led by investment management firm Avenir with participation from Menlo Ventures, and included additional investment from Bessemer and Bain.
In July, ShopMy took a big swing by launching a consumer shopping vertical called Circles, allowing it to directly host product curations. Through its website and app, consumers can now bookmark and shop from specific creators and category buckets, like “quiet luxury” or “brides-to-be.”
“Bringing consumers into the ecosystem was something that just made complete sense for us,” Lopinsky said. “We think of influencers as mini retailers, like a mini wholesaler, so they could serve their customers better if they knew more about them.”
The move enables ShopMy to collect more data on consumers, including their shopping habits and brand and category preferences. It allows ShopMy to play a larger role in the overall retail ecosystem by bypassing social media channels, where creators often share recommendations and affiliate links.
Lopinsky told Glossy the team will use the latest funding to invest in products and engineers to further expand its share of the market. It’s one way to safeguard ShopMy’s future through scale.
“Anyone could copy our software of what we do,” she said. “But they can’t really copy the network that moves $100 million in sales a month, all attributed to an influencer. So if we start to learn more about consumers, we can also give brands a very valuable tool.”
