Affiliate Marketing Platform ShopMy Raises $8 Million in Series A Funding
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ShopMy, a platform that allows creators to streamline their affiliate marketing and paid sponsorships efforts with brands that is used by the likes of Gucci Westman and Olivia Palermo, has closed $8 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by Granite Telecom chief operating officer Rand Currier, as well as a group of private investors including Justin Kan, the founder of video livestreaming service Twitch, which he sold to Amazon in 2014.
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ShopMy, formerly known as ShopMy Shelf, was founded in 2020 by Chris Tinsley, Harry Rein and Tiffany Lopinsky — a trio of technologists out of MIT and Harvard — to simplify the monetization process for creators who frequently share their product recommendations over social media by offering access to commissionable products and using a data-driven approach to connect brands with creators.
The company has more than 10,000 creators on the platform and projected revenues of around $10 million for 2023.
It began by focusing solely on beauty creators but more recently has expanded to a number of categories including fashion, wellness and nutrition, with beauty now accounting for about 65 percent of the business.
Creators on the platform include Palermo, Westman, Marianna Hewitt, Stephanie Shepherd, Dr. Shereene Idriss, Ash K Holm, Katie Jane Hughes, Sean Garrette, Dr. Simon Ourion and more. Brand and retail partners, meanwhile, include Westman’s Westman Atelier, Topicals, Tower 28, Tatcha, Dermstore, Nordstrom, Living Proof and Shopbop.
“The company really had its genesis at MIT where we were doing a lot of primary research on the creator economy and the result of our research was that there seemed to be a huge swath of creators who were very passionate about sharing their reputations on social media, but who chose not to utilize any sort of performance marketing tools because they were so cumbersome and clunky to use,” ShopMy chief executive officer and cofounder Chris Tinsley said in an interview. “Our goal was to eliminate this friction and make it as easy as possible for a content creator to showcase their product recommendations over social media and do so in a way that they could monetize their content.”
Via the platform, creators can participate in collaborations and receive gifted products from any of the 200-plus brand partners, who pay a monthly subscription to ShopMy, while brands have access to creators’ performances, from clicks, engagement and orders to related data, for every product and brand they recommend.
The creators then earn a commission through an affiliate program, with brands offering between 10 to 40 percent commission rates on products sold through their shelf, a dedicated recommendations page. The monthly earning opportunity on the site for experts is $35,000, according to ShopMy.
According to ShopMy, the Series A funding will allow the team to scale engineering product and design, build a mobile app version of the platform and expand their VIP shop manager program.
Of the investment, Kan said: “I am a strong believer that collaboration between content creators and brands will define the next decade of advertising and the ShopMy platform is the most impressive platform I’ve seen in the space. Their thoughtful approach to the underlying data infrastructure and focus on user experience has really set them apart — I’m excited to be a part of it.”
Currier added: “Influencer marketing is one of the fastest-growing industries today and ShopMy has emerged at the forefront of companies leading the future of this space. With the number-one platform for product promotion on social and established relationships with over 40,000 brands, ShopMy unlocks a world of opportunity for content creators to monetize their popularity.”
