Pinterest announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire THE YES, an AI-powered shopping platform for fashion that enables users to shop a personalized feed based on the user’s active input on brand, style, and size.
Pinterest believes that THE YES’s leadership, innovative technology, and talented team, combining shopping expertise with fashion industry credibility, will help accelerate Pinterest’s vision for it to be the home of taste-driven shopping.
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 YES’s brand relationships and shopping expertise can potentially be applied to other categories on Pinterest such as home, beauty, and food.
New Shopping Vision for Pinterest
THE YES was founded in 2018 by CEO Julie Bornstein, an eCommerce and fashion industry veteran and CTO, Amit Aggarwal, a tech industry veteran. Over the past several years, THE YES has scaled to provide a personalized daily shopping feed that learns a user’s style as they shop with hundreds of merchants, including global brands and discovery brands across the fashion spectrum.
Upon the closing of the transaction, Julie will report to Pinterest’s Co-Founder and CEO, Ben Silbermann, and will lead the shopping vision and strategy across Pinterest, creating a new and strategic organization dedicated to Pinterest’s taste-driven shopping efforts that will help steer the evolution of features for Pinners and merchants on Pinterest.
Pinterest is excited to welcome THE YES team to join Pinterest following the closing of the transaction.
Ben Silbermann, Co-Founder and CEO of Pinterest stated:
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.
Julie Bornstein, Founder and CEO of THE YES stated:
I’ve spent my career at the intersection of shopping, fashion and technology and have seen first-hand the valuable impact of building technology that enables brands to join a platform with ease while enabling customers to share their preferences. 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.
Next Steps for Pinterest
Pinterest is a shopping platform that brings together the unique commercial intent of its audience and the ability to visually explore products as you would in a magazine or catalog. In a world of impulse buying, Pinterest is designed to enable inspired shopping. It’s like a catalog, personalized to your unique tastes.
In the months following the closing of the transaction, Pinterest plans to sunset THE YES app and website to allow the merged teams to focus on technology integration and evolve their shopping vision.
Subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2022.
The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
