ShopStyle is a digital shopping platform owned by Ebates. [1] Launched in 2007 as a Web search engine for fashion, it was thereafter transformed into a fashion marketplace and inspiration engine. [2] ShopStyle lists over 14 million products across apparel, accessories, beauty, home furnishings and kids' items. It drives $1 billion in gross sales to its global network of 1,400 retailers. [3] ShopStyle is also the commerce engine behind Collective Voice, a creator marketing company with over 14,000 bloggers, vloggers and social media users, [4] who use ShopStyle’s platform to earn money from the sales they drive to retailers.
ShopStyle was thought-up by San Francisco-based UK expat Andy Moss [5] in 2006 while he was running local e-commerce website Cairo[ citation needed ] and noticed that shoes were among the most popular items searched for there. [6] [7] The technology behind ShopStyle was created by a group of engineers Moss had met while working at Ariba (now SAP Ariba), including Trey Matteson, [8] Garrick Toubassi [9] and Mike Lenz. [10] The US website launched in February 2007 with a focus on aesthetics and user experience in an attempt to recreate a magazine-like experience digitally. It was variously described as an online equivalent of a shopping mall or a shoppable digital magazine. [7]
In September 2007 PopSugar Inc. (then Sugar Publishing) purchased ShopStyle for an undisclosed sum. [11] [12] After the acquisition, ShopStyle focused its efforts on broadening out the product count, retailer expansion and becoming a search engine for fashion [13] By the end of 2015 ShopStyle’s global sites generated five million searches per week and listed 12 million products from 1,400 retailers. [14]
In 2017, ShopStyle was bought by Ebates, known now as Rakuten Rewards. [15]