ShopInterest announced on Tuesday that it has received a "small, undisclosed investment" from seed fund and startup accelerator 500 Startups, TechCrunch reports.
Launched in late June, ShopInterest is a startup e-commerce platform that lets users turn their Pinterest boards into online stores. Inspired by social shopping sites like Fab.com, ShopInterest has been called the "Shopify for Pinterest" by its founders, TechCrunch notes.
The new investment by 500 Startups, via Mexican.VC., is the first the startup accelerator "has made into the Pinterest ecosystem," said ShopInterest CEO Francisco Guerrero, who is also the creator of Pinterest analytics platform Pintics.
According to the ShopInterest blog, Pintics will be shut down next month and users will transition to Pinfluencer.com, as the old Pintics team channels their full attention to this new e-commerce venture.
Social shopping is a growing trend that some are hailing as the future of e-commerce, so it seems almost inevitable that startups like ShopInterest would want to leverage on Pinterest's burgeoning success by tapping into this innovative purchasing model.
"After we saw the large volume of sales generated via Pinterest, we decided to help regular users join in the fun and profits,” Guerrero told TechCrunch in June.
According to a new study by RichRelevance, Pinterest users drive the highest average spending per online shopping session compared to users on Facebook and Twitter, brandchannel.com notes.
"Pinterest has found an optimal balance between aspirational browsing and shopping. Social shopping is more about discovery, conversations and relationship building, something that’s apparent in the way Pinterest users interact," said Leo Chen, former Amazon product manager and current co-founder of iPad fashion and shopping app Monogram.
For the moment, it is unclear as to how successful ShopInterest is going to be in creating a profitable e-commerce platform that appeals to a wide range of Pinterest users.
But if this new investment by 500 Startups (a well known accelerator that has invested in startups like universal translator Babelverse and Chen's Monogram app) is anything to go by, it seems ShopInterest may be heading in the right direction.
"We are...extremely happy to join Mexican.VC and the 500 Startups family, and with their support, we plan to make ShopInterest.co the best eCommerce solution for anyone using Pinterest," the startup noted on its blog.