From Pinners to Winners…

You haven’t heard of Target’s newest designers? You must not be on Pinterest.

Every year Target unveils its latest design partnerships to the world. Historically, the bulls-eye logoed corporation has done dealings with household names (for the fashion-minded, at least) such as Nate Berkus, FEED USA and Missoni. This year, however, they tried something new. Perhaps with goals along the same lines of Donna Karan, Target recently announced a new partnership with three regular “real people” pinners. The lucky designers, Joy Cho of Oh Joy!, Jan Halvarson of Poppytalk and Kate Arends of Wit & Delight, may be unfamiliar to you, but are considered the “Top Influencers” on Pinterest, according to Mashable.

What’s Pinterest’s stake in all this? Well, you may have heard in mid-January that Pinterest, like many other social media platforms, is taking a harder look at profitability. With the introduction of Rich Pins in 2013, Pinterest had a very good year financially. Rich Pins allow users to mark each post with product pins, place pins, article pins, movie pins and recipe pins. Those who are business savvy, however, have set their sights on the product pins, which allow retailers to attach real-time pricing to the product, along with an instant “buy this” link. Just as Amazon has recognized the value of capitalizing on the impulse buy, Pinterest is experimenting by avoiding that whole “pin and forget” trend that has been common among pinners to date.

Mimicking other corporate gods Nordstrom and Disney, Target has capitalized on Pinterest’s Rich Pins and created the Awesome Shop, which invites online shoppers to peruse Target products trending on Pinterest with full pricing information and the immediate option to buy PLUS notifications when products you’ve pinned have dropped in price.

Can shopping get any easier? I’d say I doubt that it could, but technology has proven me wrong before. So much new, fast-moving innovation to learn! Are my eyes Target bulls-eyes yet?!