28 REWARD STYLE

For giving influencers a must-have accessory

RRewardstyle is realizing the social media world’s longtime dream of converting influence into e-commerce opportunity. Founder Amber Venz Box has channeled her frustration as a fashion blogger who wanted to make more money into a full suite of back-end publishing and tracking tools. Today, Rewardstyle allows her and her fellow bloggers and Instagram personalities the chance to earn commissions on the products they promote. “Our mission is making [influencers] as economically successful as possible,” she says. Users who like a Rewardstyle influencer’s ’gram receive an email on where to buy the featured look, a clever work-around that avoids forcing people to shop while they’re browsing their feeds. Venz Box negotiates commissions for influencers and provides tools to help them track the impact of their posts. In 2016, Rewardstyle grew its influencer network to 11,000 people (more than 100,000 have applied) and drove more than $700 million in sales for its retail partners, which include more than 4,000 stores and brands, among them Kate Spade and Sephora. Its stylish crew now creates original content for 30,000 products daily, much of it on Instagram. (Rewardstyle’s Instagram-optimized Liketoknow.it platform drives almost 30% of the company’s sales.) The company’s data and its relationships help it make the best matches between retailers and pitch folk. “If [brands] want someone who drives a high volume of sales in accessories from $50 to $100 and lives in the Midwest,” Venz Box says, “we can [connect them with] that person.” As the shopping potential of Pinterest and Snapchat grows, Rewardstyle is pushing to bring its tools to those platforms next.