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In the 14th edition of Signals, writer Emily Nabnian explores what happens when two distinct desires merge into one. The rallying cry for “bringing personality back to activewear,” she writes, “is epitomized through late 90s and early 2000s sportswear references,” and amplified through calls to “stop sweating in plastic.” “When vintage reads as cotton and cotton reads as natural and therefore better,” Nabnian wonders, “it raises the question: are these actually two separate trends, or signs of a broader rejection of what modern performancewear has become?” By looking closely at brands like CSB, Dairy Boy, and H-O-R-S-E, she dissects the anatomy of a trend: why brands are making what they’re making, and how long consumers will keep buying into it. Read more in Signals, a ShopMy publication: https://lnkd.in/eHyRue_2

Creators drive a third of annual brand GMV during November and December alone. Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) anchor the season and present one of the greatest opportunities to turn creator content into immediate revenue. Unsurprisingly, this often leads to creators being overwhelmed with inbound requests. As a brand, you can combat this inbox overload by aligning on a promotion strategy early and sharing it with creators well in advance. The more time the creators you partner with have to plan, the more likely your products are to make it into their content. Planning ahead is just one of the strategies we covered in last week’s webinar on making the most of BFCM. From gifting early to amplifying creator content with Opportunities and Spotlights to keeping momentum going through December, we’ve rounded up the key takeaways in our latest blog post: https://lnkd.in/eZZxbU-U

In consumer-facing industries like fashion, beauty, wellness, and CPG, the line between founder and creator is increasingly blurred. But it wasn’t always this way. When Crown Affair founder Dianna Cohen met with Signals editor Emma Apple Chozick in 2022 and mentioned her nagging suspicion that she should get on TikTok, it wasn’t a given. Yet, Cohen had an unshakeable feeling that “showing up as herself might matter.” She was right. In the years since acting on that inkling, Cohen’s “personal channels have become a meaningful pillar of the brand’s larger world,” Chozick writes. More than 6 million people have watched the founder’s viral air-dry method on TikTok and another 20,000 read her Substack, Take Your Time, where she writes about the rituals and references shaping her taste. Now, Cohen is hardly alone in her founder-creative multi-hyphenate status. Melanie Masarin, the founder of cult-favorite non-alcoholic apéritif Ghia, also finds the overlap between personal and brand worlds natural — though she navigates the two carefully. “Ghia is way, way bigger than I am,” Masarin says. “Brands built around a single person can cap their own growth, because ultimately you want people to feel the product is for them.” In other words, with or without a founder on social media, a brand’s products must stand on their own. As Cohen puts it, “I’ve always viewed founder visibility as an entry point, not the destination.” “At its best,” Chozick proposes, “founder-led storytelling gives consumers context: why this product exists, what references shaped it, what values hold it together.” So, while not every founder needs a following in 2026, every brand needs a point of view clear enough that people understand why it exists. Read more about founders with a following in Signals, a ShopMy publication: https://lnkd.in/gfYuyWmq

More often than not, searching for the perfect end table or blazer starts with a half-baked vision that you can’t quite put into words. And many people don’t feel comfortable clicking “Add to Cart” until at least one friend, neighbor, or coworker says, “You’re going to love this.” Each t-shirt, bracelet, serum, and vase that you come across on ShopMy is handpicked and vetted by somebody else. Our reimagined app takes your preferences — based on the creators you follow, the brands you swear by, and the products you return to time and again — and meets you wherever you are in your shopping, with recommendations you can trust. Find out what it’s like to shop in good company with: ▪️ A personalized homepage, shaped by products, brands, and creators you love, plus handpicked features from our editors and shoppable creator posts. ▪️ Search that works whether you know exactly what you want or just have a hunch. Try a product name, a creator's collection, or a vibe like "summer in Positano," then keep chatting to narrow it down. ▪️ Made-for-you "Moments," or a shop built around your taste and the occasion at hand. Learn more about our Shopper app today: https://lnkd.in/eDvsgEG4

The longer a creator works with a brand, the better they understand its products, and the better they get at presenting them in ways that convert. In our latest whitepaper, we explore this phenomenon, defined as the Compounding Trust Effect, through ShopMy data and conversations with creators and brands who have experienced it firsthand. From a creator’s first to their 15th link to a brand, average orders-per-link increase by 76%. ShopMy Icon Julia McGuire attributes this lift to the intimacy that comes from sharing what she actually buys. “I think it is best to prioritize brands that you share often and know resonate well with your audience already,” she says. “It can be really tempting to accept every Opportunity or highlight the sales you are seeing others push, but what you are authentically shopping for yourself always performs best.” That authenticity bodes well for brands, too. 63% of overall GMV for ShopMy's top-performing brands comes from relationships older than six months. The value of that familiarity rises with demand, which makes moments like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, now on the horizon, even more lucrative for brands that have invested in long-term creator relationships. To learn more about the Compounding Trust Effect, download our latest research: https://lnkd.in/ejgCciJB

Vintage-inspired jewelry line Electric Picks Jewelry knows partnership ads are an important part of a brand’s overall creative mix. But historically, the brand’s paid social strategy was hard to sustain, thanks to heavy upfront investments in vetting talent and the high cost of creating quality content for briefed ads. Over the past few months, Electric Picks has used Spotlights to turn partnership ads into a scalable, high-impact performance channel. Starting with a library of pre-approved, proven-to-convert content has given the brand freedom to test different types of creative and scale winners, thanks to real-time ROAS reads. Since launching Spotlights, the brand has gone from running three or four partnership ads at a time to more than 80 in its first three months. Overall, they’ve seen ROAS double from prior partnership ads and whitelisting, all without the burden of briefing and paying for net-new content. “Going into any kind of paid media spend with some level of certainty has been a game changer,” says David Kobi, Head of Marketing & E-Commerce at Electric Picks. “We’re leaning into strength as opposed to testing something brand new.” Visit our blog to learn more about how your brand can leverage Spotlights: https://lnkd.in/g8QHZyxV

Creators often tell us that their best-performing content revolves around products and brands that they genuinely love and use in everyday life. But those organic moments pass quickly — along with their earning potential — and many of the creators we work with speak to the pressure they feel to post new content to keep up. New York City-based fashion and lifestyle creator @marissayaps has used ShopMy to drive steady revenue through months of consistent posting. But every piece of organic content ran into the same ceiling: only so many people would see it before her Story expired or her in-feed post was buried under whatever came next. On top of the demands of her full-time role, this is what initially attracted Marissa to Spotlights. “Spotlights has been a game changer for me,” she says. “Content I shared months ago has been given a second, third, or sometimes even fourth life by turning on Instant Spotlights, in addition to helping me reach new audiences as well.” Since enabling Instant Spotlights, Marissa has grown earnings from an existing set of content by more than 500x. Now, over 60% of her lifetime ShopMy earnings come from Spotlights. “I love how hands-off and effortless it is,” she continues. “Especially as a creator balancing content and a full-time career.” Visit our blog to learn more about how Spotlights works for creators: https://lnkd.in/gbkR_AZp

Today, ShopMy is launching Spotlights, a performance marketing product that turns proven creator content into paid media that brands can run at scale on Meta and TikTok, all from within our platform. As ad fatigue rises, paid performance on social channels increasingly relies on a diverse library of organic creative. The brands we work with asked for more of this content, faster, and the ability to track and double down on what's working even faster than that. Spotlights is our answer, removing the upfront investments of time and money that brands typically make for paid partnerships, and replacing them with a pay-for-performance model. Using our affiliate data, brands choose from creator posts that are already converting organically. Creator approval is built into the streamlined workflow, meaning a mention can become a live Spotlight in seconds. As one brand put it, “Spotlights is the word-of-mouth ad that I’ve been trying to bring to life.” Learn more about Spotlights: https://lnkd.in/gTpy2AHd

This week, ShopMy's shopper app was named a finalist for Best E-Commerce Technology in the 2026 Digiday Technology Awards. Six years of powering creator-brand relationships has convinced us that commerce should be rebuilt around trust. The same recommendations that drive our affiliate and performance products also shape a more confident shopping experience, with purchase decisions backed by real opinions, taste, and expertise. Our app puts that conviction in shoppers' hands, introducing a destination for discovering and saving products that are actually worth buying. Read more in Digiday: https://lnkd.in/g9GryXkr

In the 11th edition of Signals, Emma Apple Chozick examines eyewear’s ability to subtly but decisively alter perception for the wearer and those surrounding them. Impeccably designed stores offering shelves of shades are surfacing, seemingly overnight, throughout New York’s West Village, Paris's Le Marais neighborhood, London, and Los Angeles. “Sunglasses retail now seems to offer fashion a similar kind of flexibility,” Chozick writes. “A compact product with a relatively low barrier to entry, a wide price ladder, and enough visual impact to support an entire world around it.” ShopMy data reflects this growth. Eyewear and sunglasses are one of our platform’s fastest-growing categories, with GMV up 4.5x year over year. Warby Parker, the top-growing brand in the category, is up more than 250% year-over-year. The boom makes sense when you consider what sunglasses offer both brands and shoppers: transformation without commitment. Because they sit directly on the face, they can instantly change how a person reads: polished, anonymous, sporty, elevated, quirky, or like they have somewhere better to be. Read more about the power of eyewear in Signals, a ShopMy publication: https://lnkd.in/gB4jkvaF