2 8 SXS W O R L D | M A R C H 8 , 2 0 1 8 | SXSW.COM
It has been an insane year for Amber Venz Box. In the course of
12 months, her online-shopping app, LIKEtoKNOW.it (owned by
her Dallas-based company rewardStyle) has drummed up more
traffic than Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter did in the
same length of time.
"If you look at how long it took those platforms to reach
1 million users, we did it faster than all of them," says Box,
who began her career as a WordPress fashion blogger in
2010 and launched rewardStyle in 2011. She has since
become a disrupter in the rapidly-changing retail landscape.
At last year's SXSW Interactive, the Forbes 30 Under 30
entrepreneur announced that rewardStyle was launching the
LIKEtoKNOW.it app for online shopping. The app helps shop-
pers easily purchase products that catch their eye on social
media. Just take a screenshot of the item, and you receive a
push notification within seconds with information about the
product and where to buy it.
Since the app's launch, Box and her husband Baxter Box
(who serves as company CEO) report that the number
of shoppers using LTKI has more than tripled, while the
number of influencers has more than doubled. There are
also some 4,200 retailers on the platform that have more
than a million brands.
Only four years ago, Box noted how social media was driving
shopping and that "social shopping" — tastes and trends
shaped by peers in social media — was growing. In 2014, her
company started LIKEtoKNOW.it as a way for creators to
make money when a follower made a purchase based on his or
her post. Box had been a personal shopper herself and realized
"You can be a creator just by
the phone that you have in your
hand. You have the platform to
distribute your content now."
Amber Venz Box:
Disrupting the
Retail Landscape
By Shermakaye Bass
Amber Venz Box. Photo by Mindy Bird
