Flies, Grasshoppers, and Pinterest
"Thomas Watson Jr. told Wharton students in 1973 that good design is good business. Innovation today is inextrivably linked with design and design has become a decisive advantage in countless industries, not to mention a crucial tool to ward of commoditization. Companies singing the design gospel range from Comcast to Pinterest to Starbucks." (Fast Company) This movement is gaining momentum by the day and the demand for young designers is close to that of young engineers when Microsoft entered the terrain.
About this New Killer App
The creator of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann, looks to be working non-stop hours to create a product
that transcends generations. Moms are calling it online porn while men are using it to help solve their simple DIY needs. More interesting than anything, it is completely free. The company is currently making $0; but, the data speaks for itself. In the US alone, 1.5 billion users view the site monthly. Stores like Barneys New York, Nordstrom, Sephora, Victoria's Secret, and Williams-Sonoma are seeing huge online traffic growth ranging up to 2,001% in a month. Even more important of a statistic is the amount of money that Pinterest generates on average order value when a user follows through on a purchase seen from its site: $179.36. Its competitors (Twitter and Facebook) are only generating $68.78 and $80.22 respectively. This alone has designers, business men, and even the old grannies walking across the street stop and gawlk. A company with no profits, generating this much revenue for other companies. This must be a marketers fairy tale.
Solving a Problem with Insects and Spiders
Ben Silbermann, the owner and creator of Pinterest, wanted to solve a big problem. After working for the likes of Google, he began seeing that the way in which the world wide web is laid out is entirely inefficient. It is not in human terms, but rather through a series of ever-more-specific menus, making the kinds of free-associative leaps that routinely happen near impossible. Developing Pinterest, the first site to ever succeed in massively bringing the curated vibe to the user experience, has helped to afford people the ability to shop freely through many different locations with the click of a button. No mess, no fuss. The web just became a whole lot flatter.
Mama always said there's an awful lot you can tell about a person by their shoes. Where they're going. Where they've been. Ben Silbermann has worn an awful lot of shoes. The most particular that strike a chord with the Pinterest inventor is that of his collector background. As a boy he would collect bugs. All kinds: flies, grasshoppers, weevils, you name it. He'd pin them to a piece of cardboard, dry them, tag them, and put them in little shadow boxes, creating his own private museum of natural history. This fascination never went away. Using his Midwestern roots and bug collector start-up, he's been able to generate nearly $138 million in funding.
Where to go from Here?
According to Sam Calagione in Brewing up a Business, "if an innovative idea was meant to succeed, it will, and if it wasn't it won't. God is in the details. The saying is not: God 2.0 is in the details." Pinterest has been ironing out their details. Offering only a certain number of invitations, the site has urged people to respect their taste and those that they know. Pinterest urges its consumers to pin wisely as their pins set the tone for their community. People can no longer hide behind the screen in front of them, but rather must understand that the products and ideas they have chosen represent themselves on a new unique level. E-commerce is on a new upward trend. "The E-commerce 1.0 was driven by digital cameras, electronics, hard goods- things with technical specs that you can plot on a chart. But why does someone pay $25,000 for a Hermes handbag? It's not rational. It's based on taste; it's totally amorphous and not trackable. That's the new E-commerce 2.0." (FastCompany) And that's where Pinterest is nicely positioning themselves. They have content on their site that holds a high price tag. The company could begin by selling goods on pinboards on behalf of their retailers or charge a percentage for each sale generated from the site.
The options are endless and Ben Silbermann knows it. Smiling in a sly manner, he refuses to give away their current ideas for moving into this market to Fast Company journalists, only stating that "we have a pretty good sense" (FastCompany). The world is left to project and wonder where this investing, internet giant is going to end up. Somewhere in between spiders, caterpillers, and pinned butterflies; you might find the answer.