A Message To Our ShopStyle Collective Community

To Our ShopStyle Collective Community: 

Last week we posted our support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and acknowledged that we have much work to do on our own to help dismantle systemic racism. 

I want to first highlight that we are acutely aware of the fact that as a company ShopStyle Collective has many shortcomings around diversity & inclusion, from our lack of Black and minority employees to the limited number of influencers who are people of color that we regularly cast in our campaigns. We are grateful for the thoughts and feedback from our employees and influencers on those issues – without it we would not know the full scope of the work we have yet to do. 

Today, we’re reaching out with our update to you on what we have started, what we have done so far, and to open up about our initiatives moving forward. 

Supporting Diversity in Influencer Marketing: As we mentioned in our blog post, we are actively looking into ways to build diversity in the influencer community through education, forums, press, campaigns and technology. 

We started by asking members across our organization to submit anonymous feedback on ways that we can better support Black and diverse creators (including Latinx, Asian, LGBTQ+ and other under-represented groups) in the influencer space. What we heard is that we need to improve our casting and recruiting processes, increase the number of Black owned businesses and retailers in our network, and address diversity within our own employees. 

From there, we created committees focused on four key areas: Influencer Relations, Retailers & Brands, Marketing and Internal Education & Hiring. 

Each committee will be charged with identifying our biggest problems, finding solutions that we will implement and metrics that we will set to hold ourselves accountable. We will continue to update you on their progress in the coming months. 

We would like to ask you, our community, to submit your feedback here on how we can improve. If you are comfortable continuing this conversation with us, please provide us your contact information so we can reach out with follow up questions. 

Improving and Supporting Internal Diversity: We at ShopStyle acknowledge that we need to address diversity within our own internal team – especially when it comes to representing Black voices. We are lucky to be a part of Rakuten, where we have a newly formed region-wide Diversity & Inclusion Committee and are about to launch several employee resource groups, including Black professionals at Rakuten. These groups enable employees in our organization through the following ways: 

• Ensuring we all live by Rakuten’s Diversity & Inclusion vision that “Inclusion Enables Innovation”
• Creating an employee sounding board to identify areas of concern and track feedback on our progress to resolve. 
• Providing a support system for employees
• Highlighting obstacles to attracting, recruiting, and retaining diverse talent
• Promoting diversity, cultural awareness, respect, and an inclusive work environment
• Fostering professional development through mentorship, networking, education, and initiatives
• Increasing employee job satisfaction, morale, and productivity

Within ShopStyle, we will be working closely with the Rakuten teams to devise a short and long term strategy to become more diverse and inclusive within our own employee base. We know that we have a long way to go here, and we are eager to begin that process. 

Offering Financial Support: In addition to many ShopStyle teammates supporting causes on our own, we are proud to say that our parent company, Rakuten, donated to four organizations with proven track records of enacting real change and advancing social justice. 

• NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
• Center for Policing Equity
• Equal Justice Initiative
• Southern Poverty Law Center

We hope that this gives you a look into the ways that we are committing to making a difference both within the influencer world and in our own company. We cannot do this without the support of our community, and we hope that you will be a part of this journey with us. 

Please expect more updates in the coming weeks and months. 

Best, 
Lindsay Jerutis 
General Manager of ShopStyle Collective