Yelp Offers Fashion Retailers New Ecommerce Option Shopping is Yelp's largest category of reviewed businesses, the company said, comprising 23 percent of all reviews.
By Geoff Weiss
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As rumors continue to swirl that Yelp is looking to sell itself, the review platform is delving even deeper into facilitating sales for small-business owners.
The company said today that it will enable consumers to shop for local fashions directly on Yelp thanks to a new partnership with Shoptiques.com, an ecommerce site launched by Y Combinator grad Olga Vidisheva in 2012. Shoptiques vends fashions from 1,500 small boutiques across the globe.
Two hundred fashion retailers, including Olive & Bette's in New York and y&i Clothing Boutique in San Francisco, currently allow consumers to purchase items on Yelp, with thousands of additional boutiques to be added by year's end, Yelp said.
Related: Yelp Might Be Exploring a Sale
Though this is its first foray into fashion ecommerce, Yelp says that shopping is its largest category of reviewed businesses, comprising 23 percent of all reviews. The Yelp Platform, which allows consumers to purchase a host of products and services directly through Yelp, already vends food, vacations, flowers, hair and spa appointments and more.
All told, the Yelp Platform has facilitated 1.5 million total transactions since its establishment in 2013, Yelp said.
Roughly 2.2 million small business owners currently operate claimed Yelp pages, according to the company. Yelp, which generates most of its money by selling ads, said that revenues totaled $119 million last quarter with the shopping category responsible for 11 percent of this sum.
Related: More Businesses Can Now Offer Booking Options on Yelp
