Pinterest effect helps Artefact Uprising

Artefact Uprising, a basement-based startup in Denver, had been producing and selling its minimalist photobooks for exactly one week when Pinterest struck. An avid pinner found their website and stuck it on her pinboard, and it was soon re-pinned by some of the site's top users.

Katie Thurmes, co-founder and chief creative officer, said she has a "large amount of gratitude" for the site that helped her business grow to multimillion dollars in revenue in just 19 months. "I really think it is a game changer for our company and e-commerce as a whole," she said.

Pinterest is rolling out its self service advertising platform - used by smaller companies - earlier in its development than many social sites, which often focus on building relationships with all the biggest brands first. Nicole Miller, a line of evening gowns and bridal wear, have been testing the new product.

Andrea Marron, director of e-commerce and retail at Nicole Miller, said she had called Pinterest when she heard about the test because she wanted to be a part of it. "It has been our number one traffic referrer since we started advertising. We've had a lot of success promoting bridal pins," she said.

She says Pinterest's advantage is that it is "product focused". "You don't necessarily go on Facebook or Twitter to find a dress," she said. But she has not yet shifted her digital budget from those social sites to devote to Pinterest. Instead, the money is coming from print advertising.

"We used to do a lot of traditional advertising to reach 100,000s or even millions in magazines. But now we're focusing on digital advertising buys because we can actually see the metrics," she said. "You buy an ad in Vogue or whatever magazine and they can tell you their number of subscribers but you never know if half of that is getting thrown in the East River."

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