Kik Interactive Inc. has acquired Toronto fashion app Blynk and its four-person team.
It’s only the third acquisition made by the startup in Waterloo, Ont., since the company’s founding in 2009; the first was Relay GIF Messenger in 2014, and mobile game development company GameMix in the summer of 2015.
Dollar figures on the Blynk deal were not disclosed. Though Blynk was not a highly capitalized company, it had won money and awards in startup competitions in Canada and the United States.
Blynk, founded in 2013 by Jaclyn Ling and Shums Kassam, uses a Tinder-like swipe interface to help users sort their personal style. The app shows a variety of outfits to users, who can swipe left to hate and right to love, and over time the app narrows its suggestions based on your votes to show you fewer of the things you dislike.
In August, Kik raised $50 million in a venture-funding round led by China’s Tencent, which operates the hugely popular WeChat app. Kik CEO Ted Livingston has frequently used WeChat as a shorthand for what he wants his company to become: a central platform for everything from chat to shopping to running a business.
