It’s no secret that Pinterest is one of the hottest social media platforms out there right now. The statistics are sort of mind-blowing: Mashable reported that monthly unique visits to the site increased 866% from September 2011 to February 2012—that’s just six months. And the user demographics on the site are a luxury brand’s (pardon the crudeness here) wet dream. According to L2, a think tank specializing in digital media, 60% of Pinterest users are college educated, 70% are female, and the majority are aged 25-44. It’s also overtaken Twitter as the second most significant source of referral traffic (Facebook is still number one). Which all adds up to one thing: ka-ching. Or at least the potential for a lot of coin, assuming brands are savvy enough to jump on the pinning bandwagon.

Calypso St. Barth’s made news a few weeks ago when they announced their partnership—the first ever publicized fashion company/pinner collab–with Christine Martinez (“Miles to Style”), who went to St. Barth’s and pinned some boards especially for the brand. While this was a very public partnership, it turns out that a lot of money is exchanging hands between so-called power pinners and brands—and you’re not necessarily going to hear about it.

The Power Pinners…

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