Reactiv has acquired Kin

I’ve known Joe Devoy since before Reactiv existed.

The Shopify world is small, even across borders. In 2022, Joe and Jason Brooks, both Instagram and Meta alumni, started Kin. Their idea was to take the social and community pieces people love on social platforms and put them inside a brand’s own shopping app. I’d been following them from the start.

As of September 1, Kin is part of Reactiv. We’ve acquired Kin’s technology and its customer relationships, including brands like Steve Madden, Chubbies, Lashify and Martie.

If your app runs on Kin, here’s the short version: it keeps running, and nothing changes without you. More on that below.

Why we did it

Kin made sense because of what we are. We only do mobile commerce. For brands like Chubbies, the app is where their most loyal customers shop, and it’s a relationship the brand owns outright.

We’re building for where commerce is going: AI-native, and obsessively built for each brand’s growth. That means tools for both customer acquisition and retention. We think that makes us a good home for these brands, and we plan to prove it.

Buying Kin wasn’t on any of our 2026 bingo cards. What started as a LinkedIn message I sent in the spring turned into a real conversation in July. By the end of summer, Kin was part of Reactiv.

That speed comes with being the new kids on the block. Most of the companies we compete with got here well before we did, so when the right opportunity shows up, we don’t hesitate.

We moved fast on the deal. We’re taking our time with everything after it.

If your app runs on Kin

If your app runs on Kin, you’ve already heard from us. Here’s what we’ve committed to, in writing:

• Your app keeps running. Your shoppers won’t notice a thing.
• Nothing changes without you. We haven’t decided what the long-term setup looks like, and we won’t decide it without you. If a move ever makes sense for your brand, the heavy lifting is ours.
• We’ll keep the conversation going. What’s working, what isn’t, and what you want next.
• The people who built Kin are still working with us through the transition. Folks who know the codebase are now working right alongside our teams.

Those calls have already moved past logistics. On one of the first, the wish list was in-app exclusives and a push notification when a shopper walks into the store.

That’s the conversation we want to keep having: not which platform you’re on, but what your app does next.

What’s next

We want all mobile commerce to run through Reactiv. That’s a big goal.

Our roots are in Shopify. It’s where Ross Correia, our CEO, and I met, and it’s where most of our brands live. But the work keeps pulling us past it: live events, sports venues, and App Clips that put a brand’s app in front of shoppers inside AI chatbots. Kin’s brands make that picture bigger.

To Joe, Jason and the Kin team: you built something brands rely on every day. Thanks for trusting us with it.

We’re still the new kids with something to prove. Now there are a lot more brands to prove it to.