Livestream commerce is more than a trend — it’s a multibillion-dollar industry, said Bryan Moore, chief executive officer and cofounder of TalkShopLive, at WWD’s Digital Beauty Forum.
“It’s projected that by 2023, over $25 billion in the U.S. will be coming from livestream commerce,” Moore said. “It’s something we all watched evolve in Asia. It went from being a trend to $100 million industry to a billion-dollar industry.”
Moore founded TalkShopLive, a social shopping network, with his sister, Tina Moore, in 2018. While living in China for a period of time, Moore observed the rise of social shopping and decided to launch his own version in the U.S.
TalkShopLive recently closed a $3 million seed round of financing led by Spero Ventures LLC. Based in Los Angeles, the company houses livestreaming content from businesses small and large, such as Fred Segal, Guthy-Renker and Best Buy. Its categories span music, books and cosmetics, among others.
“In Asia, people are driving people inside of an app. Basically, you’re going inside of an app to have an experience to then purchase,” Moore said. “The goal with livestream commerce is to provide a vehicle for you so that you can own the experience. You can have the ‘buy’ button on the video, convert sales at a higher rate. As the world continually is changing and evolving due to COVID-19, and beyond, livestream commerce is here to stay.”
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TalkShopLive allows users — brands, retailers, influencers, publications — to share video embeds on their respective platforms. Video embeds are sales drivers, according to Moore. Recent data from TalkShopLive found that while social media drove 44 percent of the traffic to the website or app, it only drove 28 percent of sales. TalkShopLive’s video embed, Moore said, drove 53 percent of sales.
“One of my big reasons for creating [TalkShopLive] the way I did was I felt like there was a huge missed opportunity for people,” Moore said. “You have a video where you’re promoting something, you’re trying to drive a link for where to purchase it. That video then leaves that location, no matter what social platform it’s on. It’s getting shared, it’s getting embedded other places, but your transaction is not necessarily moving on. The way we designed [the video player] was so that the ‘buy’ button goes everywhere [the video] exists. Whether it’s a small indie brand to a big box retailer like Best Buy, we have the fulfillment solutions that work for all.”
Sales on TalkShopLive were up more than 800 percent over the past year during COVID-19, according to Moore. Beauty is a growing category.
“Skin care has done really well,” Moore said. “A lot of [what] people seem to crave are things that can make them feel good at home right now. Beauty overall — it’s so demonstrable — is going to continue to build.
“Beauty has a huge advantage in live commerce because you have products you can show,” he continued. “You can take people into that experience by letting them be there. You don’t even have to sell it as much as them watching it and wishing that they were having that experience.”
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