It took a while, but brands outside of China have woken up to the benefits of live shopping.
The concept — where brands and influencers pitch products that viewers can purchase in the moment — has been a core part of e-commerce in China for nearly a decade, with sales reaching $500 billion in 2022, according to estimates from Coresight Research. In the US, live shopping sales reached only $20 billion that year, with brands prioritising paid social media ads and influencer campaigns. Giants like Instagram have over the years introduced then discontinued features that enabled live selling.
TikTok appears to have cracked the code. When the company launched its marketplace, TikTok Shop, in the US in September 2023, it enabled users to make purchases directly through the platform. The number of online shoppers who purchased during a livestream, across different platforms, rose 29 percent to 41 million in 2024, according to eMarketer. In January, Whatnot, which operates a marketplace where companies sell through livestreams, raised $265 million at a nearly $5 billion valuation as its gross merchandise volume — a measure of sales done through its marketplace — surpassed $3 billion in 2024.
TikTok’s “been a really powerful proof point for people to see the validity in shoppable video and the future of where that’s going,” said Bryan Moore, co-founder and chief executive of livestreaming firm TalkShopLive. “We see more and more brands adopting it, but also we’re really seeing more and more customers that are shopping from video.”
The stakes are high to get it right: When done successfully, live selling can lead to consumers spending more time on a brand’s site, adding more items to their carts and visiting their store more often, according to Qabil Shah, chief marketing officer at shoppable video software firm Bambuser. The conversion rates for live shopping on average are 10 times higher than through traditional e-commerce selling, according to a study by trend forecasting company WGSN.
Meanwhile, TikTok’s brief shutdown and uncertain future — the app is available for existing users in the US but not available to download on Google or Apple’s app stores — has the platform’s rivals gearing up for a new phase where brands connect with audiences across different platforms instead of relying on one big player.
TalkShopLive helps brands stream shoppable video content across their own sites, on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook and with retailers like Amazon and Walmart. Whatnot, where independent sellers generate sales through livestreams on its marketplace, also enables clients to simultaneously stream on other platforms like YouTube and Twitch. CommentSold is launching a feature in February for companies to create shoppable livestreams through their link-in-bio profiles on any social media platform, said Gautam Goswami, the company’s chief executive and chief technology officer.
“The market penetration is nowhere near Asia, but it’s beginning to grow,” Shah said. “We’ve gone from the ‘hey, let’s test it’ and innovation budgets to the main budget.”
Tapping into the Ecosystem
What makes live shopping a compelling tool for brands is the opportunity to communicate directly with their audiences. The content that often breaks through features brand founders with lively personalities answering questions about product attributes or doling out styling tips. That level of engagement often leads to an uptick in sales.
For the last six months, San Francisco-based handbag maker Parker Thatch has been livestreaming on Instagram and YouTube every Friday night at 5 p.m. The broadcasts feature co-founders Irene Chen and Matthew Grenby answering questions on how to style the brand’s $400 to $800 leather bags and discussing new product launches including straps and bag charms. It’s become an important part of Parker Thatch’s business, with sales typically rising 50 percent when the couple livestreams. This year, the company will start featuring local influencers in the broadcasts to offer more styling advice, Chen said.
“The magic of live streaming … is the strength of the community when you’re watching something live and you’re asking questions and you’re interacting with the creator, you form such a deep bond,” said Ashray Urs, head of Streamlabs, a livestreaming software firm. “That engagement creates this super strong connection.”
Building a community is increasingly important as brands look to generate more of their sales from repeat buyers amid a rise in customer acquisition costs.
Since last April, London-based luxury reseller Luxe Collective, which sells brands like Hermès and Bottega Veneta, has been livestreaming on TikTok at least twice a day. Around 70 percent of its viewers that buy during those live broadcasts tend to make repeat purchases with the company through the live or on its site — one customer has spent around €80,000 ($82,000) during the company’s livestreams since May, said Ben Gallagher, Luxe Collective’s co-founder and chief executive. The company generated €2 million from live shopping on TikTok in 2024, accounting for more than 20 percent of its overall sales, and it expects that to jump to €3 million in 2025, Gallagher said.
“I could name the people that come back,” Gallagher said. “I’m seeing Victoria come every day, Hazel coming everyday, Kenna coming every day. These people come back because they love luxury goods and they want to buy from us.”
The Everywhere Experience
Whether TikTok is permanently banned in the US, brands have already trained their consumers to buy through livestreams. But they’re also investing in tools to live stream simultaneously on different platforms to reduce their reliance on a single giant.
Parker Thatch currently livestreams simultaneously on Instagram and YouTube, which lets it tag products which viewers can buy directly through the handbag maker’s site, Grenby said. The brand expects those broadcasts to help it grow its overall sales more than 10 percent year over year in 2025, Chen said. For some companies, the results have been immediate. TalkShopLive’s clients instantly saw a 25 percent uptick in sales on average when it started allowing brands to simulcast on its marketplace and on Facebook and Instagram in June 2023, Moore said.
“Every brand, every retailer, every creator is realising that they don’t want their video commerce strategy to be dependent on one social platform,” Moore said. “Creators and brands are leveraging technologies that provide them the opportunity to distribute shoppable content on multiple properties.”
With more consumers embracing live shopping, there’s plenty of room for brands to experiment with it as a tool to grow their businesses. Parker Thatch views live selling as an alternative to the costly investment of opening new stores or partnering with retailers.
“This feels like an early gold rush,” Grenby added. “It feels like there’s something in those hills. I don’t know who’s gonna mine it, but there’s something out there.”