I spent many months on this problem, and here was my conclusion. Live shopping has an insanely difficult cold start problem. A normal marketplace has the luxury of connecting buyer and seller async - even if it takes weeks. A live shopping marketplace must make buyer and seller meet and transact AT THE EXACT TIME.
Hence, we need a platform with an inbuilt captive audience to solve this.
Option 1 is a large horizontal (noon) or vertical (namshi) adds live to their platform and hopes that a small % of their audience converts to watching the livestream. Sadly, whenever the e-commerce majors try live, they make it dead boring and recreate TVC (see Amazon live in the US). What would kill is an exploding clearance sale on a highly-produced set that almost feels like a game show.
The other way to make it work is TikTok doing it. Again similar theory, large captive audience, already watching livestreams, will convert.
I’m very bearish on an independent platform solving live shopping in the region because we don’t have a base marketplace to build on top off. Whatnot was built on the backs of eBay power sellers and collectibles - two giant microcosms which could kickstart marketplace mechanics. Nothing like that exists here - neither a large enough niche or a base platform to pull sellers from. Instagram/Dubizzle power sellers don’t have enough interesting inventory to create shows, neither do they want to formalize operations and get tax compliant. Cars might be an interesting category since offline auctions are already huge, but then that’s a touch and feel category, probably won’t work over video.
Live infra plays on Salla or Zid are DOA too, it’s impossibly hard to pull people on to a standalone website and then fiddle with what is likely a low grade media player when the gold standard is Instagram Live.
I think the space is very exciting and the formats that you could invent are endless but my bet is it will be solved inside one of the majors. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, the formula seems to be = unique inventory (either product or price) + selling format that’s default entertaining and takes the seller out of the equation (30s auctions, exploding sales) + existing captive audience.
Great read!
I spent many months on this problem, and here was my conclusion. Live shopping has an insanely difficult cold start problem. A normal marketplace has the luxury of connecting buyer and seller async - even if it takes weeks. A live shopping marketplace must make buyer and seller meet and transact AT THE EXACT TIME.
Hence, we need a platform with an inbuilt captive audience to solve this.
Option 1 is a large horizontal (noon) or vertical (namshi) adds live to their platform and hopes that a small % of their audience converts to watching the livestream. Sadly, whenever the e-commerce majors try live, they make it dead boring and recreate TVC (see Amazon live in the US). What would kill is an exploding clearance sale on a highly-produced set that almost feels like a game show.
The other way to make it work is TikTok doing it. Again similar theory, large captive audience, already watching livestreams, will convert.
I’m very bearish on an independent platform solving live shopping in the region because we don’t have a base marketplace to build on top off. Whatnot was built on the backs of eBay power sellers and collectibles - two giant microcosms which could kickstart marketplace mechanics. Nothing like that exists here - neither a large enough niche or a base platform to pull sellers from. Instagram/Dubizzle power sellers don’t have enough interesting inventory to create shows, neither do they want to formalize operations and get tax compliant. Cars might be an interesting category since offline auctions are already huge, but then that’s a touch and feel category, probably won’t work over video.
Live infra plays on Salla or Zid are DOA too, it’s impossibly hard to pull people on to a standalone website and then fiddle with what is likely a low grade media player when the gold standard is Instagram Live.
I think the space is very exciting and the formats that you could invent are endless but my bet is it will be solved inside one of the majors. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, the formula seems to be = unique inventory (either product or price) + selling format that’s default entertaining and takes the seller out of the equation (30s auctions, exploding sales) + existing captive audience.
Loved the perspective 🖤🙌