When Lauren Stevens began her reality TV career, helping Flava Flav, Bret Michaels, and eventually even Travis Kelce, find “love” as a producer on some of the century’s most memorable—and often infamous—shows, she said many believed the nascent genre would simply be a fad. Now, she’s swapped reality for retail, focused on producing content for another new industry: social commerce.
In 2020, losing her excitement for the ever-changing TV industry, she co-founded Orca, a social commerce company producing shoppable livestreams, along with paid and affiliate content, with fellow producer Max Benator. Orca offers brands livestream studios and on-camera hosts and advises brands on their shoppable content, and even debuted its own livestream shopping beauty boutique, Bleu Beauty, earlier this year.
Social commerce is still in its early days, and live shopping particularly so, especially compared to China. But it’s starting to grow. TikTok, which boasts 35.8 million social buyers, has seen shopper growth rates surpassing Instagram and Facebook, per EMarketer, with overall US retail social commerce sales projected to pass $100 billion in 2025. Coresight Research estimates livestream shopping will reach 5% of total US ecommerce sales by 2026.
“A lot of people said live shopping wasn’t going to have a place here in the US, but it’s keeping us very busy,” Stevens, also Orca’s chief content officer, noted. The company produces 400+ shoppable videos every month, working with brands like E.l.f., Nestlé, Estée Lauder, Unilever, and P&G. Stevens shared how it’s working with brands to capture consumers’ eyes and dollars and how her entertainment experience prepared her for the gig.
We’ll do it live: When Orca started with live shopping, it was streaming on Amazon selling products like air fryers and massagers. Now, it’s found its stride in more visual product categories like fashion and beauty, and even food and beverage. Orca has been able to boost AOV 30% higher than brands’ DTC sites, Stevens said. Its partnership with beauty brand KimChi Chic secured the brand 4.2 million product page views and 241% month over month sales growth in three months. Next, the company is partnering with beauty creator Sarah Cheung, maker of the viral Lip Liner Stay-n, which has sold more than 700K units via TikTok Shop.
Orca is made up of a content department—which includes studio operations and a talent department, shop operations, and paid media teams—along with an affiliate team, with 12,000 affiliates across the country who sell products for its brand partners.
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Ideally when Orca partners with brands, it’ll be able to “pull all the different levers” of social commerce, from livestream to paid media, but it works case by case to figure out brands’ goal, Stevens said. Within live shopping, Orca determines a client’s needs in terms of casting and set building, and its shop operations team collaborates with brand partners on merchandise and promotion strategy, with back-end work to ensure product listings are optimized and fulfillment operations are good to go.
Unlike reality TV, where certain moments can be left on the cutting room floor, with live shopping, “there is no take two,” Stevens noted, so there’s a lot of prep. The company has 40 exclusive live shopping hosts that it’s trained in the art of converting sales, though it can conduct custom casting for brands as well. Product knowledge is essential to “drive urgency during the streams,” she said, as are promotions like flash sales, exclusive bundles, or giveaways centered around a brand’s hero product. Efforts to make consumers feel like “they’re part of the stream,” and ultimately stick around longer, like answering questions and shouting out people’s handles, are also essential, Stevens said.
“People think of live shopping, and a lot of brands think of it as more of a marketing activation,” she said. “They’re excited. They want it to be really big and sexy, and don’t necessarily think as much about the sales and conversions.”
Reality check: Stevens said interest in live shopping, compared to other offerings like affiliate, is picking up, but challenges remain. It’s not necessarily a fit for everyone, she noted, and brands must be prepared to make their live streams stand out from other DTC buying options, especially as American consumers don’t want a used car salesman-esque “hard sell” the whole time. Plus, platforms are still trying to find a balance of commerce content so “they don’t turn off too many of their viewers,” she noted.
Stevens said her reality TV background—dealing with “wild personalities,” multi-tasking, and working in “real time” to make a show work—helps Orca create content that bridges that gap.
“There’s a lot of great potential, because you have people that are already coming there, ready to scroll, be entertained,” she said. “And that’s why I think making sure we bring in the entertainment side as well can go a long way."