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When it comes to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, TikTok is relying on livestreams to generate revenue.
This holiday season, TikTok Shop will host “super livestreams” featuring celebrities (though it declined to share names).
Livestreaming was a dominant theme of TikTok’s first US commerce summit hosted in California last month. TikTok Shop seems determined to make live shopping work in the US, and is encouraging both brands and creators to go live as much as possible for two-hour sessions on average.
The company has also opened up studios in cities including Los Angeles and New York to help creators and brands film livestreams.
Live shopping hasn’t typically worked in the US. Tech giant Meta abandoned its live shopping efforts in 2022, and Amazon hasn’t managed to crack the space in a meaningful way yet.
“We have to educate customers; we have to build a complete ecosystem of agencies, creators, brands,” Nico le Bourgeois, head of US operations for TikTok Shop, told Retail Brew on the sidelines of an event the company hosted in New York on Oct. 23. “It takes time.”
The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree: TikTok owner ByteDance, however, has seen success in live shopping in China with social sites like Douyin, which earned more than $200 billion last year selling items during lives hosted by influencers, per The Information. And TikTok wants to replicate that playbook in the US.
“We inherit that technology from China, given how big it is out there, but when you plug the right technology with the right agencies, the right creators and the right products, it works very well,” le Bourgeois said.
One of the early success stories on TikTok Shop for lives is beauty brand Canvas Beauty, which sells body glaze, Kelsie Johnston, head of beauty and personal care at TikTok Shop, told an audience of creators and brands.
Canvas Beauty Founder and CEO Stormi Steele became the first TikToker in the US to earn $1 million in sales on live shopping in June. Steele, also in attendance at the event, said her favorite thing about selling on TikTok Shop is the lives because she can freestyle and show up as her authentic true self, once that camera turns on.