As more retailers trial livestream shopping in the UK, Retail Week explores what it could do for Western retail and what can be learned from the Chinese phenomenon.
- Livestreaming lessons from China include having a USP such as discounts, exclusive product drops or a tutorial
- Retail Week reviews livestream shopping shows from The Fragrance Shop, Ann Summers and ISawItFirst
- OOOOO founder Sam Jones details plans to create a video mall featuring livestreams from major Western retailers 24 hours a day
Livestream shopping has boomed in China over the past five years. In 2020 livestreaming sales reached an estimated £129bn in the country, according to research group iiMedia, now accounting for 20% of its ecommerce sales.
Operating 24 hours a day, for three hours at a time, livestreams sell anything from instant noodles to Gucci handbags and from holiday villas to plastic surgery.
It’s a phenomenon that has driven growth of Western brands in China. Burberry livestreamed its spring/summer 2021 show during Super Brand Day on Alibaba’s Tmall platform last year to an eye-watering 28 million viewers, while brands such as Mac and L’Oréal have cited livestreaming as a key sales channel going forward due to its stratospheric rate of growth and engagement for Chinese customers.
The Western world has just started to catch up on this trend. Walmart has begun a livestreaming pilot with TikTok in the US, while UK retailers such as ISawItFirst, The Fragrance Shop and Ted Baker are all trialling their own live shopping experiences for domestic shoppers, with varying degrees of success.
Livestream commerce platform Bambuser launched in 2019, believing that the West “needed a shift in ecommerce”.
“Ecommerce has been pages of texts and images for the past 20 years, so we felt we need to bring to online the experience that we have in everything else we do – we’re in Zoom calls, we’re on Facebook Live, we have Instagram Stories,” explains Bambuser chief commercial officer Sophie Abrahamsson.
“Everything is live, but ecommerce is still the same. That’s the mission we set out to elevate the ecommerce game and humanise it in a way that personal interaction can do.”
Retail Week explores the potential for livestreaming to revolutionise the way Western consumers shop and bring ecommerce to another level.
Finding a USP
Digital consultancy Pattern’s senior ecommerce consultant for Asia Desiree Wong explains that in China there are two main categories of livestream: one-off events led by high-level influencers, who offer exclusive access and deep discounts, or regular scheduled programming, often led by a brand’s own staff, which focuses more on customer engagement than driving immediate sales.
While the former are more high-profile, the latter are often more high-value for shoppers in the long term.
Wong says 80% of customers interact with customer-service agents throughout the whole purchasing journey, so livestreams are critical as a “consumer loyalty programme”.
For the more impulse-driven livestreams, hosts and retailers need to keep viewers engaged in order to keep them watching and purchasing.
Livestreaming shopping platform OOOOO founder Sam Jones agrees that livestreams need a USP in order to succeed, especially for Western consumers, whether that is an exclusive product launch, a tutorial or a chance to purchase a limited-edition or heavily discounted product.
Having a unique element to the show is therefore critical for success. customers want to gain something out of their experience, especially if they are watching for long periods of time.
“You have to have one of those elements involved, otherwise it’s not interesting,” Jones concludes.
ISawItFirst
- How it works: Fast fashion retailer ISawItFirst hosts TikTok Tuesdays every week at 7pm, during which hosts are joined by influencers to showcase a selection of garments.
- Retail Week verdict: The hosts took requests from the audience to try on particular items, which made the livestream feel very natural, but it was more product-focused than fun and entertaining. They offered discounts on all featured products to entice customers to buy as well as a giveaway when views reached a certain number, which is a great USP, even with ISawItFirst’s low prices. Viewers are also notified when someone else makes a purchase and when items are low in stock, again enticing them to buy. However, while the hosts showed a tutorial on how to purchase, the journey is quite clunky – customers must purchase each item separately rather than adding to a basket and making one order. The team also ran out of time to showcase all the products.
- Long-term value: ISawItFirst is the first of its kind to launch a livestream on TikTok, which means it is ahead of the curve. However, with only 200 viewers on average, it doesn’t quite have the audience it needs to succeed yet.
The talent gap
In an established market like China, livestream hosting has become a lucrative profession. Millionaire livestreamer Viya, for example, earns more than 30m yuan per year (£3.3m) and reaches an audience of more than 35 million people.
Retailers vie for Viya’s sales talent; her livestreams largely include cosmetics, appliances, prepared foods or clothing, but she’s also sold cars, houses and even a rocket launch. Procter & Gamble and Tesla are among her biggest clients.
However, there’s a “talent gap” in the Western world, he says, where influencers have not yet been trained in the art of selling products live.
“Not all influencers who are good on Instagram are necessarily good on YouTube, so not all of them will be good on livestreams”
Sophie Abrahamsson, Bambuser
Bambuser’s Abrahamsson agrees: “Certain influencers started out as bloggers, then they moved over to Instagram and now they’re on Stories and TikToks.
“Each of them work better in different mediums – not all influencers who are good on Instagram are necessarily good on YouTube, so not all of them will be good on livestreams.”
To combat this, platforms such as OOOOO have their own teams of livestream hosts on staff to help ease their partner brands and retailers into the concept.
“Initially we’re putting in presenters who are trained and confident with how our apps work, and we’re also putting together an academy which is training people how to become skilled in live selling,” says Jones.
OOOOO partner brand ISawItFirst, which is also running livestreams on TikTok, is initially using these hosts alongside its own staff and influencers to present the livestreams on both platforms.
The fashion etailer’s chief technology officer Andrew Stevenson-Thorpe says the long-term aim is for ISawItFirst to livestream 24 hours a day, meaning entertainment, themes and securing the best presenters will be top of its list to ensure success.
“We were laying down some criteria about how we know we’re successful in this game and it’ll be when ITV poaches one of our presenters to put them on This Morning,” he quips.
To achieve this goal, the fashion retailer is approaching securing presenters for its livestreams in a number of different ways.
“We’re going to have some anchor presenters who are retained by us – one is going to be a staff member and we’ve got a couple of influencers signed up for a permanent presenting slot,” explains Stevenson-Thorpe.
Two other categories of presenters are influencers and reality TV stars, whose contracts with the retailer will now include the option to present livestreams, and ISawItFirst’s own staff members – 20 have so far volunteered and begun training.
Most interestingly, Stevenson-Thorpe believes that anyone could eventually become a livestream host for the brand.
This would work like an influencers’ affiliate link on Instagram; wannabe livestreamers could apply directly to ISawItFirst to be given sample products to showcase, but any purchases made from their livestream would go through the retailer’s own website link.
This element would popularise livestreaming as a concept for the masses – ultimately changing the way consumers think about how to shop.
“Live commerce will just become part of the mix, because it’s so efficient. It’s so easy to just press live”
Sam Jones, OOOOO
On the other side of the scale, some categories may require experts on a niche topic in order to present the products properly.
Abrahamsson says this is better for those livestreams that are not necessarily for instant gratification.
“Expert or staff-driven ones are better for complex livestreams explaining, for example, an expensive skincare regimen and why it works or designers explaining the thinking behind a collection,” she says.
“The most important thing is the target audience and what would add the most value to them.”
In this way, Bambuser sees livestreams as a “360-degree ecommerce amplifier” where different video styles are appropriate for different needs – big influencer events, staff Q&As and customer service being just a few.
The Fragrance Shop
- How it works: Streaming on live shopping app OOOOO, The Fragrance Shop uses an OOOOO presenter alongside a store colleague to chat through products in a store environment.
- Retail Week verdict: This was by far the most fun livestream, The presenters’ interaction with each other and viewers commenting on screen was very natural, discussing pop culture rather than just the products, and they even had inside jokes with viewers who were clearly regulars to the show. Featured products had random price drops and viewers were given the opportunity to “spin the wheel” on screen to receive a coupon valid for one hour, which made them more likely to purchase. Perfume is clearly a strange product to describe on a livestream – unless a viewer is an aficionado, it would be hard to choose based on descriptions of the scent alone – but it offers a great way to buy with a discount.
- Long-term value: The Fragrance Shop is OOOOO’s most successful retailer, making a record £35,000 in one show with 12,000 viewers. On average, the show has 1,500 viewers and 55,000 likes, meaning The Fragrance Shop has definitely hit a sweet spot for viewers despite the nature of its product.
A video mall
Livestreams should therefore be part of the wider ecosystem of both an individual retailer’s ecommerce site and the industry as a whole.
OOOOO aims to create a “video mall” where shoppers come to watch livestreams from their favourite brands at any time of the day.
“Our goal in the UK is to build a video mall, where we have all the anchor tenants and give them the toolkit to express themselves,” explains Jones.
“My prediction is that, in the next year, they’ll start going live from photoshoots, head Office and warehouses, and I think live commerce will just become part of the mix, because it’s so efficient. It’s so easy to just press live.
“We’re seeding it at the moment, but eventually they’ll do it all themselves.”
Going one step further, ISawItfFirst is using other retailers on the OOOOO platform as opportunities for further promotion.
“There are opportunities to do synergistic partnerships with other brands; for instance, there’s a number of drinks brands going on OOOOO and we will dress them in ISawItFirst,” explains Stevenson-Thorpe.
“The product partnerships that can be enabled by that platform are endless – it takes us into a different space.”
“What they’re building is the Trafford Centre times a million. We originally wanted to build our own livestream app, but we realised it’s not just about our audience – it’s about the aggregate that makes it more interesting.”
ISawItFirst runs livestreams on both OOOOO and TikTok, which Stevenson-Thorpe says is to ensure that the brand is at the heart of the “revolution”.
For ISawItFirst, it’s all about conversion rates, where livestreams deliver almost double the retailer’s average.
“Our average conversion is 3.85% and I’ve got a team pushing to get it to 4%. The worst conversion rate we’ve had with OOOOO is 7% and I’ve seen it as high as 12%,” says Stevenson-Thorpe.
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out, regardless of where the sales and audience are, that if you can consistently hit 7% and above it’s a game-changer.”
Both Abrahamsson and Wong say that brands also record upticks in sales of products for up to a month following a livestream, adding value later down the line.
“Live is what performs the best – we have the highest conversion rates during the live shows – but we also see that 60% of sales are happening on our recorded shows,” says Abrahamsson.
Ann Summers
- How it works: Ann Summers has only just jumped on the livestream bandwagon, promoting its lingerie and other products using influencers on the live shopping app OOOOO.
- Retail Week verdict: This livestream was a little more awkward than the others, potentially showing how much training livestreamers and influencers would need to make a good show. However, the presenters interacted with the audience well, getting them to vote on products in the comments, and the show had a USP where anyone who made a purchase was given the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw. Ann Summers did very little to promote its first livestream – there’s nothing to be found on the retailer’s Instagram page or even when searching the brand online – so only OOOOO app users who already have it downloaded would know about the stream.
- Long-term value: For a first trial, the concept worked for Ann Summers; the presenters were engaging and viewers seemed to enjoy the experience. To succeed in the long term, the retailer needs to do more to promote its livestream across its other social channels and website.
A revolution in the making?
So will livestream shopping revolutionise Western retail? Stevenson-Thorpe says undoubtedly yes, while Abrahamsson believes it has already.
“We see from behind the scenes that there’s really a change,” says Abrahamsson.
“I find it hard to believe that, once you get used to a better and elevated experience, you will go back – those who interact with a shop assistant or message an influencer while shopping, why would they want to go back to watching something in one place and then visiting an ecommerce page?”
“This will be the video generation. Will it be as crazy as it is in China? I don’t know, but I do think it will be massive”
Andrew Stevenson-Thorpe, ISawItFirst
“There’s very few innovations or transformation moments in retail,” adds Stevenson-Thorpe.
“We’ve identified in the early days that this will be the video generation. Will it be as crazy as it is in China? I don’t know, but I do think it will be massive.”
With more and more retailers trialling livestreams – Boohoo, JD Sports, and Missguided are just a few set to launch offerings on OOOOO in the coming months – this could indeed be the start of a revolution. However, brands need to be shouting about this from the rooftops if they want customers to switch on a show.
Ultimately, there are still some kinks to work out – clunkiness in the purchase journey and filling the talent gap – but there is definitely potential for livestreaming to be something consumers turn to automatically when scrolling through their phone for something to buy.
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