Grant LaFontaine was the first person to host a live-shopping stream on Whatnot. He sold $5,000 worth of products in the space of two hours. “And I’m not a particularly entertaining character,” says LaFontaine, who is co-founder and CEO of the platform.
Whatnot, on the other hand, is designed to be entertaining. It operates like a live auction: sellers live stream while showing off products to be sold, which can be purchased in real-time. Initially launching with a focus on collectibles, the platform has expanded to over 140 categories in nine geographies.
The California startup was founded in 2019 by LaFontaine (who has a background in product management) and Logan Head (who is chief technology officer and has a background in software engineering). In January, Whatnot raised $265 million in a series E funding round, led by venture capital firm Greycroft along with DST Global and Avra. Its valuation now sits at $5 billion.
“We had been buyers and sellers online for so long and we felt there was something around social or more experiential commerce,” says LaFontaine. “We didn’t build from the place of wanting to jump on live shopping because it’s great business — it was a product that was really fun for ourselves and something our community wants.”
Whatnot’s sellers are primarily independent resellers or resale platforms themselves, but there are a few brands operating on the app, including Staud and Dolls Kill, who have primarily used its capabilities to shift excess stock, add context on their products and connect with their communities. LaFontaine says he expects more brands to get involved as the platform grows. Women’s apparel is Whatnot’s largest category, with Lululemon, Nike and Adidas among the popular brands being resold. It also has a particularly strong sneaker community.
On average, Whatnot customers make tenfold more transactions and spend 4.5 times more when shopping via live stream compared with other peer-to-peer marketplaces, according to data analytics provider Bloomberg Second Measure. Whatnot says its gross merchandise value for live-stream sales surpassed $3 billion in 2024, and the number of new sellers and first-time buyers doubled compared with the prior year.
Live-stream shopping has been big in China for almost a decade, popularised by Alibaba-owned shopping site Taobao, which launched live shopping in 2015. Brands in the West, meanwhile, have been dipping their toes into live shopping ever since. H&M Group hosted a live-shopping stream in 2019; Gucci Live launched in 2020 to recreate the in-store experience during the pandemic; Amazon, Snapchat and TikTok hosted shoppable reality TV in 2021; and Threads Styling tested live shopping in 2022. However it hasn’t quite taken off, unable to shake the association with home shopping cable shows like QVC, whose core customer base is elderly women. In 2022, Meta shut down its two-year experiment with live-shopping features on Instagram and Facebook. Most shopping that takes place via Instagram is through sponsored posts, while only 7 per cent use the in-app shopping feature, according to consumer insights firm GWI.
TikTok Shop was the first to make real inroads: 22 per cent of UK and US TikTok users reported having purchased something on TikTok Shop in early 2024, according to GWI, and since 2020 there’s been a 22 per cent increase in live stream US viewership on the app. The future of TikTok in the US is still shaky, though. Not only that, GWI’s research shows that consumers in the West are distrusting of TikTok Shop. “They’re naturally a bit slower to engage and more suspicious of emerging behaviours like live-stream shopping,” says GWI consumer trends manager Shauna Moran. In comparison, China has been mobile-first for much longer.
“Asia has been a leading indicator of where the consumer is going for a long time, but people have looked at Asia and said, ‘Let’s copy what they’re doing.’ And that’s never the right way to do things,” says LaFontaine. “A lot of early attempts were copycats rather than platforms that built unique user value.” Now, the company’s challenge will be to maintain the user experience while embarking on a fast growth trajectory and building out awareness and adoption.
Building trust
Whatnot’s aim is to bring together the fragmented elements of e-commerce. “No one was taking a full-stock approach,” says LaFontaine. On the seller side, the user experience includes streamlining the live auction element, allowing the seller to see the bids, processing the bids, payments and shipping services. On the buyer end, it’s all about discovery, trust and customer support. “If you’re a seller, you can move more product per period of time than anywhere else — and because of that, buyers get a really good price and they also get to watch and hang out with people who have similar interests, so you get to know the community.”
“In my experience, Whatnot is great for clearing out discounted inventory quickly,” agrees Maleeha Zahid, founder of US-based consignment store The Luxury Find, who has been selling on Whatnot for the past year. She highlighted the customer service support was particularly strong. “A representative reached out to me before my first few shows to offer tips, strategy and support. That was great as it shows they want their sellers to be successful. I have not seen this level of support available on other platforms.”
Many Whatnot users that Vogue Business spoke to joined the platform because of its referral scheme, which offers credits to both users. “Live shopping in the West is still a very new thing, so [the referral programme] allows folks to get acclimated to the experience,” says LaFontaine. Having real people involved in referrals and in the live streaming itself is likely to build trust. Looking to Asia as an early adopter, around two-thirds of live-stream shoppers in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines prefer live-stream shopping events hosted by normal people rather than celebrities or influencers, per GWI.
With the future of TikTok in question, GWI’s Moran says social commerce apps are likely to invest in similar streaming and interactive experiences with the hopes of filling the gaps left by TikTok Shop. “If concerns around authenticity and product quality are putting Western consumers off buying directly through social media, competitors are likely to emphasise product verification and buyer protection, for example,” says Moran.
While Whatnot says independent sellers and small businesses are at the heart of its community, the company has been investing in brand partnerships and plans to develop this area as it grows. The platform currently does not have display or video ads, but is exploring “authentic and community-driven” ways to allow buyers to explore products from specific brands — even if that brand isn’t hosting its own live stream.
Certain Whatnot selling categories have additional requirements to add a layer of accountability. To sell luxury bags and accessories or mystery boxes containing sneakers and streetwear, sellers have to pass an eligibility check and a policy quiz. Whatnot also keeps track of reports from the community and removes sellers from the platform if necessary. Since buyers tend to be fanatics, LaFontaine says they would also likely have the knowledge to determine whether a product is legitimate.
“We very much focus on categories that have communities built around them. You’re purchasing because it’s fun and it’s a product you love, versus a low-price cheap good that you’re not particularly passionate about,” LaFontaine says. This also reduces the risk of mindless overconsumption, he adds. “Also, all we do at Whatnot is shopping — I spend all my time thinking about the best shopping experience from discovery to customer support to trust, so our experience is far superior because we have more depth of supply than others in the market.” The average Whatnot buyer purchases over 12 items a week on the platform, and viewers spend an average of 80 minutes per day tuning into its live streams.
Marcie Vu, partner at Greycroft, who is now a board observer at Whatnot following the firm’s investment, says a shopping-first approach tends to be more successful. “We’ve seen a lot of platforms try to move into commerce and generally they haven’t been as successful, because there’s a lot of technical nuts and bolts, like payments and shipping. The most successful companies start out as commerce platforms and then move onto advertising, for instance,” she says.
Whatnot is hoping to cash in on the blending of the physical and online worlds — a trend we’re likely to see more of as Web3 continues to develop. “Whatnot has really tapped into a powerful shift in the way consumers want to shop: they’ve combined the energy of in-person retail with the efficiency and reach of digital platforms, combining marketplaces with entertainment and community,” says Vu.
“In some ways, I see live or social commerce as the digital recreation of a bricks-and-mortar shop with some of the fun stuff you can do on the internet like shopping from your couch at midnight,” says LaFontaine. “With this new wave of building shops on social apps, we’ll see people set up very large businesses for basically zero marginal cost. It’s going to make shopping more fun and efficient, and we want to be the best social and live-shopping platform out there.”
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