It’s all about Whatnot lately. This Whatnot review will go into how combining video, entertainment and rapid auction style has completely taken over. What started a marketplace for those interested in buying and selling sports cards, has exploded across the entire e-commerce landscape. Whatnot makes eBay look incredibly archaic. I mean, who wants to wait a week for an auction to end when it can end in 5 seconds. Again, again , and again. It’s auctions on hyperspeed.
The Live Shopping Revolution: How Whatnot Blends Entertainment and Sales
In the words of Gary Vaynerchuk:
“If you ask me, right now, how to make money in the next five years in America out of all the options in the world, live shopping would be at the very top of my list”
Whatnot is at the forefront of this. There sole focus is live selling. They didn’t start as a social media company trying to add in live shopping, they are all about live shopping. Think of Whatnot as a combination of QVC, Tiktok and what social media should be, about authenticity and connection. That part that Whatnot does an amazing job is wrapping very simple items into a must watch event. Don’t get me wrong, there are TONS of high priced items on Whatnot, but they were able to make buying used t-shirts exciting! Now, imagine full blown products, now that’s some amazing stuff.
If you’re a numbers person, then there is no question that live shopping is truly changing the landscape of e-commerce. For instance, the amount of time you spend on an e-commerce site vs Whatnot is like to 20x more minutes of viewership. That’s completely nuts. The reasoning to is the same reason why Robinhood with their gamification of investing has taken off. Watching someone selling something live is not only instantly attention grabbing, but it’s so addictive.
Entertainment aside, it’s a smart business all around. From Whatnot’s side, they charge 10.9% to sellers (2.9% of which is the credit card fee). From the sellers side, if they are able to combine entertainment with commerce, the results are amazing. Not only do they start having their own following, they have an insane amount of repeat business. Remember, it’s just not about selling, it’s about entertainment as well and some sellers on Whatnot have it nailed.
The big picture about live selling is, it’s not only changing HOW we buy, it’s changing WHY we buy. So it’s changing the how and the why, that makes the business trajectory to be insanely high.
