TalkShopLive Is A ‘Digital Main Street’ Of Livestreamed Storefronts

Whether it’s small businesses with a single employee, a Fortune 500 retailer doing a product launch or an A-list celebrity discussing her new book, the impact and intimacy of streaming commerce platform TalkShop.Live is gaining converts as well as conversions.

“At a time with stores across America closed, we help provide people with their live digital storefront and be the digital Main Street where people can tell the story behind their product,” TalkShopLive Founder and CEO Bryan Moore said in a recent interview with PYMNTS.

“Whether you’re Peter Frampton or Paul McCartney or Garth Brooks or Matthew McConaughey, or whether you’re the Hungry Monkey Baking Company in Illinois, what you’re trying to provide — whether it’s for your fans or your customers — is the same thing. You’re saying, ‘Come in and have an experience. Let me tell you the story behind my product.’ And that’s really where we’re seeing the sales drive and the sales convert.”

In fact, Moore said TalkShopLive is currently seeing around an 18 percent conversion rate from its growing audience, a metric that partly explains why investment fund Spero Ventures, which was formed by billionaire eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar, just invested $3 million dollars in seed capital into the streaming commerce startup.

Creating a Seamless Out-of-App Experience

While all of those celebrities — as well as dozens of others — have appeared on TalkShopLive, Moore stresses the fact that his platform is designed for all sellers, not just famous ones. “We are a network that is also cutting the friction in the path to purchase,” he said, adding that a lot of livestream commerce drives people to go download another app when it’s time to buy. “So if you’re a brand, a retailer, talent or a small business, you don’t necessarily want to drive everybody to go download another app in order to experience your product and possibly buy it,” Moore said.

On TSL, the buy button is embedded in the video stream, keeping customers — and their cash — right where sellers want them. At the same time, sellers can also embed the TSL player in their own site without losing any of the purchasing functionality. “For a lot of small businesses and retailers, [the ability to embed] is really important, since they want to own that experience and their customers,” noted Moore.

A Variety of Verticals

Moore pointed out that another timely benefit of livestreaming sales is that it allows small businesses to reach more people and engage and connect with their customers, at a time when the pandemic has made that harder than ever to do. “When we started to prove the value of converting sales, we went from being something where publishers would say, ‘oh, this is kind of a good idea if you want to do it,’ to now encouraging their talent to go on here early because they’re going to move a lot of books.”

Moore said talent and authors like the format, which makes it an easy sell. “It’s really inviting people to an intimate experience to talk about their books,” he said. “So we do great with books and music. I would say food is our fastest-growing vertical, and beauty is also very strong.”

Seeing Is Believing

Of course, the early success of TSL nicely coincides with the emergence of social media and video. From Live Nation’s use of streaming concerts to Walmart’s move to reach young consumers on TikTok, the sector is clearly hot right now. “I think the idea that livestream commerce is getting more and more adopted [in the U.S.] is a great sign for everyone who is in the space,” Moore said. “But for us, I think what’s so wonderful is that we give people the opportunity to tell their story, to bring people in for an experience and really develop their brand loyalty,” he said.

So far, about 3,000 small businesses have turned to TalkShopLive to stream their goods, and Moore said he has barely scratched the surface. “I believe that TalkShopLIve has the opportunity to be the digital Main Street for businesses across all verticals, so there is an opportunity for us to grow really large and also be a very beneficial community to all of the small businesses that use us,” he said.