This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Clearly, when you think about the world's largest online e comm is a retailer that's coming. But who better to chat with us and break it down as far as the landscape of what's happening in the retail space than Leah Wu, founder and CEO of Shop Shop. She's on zoom joining us from Vancouver. Thank you so much, Leah for chatting with us late on a Friday as well. We appreciate it. First off, before we get into the retail landscape, tell us about shop shops and what you do.
Hi, nice to meet you both. Shop Shops is the live streaming platform that brings offline shopping experience, the fun, the discovery to the palm of your hand. Our viewers and shoppers are able to turn on their phone at eight in the morning or eight at night, or even all over to midnight shop with local shopping experts, who we call hosts. They're in Paris, New York, Milan, Tokyo,
many other fashion shopping destinations. Our hosts walk into local batique stores, shopping centers, outlets, and sometimes even sleep markets with their phone and go live stream. They curate and sell product that they found, often with their customers or audience together, and that's what we do. We believe shopping is not just such a keyword or transaction. It's actually
treasure hunting. It's about building connections, creating memories about people who share similar interest So throughout the years, we've always sort of our vision has always been mimicking that offline destination shopping where you discover products with a friend. So this is the interactive and immersive online version of shopping via live and detail.
Something Maddie and I were excited to talk about was this nineties vintage and Maddie, we wanted to hear more about that. As far as the consumer nostalgia, we were just talking about these polarids, but what about what it comes to on your front, it comes to this nineties sort of crazier.
Well, we definitely are seeing what we call the nineties vintage fever. I think it's really the trend that's formed because the generation who grew up in the nineties are not so touched by media or Instagram. And while we were growing up and that there was a lot of magazine, popular TV shows I think those are the trends that we're seeing. Audiences are turning back their TVs of friends, rewatching them Sex and the City and really looking at
fashion then and starting this sort of hunting experience. It became more like what I said, trigger hunting, where you're looking for a product nylon bag that you wanted but they didn't get them. Now it's the perfect time to have it. Leave a tongue Fanni peg. Those were like where you see models. Now they're all coming back. So we're definitely seeing that it's not only for a piece of item, it's more of like a memory that you can carry forward as well.
So is it a situation on the app and this is an app that individual users are going to have to download, right, so they have to download the shop Shops app?
Okay?
And is it a situation where the kind of buyer influencer on camera is as you said, literally walking the user through a vintage store and getting comments in live and getting to say like, oh, I'll buy this one and ship it.
Off to you.
Or is it a little bit more like they batch buy things and then show off all of the products.
And well, most of our shows are really what we call host sellers. They're local shopping experts that knows the loco stores. They take you on the journey walking into the stores, presenting items that are inside the store in real time. So you're literally sitting at home and fighting for the same bag in Tokyo. Yeah, some local travelers or tourists are walking in and looking at and buying up as well. Wow, but you get to see that in real time. So when I was giving examples earlier
at midnight, that's where Japan has shows on. If you are at home, you will be watching live hosts in the stores featuring interesting product all the way from Japan. Yeah.
So that's amazing because I am not a good vintage shopper. I want to be. I want to get vintage closed. I know it's cooler than the clothes I buy, but I'm not good at it and I'm not patient enough to sift through items in a store. So I can see how this would be the perfect product for someone like me. But I do wonder if one of the challenges or opportunities for you is getting people to download
the app itself and just that awareness. How do you deal with that and what is your kind of strategy around that.
Well, very good question. We definitely see that as one of the challenges because I think live shopping itself is you at very early stage for US consumers to actually astapt this concept and fully adopt. So the messaging of live commerce, live tream selling, it's super hard, like how do you describe it so that users or viewers can actually understand what to expect. What we've seen that really resonate is leveraging products or items that are highly searched
by existing users. So if you're looking for a Y cell Lulu, if you're looking for door or Settle, that's what you go for. And when that's sort of how we position ourselves online to get eyeballs so that people know that you can actually shop and find these products via live this way.
Break down the demographics, is this more gen z that's using the app?
Well, currently we're definitely seeing gen z as well, surprisingly millennial and millennial moms as well, so really a range group from I would say twenty five ish all the way to sixty five ish.
That's so interesting. And when you look at the items that are popular amongst those customers, are you able to tell us the differences and what the millennial moms are buying versus what the gen Zers are buying and what are kind of the big trends that Jess and I need to know about heading into the fall of next year.
Well, I think I will be able to show what ever we are able to see on the gen Z front. I do think that a lot of the items are more bright in colors, uh Mini bags like also obviously two thousand uh Creed loved Nylon product is like an IT bag, but gen Z's right now, so.
The coach bags that Jess and I had when we were in middle school, or like.
The IT bag, they're definitely back. So basically, if you can go back into your garage and find that bag and then carry start carrying them, you're definitely hitting the trend. So that's sort of what we're seeing with gen Z's and with millennial millenniums. I think we're we're seeing them buying more of the classic channels, classic deors investment pieces in the sense that it's a good item to have as well as investment to have over time.
So if I can go back and find some of these items, I can try to make some money off of this.
Definitely, I think that's what's fun and also interesting about circular economy. It's not just about making money, it's not just about resell product yourself, and it's not just about sustainability. It's almost everything in one where we're both where we're selling a piece of item but also bringing back memories and trend at the same time.
I'm curious when you look at kind of the landscape of reselling platforms. Something that comes to mind for me is a poshmark. For example, Deepop, who would you say is your biggest competitor in the space and how are you kind of planning and strategizing around that.
Oh, we see ourselves as a live commerce pioneer in the live commerce space. I believe that the real real posh mark these are circular economy platforms that sell multiple products or resells. I think our biggest competitors right now would be the TikTok of the world or Instagram Life Powers. Interesting. Yes, obviously we see ourselves more from virtual shopping front, so
the virtual shopping mall perspective. Pretty Love is the initial category for entry category that we've found to enter the US market to first stage of early adoption for the consumers in the US, but as we expand or grow in the next few years, we believe that we would be able to bring the real offline shopping experience in multi categories to the consumers, not just pre love but
also designer deals, walking an outlets or tagameg for that. Say, sure, so that's sort of how we imagine ourselves to be.
So you mentioned TikTok and Instagram live streaming as a form of competition. I wonder, then, because you rely on host sellers creating content on your platform obviously, is there a concern for you that these sellers might say I'm just gonna do my own thing on TikTok and sell content on a TikTok live stream as opposed to using your platform, And how do you strategize against that.
I think we positioned quite differently than TikTok and Instagram. To me, I will always say, are you going to a playground or are you going to shopping? Because I do believe that's a very too different approach of this market. When you're going to playground, which in the sense is TikTok looking really for content, you accidentally make a purchase. But when you're actually going going for shopping, going to
the shopping mall itselves. The intention to buy is really to shop, and for our audiences or the users that we are attracting, the intention for them is to come here to shop, and the entertainment piece itself is shopping, and the fun itself is really discovering different merchandise, different stores, finding the right persona or hosts that are locally based to give you feedbacks on things to buy and what
not to buy. I believe that is the way that we see ourselves positioned very differently, more from a commerce end goal than just entertainment itself. Talk to us.
About the trends you're seeing with shoppers and what you think this means for the economy.
We definitely is seeing you as users as early stage adopting to this behavior. We've seen the same similar behavior in Asia, where live commerce is much more penetrated in the market itself. We believe that the adoption will happen fairly quickly in the next few years. I think it's estimated to be around sixty eight billion dollars of a
market sized by twenty twenty six in the US. That's only about five percent of e commerce penetration, but comparing to the Asia market that's probably around above twenty percent
of market penetration that are generated by live commerce. I think there's a long way to build, and we also see that currently what we call hostellers will become a job description in a few years, you know, four years, where it's going to be where you brands, retailers looking for or people who are experts live selling and that could be a daytime job or a full time job or a part time job. So that's sort of how we see the market trend to be.
You're talking about e commerce, we do have Amazon coming up next week. How do you view some of these bigger retailers and how does your company fit into this type of space.
I think we try to build the connectors or between offline shopping to online, so the retailers, the brands that have offline present presence, We truly believe that offline is not going to go away. There to serve a purpose, and people still believe that there's a synergy between the break and Mortal and the live commerce where the physical retail stores means trust means discovery, read means connections where you can be physically in store and then also shop Online.
I can give you an example. We currently work with Bloomingdale outlets. Our hosts those to Bloomingdale outlets and feature products that are physically in the stores but not necessarily online and the same price, the same deal. You're able to sit at your own home and watch someone that you trust, maybe have your size, maybe have your maybe have your taste right, be able to find products for you and then drop ship direct to you by Bloomingdale.
So I think that's where we see the connection that's going to happen.
Lea, we got to leave it there, but thank you so much. This was great. Leo Wu, founder and CEO of Shop Shops with over two million active users. I gotta be honest, I'm going to download it right now. Thank you all so much for joining us.