‘People overthink what live shopping is’: TalkShopLive CEO

Is live shopping big in the US? Maybe not yet, but its runaway success in China makes companies believe the trend is poised to take off.

One of live shopping’s biggest platforms is TalkShopLive, founded in 2018, which lets publishers, celebrities, and creators stream shoppable content across multiple platforms simultaneously, rather than asking them to choose between Amazon or TikTok Shop.

New CEO Sandie Hawkins—who previously launched TikTok Shop in the US and has more than 20 years of experience across commerce, digital media, and advertising—spoke with Retail Brew about TalkShopLive’s overall strategy to attract as many eyeballs as possible.

How can we destigmatize live shopping for the US audience and show people it’s not high-stakes programming?

People overthink what live shopping is and how programmable it needs to be.

I love making matcha in the morning, and there’s a specific matcha that I love. I tell my friends about it, and then my friends are going out and buying it. Live shopping is the same thing. The difference is that I’m speaking to a community of people that I don’t necessarily know directly…You pick up your phone, talk about something you love, and you can sell it.

What are you doing at TalkShopLive to make live shopping more accessible? One of the things that is different in the US is that live shopping is very fragmented. You have Amazon, which is very focused on more programming-oriented [content]. You have TikTok Shop, which is telling all of their creators that they should go live and talk about products that they love. And it’s very different approaches. 

As a creator and somebody who’s making shoppable content, it’s hard to figure out where you should start. And so what we built at TalkShopLive is a platform where you don’t have to choose where you start. The idea is as a creator, you can go live through one platform and push shoppable content out to a number of different publishers and platforms.

What’s the average order value for liveshopping?

We’re seeing that average order value is 20%–30% higher than just regular e-commerce shopping. When the audience is involved, they’re buying. And that’s the power of live shopping—it’s somebody telling you about a product and now you have this urge that you need to check out now.

Live shopping also captures somebody at any point in the purchase cycle. They could be learning about a brand for the first time and the information that they’re seeing during the live inspires them to buy. They could be a loyal brand customer, and maybe during the live, you’re talking about a new color or a new shade if it’s a makeup product and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need that right now.” And you buy it. And that’s why you’re seeing the larger average order size through live shopping.

Statistically speaking, where does live shopping stand in the US?

What’s interesting is everyone keeps saying that live shopping isn’t here yet in the US. It did grow 50% YoY, and it’s expected to be a $30 billion–$40 billion business within the US in 2026. I understand that’s not a big number when you look at overall retail and e-commerce, but for an industry that really just started in the US a couple of years ago, that's very, very rapid growth.

What does the future of retail marketing look like?

Everything with technology needs to be AI-based, needs to be available for the AI models to learn off of. And it goes without saying that is going to change the face of retail.

I think retail is going to become two-faced, if you will, which is one, it is going to be very much about the human connection and the live shopping component or the short video component. And the other is going to be more AI-driven: “Just give me the product that I want at the best possible price, where I can buy it and get it to my house as quickly as possible.” And those are going to be two very different experiences based off of what you’re looking for in that moment.