ShopThing live video shopping marketplace
ShopThing, a live shopping marketplace focused on luxury brands, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Origin Ventures, with participation from Pritzker Group and Interplay. The Toronto-based company aims to redesign the way people shop and sell through live video commerce via its iOS app.
Founded in 2018, ShopThing currently has 500,000 users across North America. The company’s app allows its network of shoppers and influencers to walk into stores and select products, livestream them to audiences and then purchase an item on a customer’s behalf. On the consumer side, customers can browse the app to see the live deals that shoppers have found. ShopThing notes that sale items only live for 24 hours.
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Once a customer makes a purchase, ShopThing fulfills the order. Checkout is completed through the ShopThing app and products are shipped to customers in 1-3 weeks via Canada Post or USPS. ShopThing charges a 20% fee to account for the shopping service, along with the purchase and shipment processes.
ShopThing was created by Maggie Adhami-Boynton, who previously worked at the mobile app agency Plastic Mobile, which is behind several popular apps in Canada such as Pizza Pizza, Shoppers Drug Mart, RBC Bank, and more.
Adhami-Boynton told TechCrunch in an interview that she got the idea for ShopThing after coming across a New York-based personal shopper on Instagram who would go into stores while livestreaming and find items for her followers to purchase. After doing some research, Adhami-Boynton found that the concept of live shopping is popular in Asia and decided that she wanted to bring that same addictive experience to North America. Live shopping is becoming increasingly more popular in Asia and particularly in China, where e-commerce company Alibaba has launched a service called Taoboa that links livestreams with e-commerce stores to allow viewers to watch and shop at the same time.
ShopThing live video shopping marketplace
