Livestream Selling is Here

Amazon, Facebook, Google, and TikTok are getting involved, VCs are investing, and brands are interested in a new retail spin that takes online shopping live. But an upstart company in Alabama is already living what may be the future of retail—and helping 6,000 small retailers see their business soar.

- By Liz Brody

Mic Hensley won’t put on a dress. His fans would die for him to wear one when he lives streams to more than a million phones and Facebook pages while making sales for Pink Coconut, which sounds like a club but is actually a women’s clothing boutique he owns with his wife, Sheri, in Olive Branch, Miss. “I’ll put on a cardigan or a bunch of purses,” Hensley says, laughing. “But I try not to even do that very often because they just get pumped and want more.”

Though that’s not all they want more of. Livestream selling not only saved the Hensleys’ business from becoming a casualty of the pandemic; it increased sales 20 to 30 percent every month, sending the Hensleys into a hiring frenzy that has now reached 48 employees and counting. “Once we started doing it,” says Mic, “everything just kind of shot to the moon.”

Widely referred to as QVC on steroids, Livestream selling in the U.S. usually features a salesperson or an influencer, often in their living room (cords, tchotchkes, and pets in full view), demonstrating products and shooting the breeze with online shoppers in real-time video. Viewers can say hi or ask questions in comments that float across the screen, and the livestreamer responds to them personally. Meanwhile, everyone watches a bubble that displays the product’s dwindling availability until it sells out.