As the digital world changes, so do the ways consumers shop. On this 129th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Andrew Chen, Chief Product Officer of CommentSold. By taking advantage of key opportunities and gaps within e-commerce, CommentSold has developed a one-of-a-kind tool for shopping experiences within Shopify.
In the episode, Andrew Chan dives into the functions of CommentSold such as live selling, shoppable clips, and comprehensive supply management, that ease the challenges of online shopping. More importantly, Andrew illustrates just how important it is to take the time to understand the user experience and identify areas where technology can be leveraged to create an indispensable product. If you’re looking to learn more about how you can devise game-changing tools and solutions, this episode is for you!
Watch the full episode below, or visit TheEcommShow.com for more.
If you enjoyed the show, please rate, review, and SUBSCRIBE!
Have an e-commerce marketing question you'd like Andrew to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: hello@theecommshow.com
Tapping into the Power of Live Selling with CommentSold
Andrew Maff and Andrew Chan
CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com | Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff
Andrew Chen is an experienced product executive and the Chief Product Officer at CommentSold, a leading video commerce platform that has produced over $4.2 billion in sales by enabling thousands of retail businesses to unlock sales growth through live selling.
00:03
The reason you should join this live is not just to discover more or be entertained but there may be significant opportunities that you may miss out on if you don't join the live and that's really important I want to show
00:27
you show you an awesome yes
00:38
guys hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host Andrew Maff. And today I am joined by another Andrew Andrew Chen who is the Chief Product Officer over at Common Sold. Andrew, how you doing right for good show? Yeah, it's gonna be awesome, too. Sweet. Super excited to have you on the show. Very excited about this topic as well. Going into the usual though and not spoil anything. I'd love to give the opportunity let everyone know more about you your background, common soul and we'll take it from there. Okay. Sure. Yeah, so I'm the chief product officer common sold. Been here for a little over two years now. I lead the product design and number of our technologies teams in the US as well as in China and India.
01:50
Prior to common sold, I was one of the founding team members at flow commerce helped build that from the ground up over the last six years and we sold it to our biggest competitor globally 500,000,020. Prior to that, I had a long history of E commerce companies like Gilt Groupe and lot 18 and many others I can talk about.
02:15
Beautiful. And so common sold. Tell me a little bit about that. What's the platform or is it due? Let's go.
02:22
Yeah, so common sold were. The US is number one video commerce platform, our specialty has always historically been live selling. And so we've got three core product areas. One is our common sold core platform, which is a full stack ecommerce platform that does everything from order fulfillment to payments, to shipping and all the things but with a specialty around life selling and video commerce. Our second product is video for Shopify, which takes everything we know about video commerce and life selling. And we took that and we made a plugin on top of Shopify, so any Shopify customer can now go live, have their own mobile apps that go live as well as have video clips, like a tick tock like feed, they have their and then our third platform is Pop Shop Live, which we acquired last year, which is a full video commerce live selling marketplace that we work with small shops and creators who want to go live on an easy to use marketplace.
03:30
Cool. So very, it's super interesting, because I know that like live streaming shopping like it's you know, it's been growing for years and years like Amazon started getting into it was a couple years ago, I think it may be a little more than that. So it's obviously a very, it's a big growing aspect and really starting to become a part of a lot of brands marketing mix. What's the theory around, you know, in this case, like comment sold essentially, you almost it's a plugin, like you mentioned, let's say for Shopify, and so it's hosted on their website. And so is the theory that these brands are driving that traffic to their website, wherever they have the comments sold app, basically, featured. And then people can obviously interact with everything from a live perspective, correct?
04:17
Yeah, absolutely. So with our core platform, you know, our vast majority of our customers are small boutiques. A lot of people who may have been stay at home moms are teachers and then turned into wanting to get into this life selling started, you know, just trying it out, and then nurtured an audience nurtured people who enjoy interacting with them and engaging with them. And that's what the common social platform historically has done when it was founded in 2016. It allowed these these hosts these sellers, these boutiques to be able to have a really engaging and interactive Um, you know, experience with their audience. And this was especially prevalent during COVID. When no one could go out, right? No one could go to a shop or a store and cigar and COVID A lot of people started live selling, and they, it just became their form of entertainment. Yeah, a lot of the followers and the shoppers who would, you know, get on at 8pm on a Thursday, every Thursday to watch the show. And they became a loyal following. And with that, they're like, Hey, I love this person. I love how authentic they are. And I love the stuff that they were and they love the stuff they sell. It has been come such a retentive tool for any ecommerce platform, or brand or seller who wants to better engage with the audience from anywhere. Yeah.
05:51
The What's your theory on using a platform like comments old versus using the live functionality on any of the different social media platforms?
06:02
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, the, the critical aspect is, we handle everything end to end. When you go live, that's one thing that's engaging with the audience. And, you know, with something like Pop Shop live with all our creators, that is, that is what they do. They go live the Cree video clips, and they're really good at engaging with that audience. With comments old Pop Shop, live and video for Shopify, we make everything super simple meaning we take care of like when when someone's live on the live stream, someone's buying it, they immediately put it in their car, they check out, we see the checkouts live, that's something that you can only do if you have an end to end ecommerce platform linked to the live stream. And then, you know, we have this idea and pop shop, which is open box, which means you know, you can you buy something on a Monday, and then you come back on a Wednesday, and you have an open box with that same seller, that only shifts the open box on Friday. So you only pay shipping once and you can keep coming back. And so from an end to end perspective, live, the live experience is inherently linked to the entire ecommerce experience. So we can make it really simple for the seller to be able to manage their their all their logistics, all their operations, or, you know, even especially with pop shop, live and dropship that we've integrated into it, they don't even have to touch a product. So what happens is they just go live. And those products are sold. And we take care of all of the delivery, we take care of returns, we care payments, and all the Creator has to do is nurture their audience, sell those products and make a living.
07:45
That's awesome. That's, that's pretty cool. You also mentioned obviously from an app perspective, so how does that work? Is there just like a common sold app? Or is this like, everyone's got their own type of app thing? Like how does that work?
07:56
So mobile is so critical and important is you see on one aspect as a seller, you can go around and you know, you can literally be selling from anywhere you can go to your shop, your warehouse. But also from a user's perspective, you get a notification that someone's going live, you want to join that show immediately, wherever. So we know mobile is so critical to the user experience. So that's why all three of our platforms offer mobile applications. So on a common soul platform. Again, we have 1000s of shops who use that full stack ecommerce platform, it comes with native iPhone and Android apps. So a shop will be able to have their own website on common sold. They also have their own mobile apps. And so when they go live, and they create their videos, they are streaming at all at the same time to their website to all the mobile apps and also their live streaming platforms that we've integrated with, whether it's Instagram or Tiktok. Similarly with the video platform, our video plugin is not just a video commerce plugin, everyone also gets a mobile app. So it turns their Shopify store into a mobile app again, because we know having having an app that allows have followers and shoppers who love those brands to be with them all the time to be like hey, we're going live Joining us now is so critical. And then pop shop live itself is just a marketplace. And so it's a singular app that provides you know all the all the shoppers and all the creators one single place to go to see the video commerce to see the clips and the live streams.
09:31
Interesting. It's thinking of some brands we work with, you know, as you're kind of telling me about this and obviously, like, there's the obvious, right, like the ones you mentioned, like oh, they have a boutique shop, maybe they're selling like apparel or something like that. It's great to show off, etc. But I'm also thinking and correct me if I'm wrong here. Like we've got a bunch of clients we work with, they're larger, like b2b, like massive products that are like 1000s of dollars and they're kind of a pain but they require a lot Education. And I feel like having like, this is also a really good way of having like a quote unquote, like product demo and then being able to sell it as well. Are people leveraging it that way? Also?
10:11
Absolutely, absolutely. product demos are a critical use case for live shopping. And, you know, the the sort of, you know, previous advent of E commerce, it's, it's, it's static, it's in a war experiencing, historically. And now you go and you have your just your image and some descriptions, and you're shopping and you're trying to do your research, and you're going everywhere, and you're not sure you're getting going to be able to see the right angle, or is it kind of fit or, you know, so many questions you may have. But with live, those, all those things are answered first and foremost with with with a live video, you would be able to, you know, like show the different angles, being able to accentuate the particularities of something that's really cool on it. And at the same time, as people engage in ask questions, and especially with like clothing and expensive clothing, where you're like, I don't know, if I want to spend this much money, you're like, hey, how does it fit in? And this is the type of person I am. You know, maybe I'm kind of like the person but like the host, does it? Does it fit? Right does? What is the fabric feel like? And so there's so many different ways that that continuous engagement in those questions and answers and that happen on alive facilitate a much richer commerce experience for everyone involved?
11:28
Yeah. Is there? I mean, I know I'm kind of opening this up for you to just be like, No, it's perfect for everyone. But like, is there any type of product line where it doesn't go and doing the live element doesn't always kind of resonate as much? Well,
11:45
what I can say, you know, to your point, yes, I think everything could be so nice, anything, you know, you couldn't you can imagine, what what is live sort of live commerce and live video, you know, taking the place of it's, it's that in person experience, you walk into a retail store, you walk into a car shop, and you're engaging with someone who was telling you about the product, and you may have you know, a relationship with that person, or they're really nice, and it feels feels better or someone's really mean, it doesn't feel great. And so like, with live, you kind of get that too. It's like, do I like this person? Am I following them? Like am I engage with them, right? And so at the end of the day, you know, anything could be sold. That being said, what we find sells better, is are things that are exclusive things that maybe have scarcity, or at least scarcity from our standpoint. And those are the types of things that being like, hey, the reason you should join this live is not just to discover more or be entertained, but there may be significant opportunities that you may miss out on if you don't join the live. And that's a really important tool for
12:52
sellers. Interesting. So leveraging it a little bit more like, like a product launch strategy, or we're doing a promotion, but only during the live video kind of thing. Interesting. Okay. The once the video, you know, you go live, you go through the video, you make millions of dollars, you're awesome, great. And then the video ends. Is it? Like, is it downloadable? Is it something where you have like a library of previous live videos like how does that work? Yeah,
13:21
that's a great question. I'm pretty excited because we've had have some historic product. And we literally just launched a product that extend some of these things that I'll talk about. So historically, yes, every, every live is recorded and has replay. And so those replays are then available to be presented on your website on your mobile app, so that people can view those previous replays. And if those products are still available, it can buy for them. We also have done this functionality that because as someone talks about a live, they scan the product, and then the product shows up on the live, we know when our product is being shown. And so we automate, we automatically take the VAT portion of that clip, and we put it on the PDP the product detail page of the site. So that now you've automated the content of being able to have your previous live and that portion of the product on your on your product page. So people when browsing, they can, you know, experience that. But what we've just launched is a number of really cool AI products, one we call AI clip hero, which what we're now doing is taking you know we generate 1000s of hours lives a day and so any of our shops now will be able to have their lives processed and automatically clipped to the most significant portions of those products automatically have captions on. They can then now not just put that on their website and their mobile app but also download them post them on to Tiktok and Instagram so they have their short form videos in a pre you know pre made format that already works for Tik Tok. But secondly, We've also made it such that if they so choose, they can put it into their pop clips feed, which is a new feed every one of our clients have on their mobile app. And what that allows you to do is as they generate more and more, they're essentially creating their own tic tock like feed in their, in their shop in their mobile app. So everything the you know, you can see the engaging, you know, portions of the video, you can see the product, and you can tag up to five products on it. So every one of our shops now has the ability to have their own feed of short form clips generated automatically from their live streams. Wow.
15:37
So obviously, not everyone can be such an amazing and flawless and handsome host like myself, however, I know obviously, you guys sorry, I had to you guys create, obviously the platform, do you provide insight into how they should leverage it how they should do these because like, you know, too, similar to like what we're doing right now, like quality microphone, good lighting, like that kind of stuff is usually standard. But this I really see this as like, you know, it sounds like a really cool idea. But I can also see how it could hurt a brand if you're doing it. And it's just annoying and salesy. Like you've got to make it somewhat entertaining, right. So what's the what do you guys kind of preach over there?
16:22
Yeah, so there's a few things that I want to talk to you about point one. The first thing is, is that we we absolutely we have customer growth specialists, and their job is to engage with, you know, existing, but also new sellers who are on our platform, and help them with best practices, what does it mean, to be in front of a camera? What does it mean, to nurture a live audience? What are the first few lines is going to be like, you may only have two or three people that's okay, is that, you know, you're gonna warm up over time, you're gonna grow an audience, you have to put in sort of a time and effort. So we have this whole sort of school or university education system that allows sellers to understand the commitment that it takes to be able to get to a place where you have 1000s of people tuning in every other day, and you're making, we have shops making, you know, 10s of millions of dollars, like a year, and it's amazing, and purely from lives. You know, that being you know, that being said, we do find, and you see this also where, you know, as you probably know, live selling is gigantic, and China and Asia, but mostly China, you know, multi 100 billion dollar industry there. But everyone, and they're the people they're called their creators are called KOLs key key opinion leaders. But what you do find is brands directly, like brands, may may be able to go live on their own, they may be able to have hosts. And you know, we've engaged with a number of brands, but we actually find that brands are better off partnering with people like creators who who are really good at going live. Right. So in China, there's this there's this creator, his name is Austin Lee, he's he's called, his name is Mr. Lipstick, because he just sells like makeup product. And he himself literally, like on China's single day sells like, you know, a billion dollars worth of, of life. Amazing. That's just one day, and one person and all the brands. So he's got deals with all the big brands, right, all the big cosmetic brands. And so what we've been finding, and what we've seen in the market is that it's better for brands to partner with a creator or someone who's really good at going live. And that's also why we have a dropship capability where we work directly with a lot of brands, as well as suppliers to be like, Hey, here's, here's how we're going to provide all of our sellers product in an easy to use fashion. And they can sell it for you. And they're the people who are really good at going live. And that's and that's the thing, shoppers, the followers of of all of our shops, who are amazing live hosts, they love the person, they love to host and they love the authenticity. And I think that's a really important key element here. They love the authenticity of these hosts. Because what happens is, there'll be going live and you know, some of our top shops, they've got like, you know, it's, you know, it's a wife, who has, you know, two or three kids, you know, they're doing a live the kid runs in and you know, the dog runs and the husband is like, you know, in the background saying stuff, but people love that because it's authentic, and they feel like hey, I can relate to this person. But sometimes if you're too made up if you're too, like put together and it's like, clearly you're being salesy. You're there's not really a relationship and that's what you know, that's where we find him. That's what we encourage our shops to do is like you're engaging in live to have a relationship with your audience, so they get to know you, you can get to know then you can get to know what they like and what you like. And then that is what nurtures the trust and respect for the things that are being sold. And that's so important.
20:10
So you'd say it's kind of like a, almost like your traditional social media approach where it's like UGC, like you're just it, you're better off probably filming it, you know, on your phone in a real life situation, as opposed to overly producing it, in which case, it seems kind of like, you're obviously trying too hard. So I think the good thing about that is obviously, I know it works, because that's what works well on social but I would also say like the startup, to actually start going live and trying it is a lot easier, you probably just need like a stand for your phone and maybe a light and you're good. Exactly.
20:44
And that's what we tell our shops, like, you don't need to go out and you know, these again, these a lot of our some of our best sellers, they came you know, they were formerly nurses and teachers, right and like, you know, saying saying to someone being like, you have to go buy, you know, 10s of $1,000 worth of like, video camera equipment to get started, like that's a starter, but we're like, all you need is your phone. And all you need is a computer and maybe a light and you're good to go. Right? Like that's all you need. That's what we've made it easy and accessible for anyone to this and that's what we're really proud of. And we love seeing these sellers lives being transformed because they're really enjoying what they're doing going live creating video commerce getting clips, and and having a real relationship with them just with what they already have.
21:33
Yeah, pretty cool. I'm, I already know of a couple a couple clients and I reached out to him like, hey, no, because like, it's, it's a very interesting thing I, you know, I can see the thing that becomes very interesting about it, from our end, at least from a marketing perspective is like, I can think of a handful of brand owners that I'd be like, maybe you shouldn't go live. There's others where I'm like you this would be great because you are the face of this and you can educate your customer because that's, I see this working really well for you know, products that have a little bit of complications behind them. And you get a lot of people that are like adding to cart and sitting there for a while or like you got a long sales cycle. So I think it's great. I think it's awesome. Andrew, obviously I really appreciate you being on the show. I don't want to take up too much more time. I'd love to give you the opportunity to let everyone know where they can find out more about you and of course more about common sold. Yeah,
22:25
absolutely. First and foremost, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation. I can talk about talking about this talk about e commerce and product all day long. But yeah, you know, we we, we love being able to empower you know, anyone and everyone to be able to go live right. So our common sole platform for small boutiques are pop shop that Live platform for creators and individuals who may want to be selling collectibles and things like that. Or if you already have a Shopify Shopify store, you can look for video for Shopify, and these are all the products that anyone can can sign up for and get started within five minutes of of going on the page. So we're always happy to be able to introduce this new form of user experience and engagement in live and video commerce for for anyone who wants to engage that.
23:18
Beautiful. Andrew, thank you so much for being on the show everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer. or head over to theecommshow.com to check out all of our previous episodes, but as usual, thank you all for joining and we'll see you all next
23:34
day. Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to theecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTusker, a full service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.
Community for E-commerce Sellers
Leave a Reply