'I made £100,000 of TikTok sales in one day': The business of live shopping

Daisy Kelly's business was inspired by a personal problem - for years she'd been pulling out her eyelashes.

She hid her habit with lash extensions, but when beauty salons closed during Covid Daisy decided to create a serum to help her eyelashes grow back.

She started Glow For It from her mother's kitchen table in 2020 while she was a student and now her business generates £6m a year in sales.

More than 40% of Daisy's sales come from TikTok Shop UK and increasingly from livestreams.

"I think live shopping gives people that connection and interaction that we're all craving... We actually generated over £100,000 revenue in one 12 hour TikTok live," says Daisy, 27.

Daisy's business goes live from a studio for a minimum of six hours a day with different presenters interacting with shoppers, from showing off products to answering their questions.

There are a host of platforms and marketplaces now offering livestreams connecting sellers and customers, from Instagram Live, YouTube Shopping, to eBay and Amazon Live. They're all different.

Live shopping, it seems, is becoming part of everyday consumer behaviour for many.

According to new research from retail agency Savvy Marketing, 30% of shoppers surveyed said they'd bought something from a live shopping event.

"The big retailers have got to grab hold of this," says Catherine Shuttleworth, CEO of Savvy. "It's grown from nothing to a huge thing really quickly. If you haven't got a strategy for live selling, you're going to miss out."

TikTok Shop says its UK sales grew by more than 30% year-on-year in June, with live shopping the fastest-growing format.

At an event in the centuries old Covent Garden market, it hosted 20 small businesses with stalls who were also selling live to customers all over the UK.