EP350 - Live Commerce Is Where E-commerce Was in 2005: Whatnot's Tom Verrilli

Recorded live at the Retail Club AI Festival in Huntington Beach, Jason and Scot sit down with Tom Verrilli, Chief Product Officer of Whatnot. Jason says Whatnot is now his answer when big brands ask what they aren't paying enough attention to, the way TikTok Shop was two years ago. Tom came to Whatnot after nearly seven years at Twitch.

The conversation covers how Whatnot grew from a static Funko Pop trading site into live commerce across 224 categories in nine countries, where fashion is now the biggest vertical by order volume. Tom explains why live selling gives small brick-and-mortar businesses back the personality that a product detail page strips away. He also walks through Whatnot's auction and fixed-price formats, including sudden death auctions, flash sales, and "party purchase" group buying. Other topics include how trust works when every sale is on video, why "a format is not a moat," and how real-time recommendations (and the acquisition of the AI company Shaped) tell a Star Wars Lego collector apart from a grandma buying Lego for her grandkids.

The headline number: sellers did about $8 billion in sales on Whatnot last year, and Tom expects that to comfortably double this year. His thesis is that live commerce is where e-commerce was in 2005, and that everything sold online will eventually be sold live.

Enjoy the show.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of ReFiBuy.AI and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.