“`html
Tinny music plays in a dimly lit basement as we watch a teenager pull football shirts off a nearby clothing rack and hold them up to the camera.He describes each item monotonously – the team, season, colour, and condition – before sticking on a numbered label and transferring them to another rack. Each item gets less than a minute in the limelight.
Bid rates and prices are listed at the bottom of the screen with eager buyers swiping a yellow bar to bid, while exchanging questions, comments, and emojis in the live chat box. when a buyer wins a bid, their username pops up with bursts of brightly coloured confetti. After live streaming for just over an hour, the teen has made €1,000 in sales.
Generating this kind of cash on VintedeBay, depop, or any other static peer-to-peer marketplace would have taken days, even weeks. Rather of writing detail-heavy descriptions, uploading multiple images, and fielding a laundry list of questions from interested parties, independent resellers and small retailers are turning the camera on themselves to livestream video auctions on the shopping app Whatnot.
The Californian startup has been quietly plugging away as 2019, when product management whizz grant LaFontaine and software engineer Logan Head founded it to solve the pain points experienced by sellers of the plastic Funko Pop figurines,including counterfeit sellers and scams.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art.It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
The success has been a slow burn, with the focus still on niche hobbyist and fan communities. This year, however, has been pivotal for the app. It kicked off by raising $265mn (€233mn) in a Series E funding round, which brought it’s valuation to $4.97bn (€4.37bn). when TikTok went dark in the US earlier this year, Whatnot placed ads in a number of national newspapers to reach sellers using the platform’s Shop feature, whose livelihoods were at risk from the federal ban. Since then,its growth in the UK,Europe,and North America has been remarkable,with a 100% increase in both new sellers and first-time buyers over the past year.
With sellers across 140 shopping categories and nine geographies, flogging everything from hair products and luxury bags to bullion and Plushies, it’s eBay meets Twitch, with a distinct DIY, lo-fi feel. Sellers aren’t broadcasting from pristine, influencer-gray homes, they’re experimenting from bedrooms in shared housing, squeezing shows in between the school run, or beaming in from quiet moments in thrift stores. For many, it’s shaping up to be a full-time job, with some even employing a team to manage their operations.
From casual buyer to full-time live seller making £1mn a week
Livestreaming and “shoppable” video content have been booming in China for years, where platforms like Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese equivalent) and Taobao host thousands of daily livestreams. Over 600 million Chinese consumers regularly watch shopping live streams, and the breadth of what they can buy through this medium is staggering. A new life insurance policy, still wriggling crabs direct from a small village farmer, a discounted McDonald’s chicken sandwicha secondhand car – the list goes on. Top live sellers, often called “Key Opinion leaders” such as Austin Li (aka The Lipstick King) have built mega followings and can easily generate $100mn (€88mn) in sales in a single session. In 2024, the Chinese livestream commerce market reached 5.86 trillion yuan, equivalent to about €715bn.By 2026, it’s projected to reach 8.16 trillion yuan (€996bn).
While china will forever remain streets ahead, the medium is undeniably taking root in Europe. On Whatnot’s platform, there’s been a 600% year-on-year increase in European sellers specifically, and they host more than 20,000 hours of live shows a week. Over half (59%) generate the majority of their revenue from live selling, which rises to 70% for UK sellers, according to the platform’s data from early 2025. This real-time, interactive approach to shopping is attractive for small resale businesses, but is also pulling in passionate buyers-turned-sellers, many of whom have never been in front of an audience before.
It chimes with a trend that Sam Shawstrategy director at cultural insights practice Canvas8has been tracking for over a decade – the desire to be your own boss, which is especially prevalent among younger generations. Nearly two-thirds of people aged 18 to 35 say they’ve started a side gig to supplement their income, or plan to start one, according to a survey by Intuit. Nearly half of those surveyed say their primary motivation for starting a side hustle is to be their own boss. “There’s a strong desire for independence and to build something personal,” says Shaw. “Live selling lets people turn their interests or products into a business.”
Andrew Tubman, for example, hadn’t heard of live selling before he attended the London Card Show with his young son in 2023.A punter with a penchant for Pokémon cards, it was here that he first came across Whatnot. He downloaded the app and used it to buy more trading cards, and spent big on several limited edition Disney collections.”I was watching how livestreamers were doing it,what works and what doesn’t,” explains the 35-year-old from Cranleigh,Surrey. “Then I took the leap to do my first show as a seller in February last year – it was addictive.”
Working a 48-hour week in the motor trade industry, Andrew – known as @TubmanBreaks on Whatnot – managed to fit in a couple of shows weekly, selling sports and entertainment trading cards. He began to see that it could be a viable sideline business.Less than two months after Andrew and his wife Chantel registered as a company, it was clear that demand was high, and live selling alongside the day job wasn’t sustainable.
“At least six nights a week, I was streaming all night, then staying up to pack the cards for postage – it was exhausting,” explains Andrew.”I’d been doing my full-time job for a decade,and although stable,I didn’t enjoy it – it was just to pay the bills and put food on the table for my three kids.” As leaving his salaried role and putting everything into the business in the spring of 2024, Andrew hasn’t looked back. Monthly turnover now easily exceeds £1
