Sam Blumenthal

According to Gordon, what makes mystery boxes such effective marketing is not only that “people love mystery” — it’s also that the experience of unboxing is so shareable and reproduceable. When someone watches a 5 Surprise unboxing on TikTok, he said, “people then want to experience that for themselves.”

There’s no true equivalent to Taobao Live in America, and so the U.S. is still playing catch-up.

The average time users spend on Versihop has gone up 50% since the live video update, and the streams are generating a 4x higher conversion than the overall rate. Khan views video as a means of helping shoppers to discover the independent brands the platform specializes in. Verishop does not provide user or sales numbers, but its base is 80% female... See more