Sam Blumenthal

In December, a fashion startup called Scarce started selling used luxury clothing in the form of mystery boxes, following in the footsteps of a British startup, Heat, which launched with the same concept in late 2019. Both companies claim they have managed to avoid a high return rate — one of the biggest potential pitfalls of a mystery box sales... See more

Shop LIT’s successful livestream formats include exclusive promotions, product launch announcements and seasonal sales, said Zhang. The platform is integrated with Shopify and can be accessed via the Shopify app store to list products. Each purchase on the app is fulfilled by the individual participating brand. While the app earns revenue from... See more

From 2019 to 2020, deepfake videos grew 6,820x (!), from 14,678 videos to 100 million videos. They began to invade mainstream internet platforms. Tom Cruise, for example, isn’t on TikTok. But you’d be forgiven for thinking he is: the account @deeptomcruise posts (very convincing) deepfakes of Tom Cruise.

Influencers do, in fact, affect the purchasing decision of many Gen Zers. Almost half of them purchased something based on an influencer’s recommendation, according to a 2020 study from Kantar.