The Philippines’ first and leading livestream shopping network, Shoppertainment Live recently opened seven (07) diverse and fully functional “Livestyle” studios to capture the ever-growing live commerce market.
As a tech-enabled livestream shopping network for eCommerce and social media, Shoppertainment Live enables big advertising agencies, multinational companies (like Unilever and Del Monte), and eCommerce giants (like Shopee and Lazada) to properly sell their products in an online broadcast setup produced at their Quezon City studios, where they have in-house presenters from their talent pool.
“With more studios, we expect more action for the market. The team’s confidence stems from handling the smallest local businesses to the biggest global brands as part of our roster of clients. Shoppertainment Live’s strength is making products sellable, handling diverse products such as cosmetics, clothing, electronics, and everything in between,” according to Shoppertainment Live CEO Hiyasmin Neri-Soyao.
Neri-Soyao explained that through their data and experience, the company was able to identify which categories are going to be on the rise and in demand, hence the creation of multiple livestyle studios:
- Style studios for fashion and beauty
- Kitchen studios for cooking and home appliances
- Lifestyle studios for talkshows and homecare
- Technology studios for mobile and gadgets
- Music studios
- Recreation studios for entertainment
Moreover, Shoppertainment Live also launched its incubation program for its influencer sellers who are called “influensales” through Shoppertainment Academy. This company initiative educates and equips Shoppertainment Live presenters with the necessary skills to be sale-centric, entertaining, and engaging to the market. With a numbers-driven mindset and a natural disposition to entertain and inform shoppers about their purchases, their in-house presenters are the next generation of marketers working for brands in real-time to reach a wider range of a brand’s market in a more authentic and engaging way, making every Livestyle activation effective in the virtual realm.
“Not all presenters can produce the same numbers for every lifestyle. That is why Shoppertainment Live brought together a diverse group of presenters whom we trained to do ‘influensales’ as opposed to simply producing buzz and engagement for the brand. This follows the company’s philosophy wherein we believe that content is king but they like it better when the cash register rings,” added Neri-Soyao.
The Next Normal in Live Commerce
The live commerce market has been rapidly growing and thriving with the eyes of Filipinos stuck to their screens due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Shoppertainment Live has seen a 200% growth in the demand for live streams from brands since 2020.
“It has been more than a year that people have been watching live streams, thus, it will be part of the new normal and e-commerce marketing mix. We are proud to claim that we lead in empowering brands and companies to shift from their traditional ‘promodizing’ method usually done inside malls to doing it via live streaming. We see this as an ongoing trend, even if things get back to normal. And while everybody is talking about what the ‘new normal’ should look like, Shoppertainment Live is already living out the ‘next normal’,” shared Neri-Soyao.
Undertaking the “next normal,” Shoppertainment Live is coming in equipped for this industry with members from the eCommerce, broadcasting, events, activations, and advertising industries coming together to oversee its growth. The company CEO herself was a host alumna of a popular home TV shopping show and has served as a brand executive with the country’s biggest network. With her are Lawrence Lee, the Chief Broadcast Officer who gained significant experience in all three major broadcasting networks as director and producer; and Patt Soyao, the company’s Chief Strategic Officer who also serves as CEO and co-founder of ICON Executive Asia and a former managing director and co-founder of a below-the-line advertising firm. Through their efforts, Shoppertainment Live has expanded their clients’ audience digital eCommerce reach with an average of 10,000 average organic views per hour, amplified by 70% digital engagement, and 100 average store followers, with 2-10% viewership to sales conversion.
Shoppertainment Live started a year before the country was hit by the pandemic, seeing the opportunity that live commerce brought when it was just growing in China. For the last two years, the company has been aiding local and multinational brands into this branch of digital transformation, serving over 200 clients. They started out with an average of 20 live streams per month, but are now producing 100 at the moment, with the number steadily increasing this 2021.
The company has been constantly refining the virtual retail experience into an art, producing push sales live streams, brand awareness events, shoppable webinars, activations, and grand live streams that were previously held by the above-the-line network giants.
Poised for National, Regional, & Global Growth
Shoppertainment Live is poised to make the live commerce ecosystem flourish in the country. With its board of directors backing the company’s growth using their expertise in e-commerce solutions, influencer marketing, and visual merchandising among others, the company is projected to spread its roots nationally, projecting regional offices to be installed in three years’ time. This opens up for regional speakers to sell in their own language, making marketing more hardworking for brands to get their products closer to home, closer to life by going live.
The livestream shopping network is also working on its Southeast Asia (SEA) and Global expansion plans, citing the potential of Filipino livestream presenters because of their strong communication skills and infectious enthusiasm.
To push through with these plans, Neri-Soyao has been hard at work with her growth as a CEO, being chosen after six (06) weeks of intensive learning sessions and out of 400 business owners from Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, to be a delegate and take an executive course in the birthplace of livestream shopping — the Alibaba Headquarters in China. This sets the precedent for Philippine live commerce to go global, with Shoppertainment Live at the helm.