The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Facebook Inc. acquired a small video-shopping start-up earlier this year to help build a live shopping feature inside the company's Marketplace product, according to a person familiar with the plans.
The social media company bought Packagd, a five-person company founded by Eric Feng, a former partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and most of the start-up’s team joined Facebook in September. Packagd was building a shopping product for YouTube videos. “Think of it as a re-imagination of QVC or a home shopping network,” Feng said in a 2017 interview with Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang.
The acquisition by Facebook wasn’t announced, but the small team is now working on a project for Marketplace, which would let users make purchases while watching live video broadcasts. Facebook tested a similar product a year ago in Thailand, though that effort didn’t include a way to buy merchandise directly from the video and has been shut down, a person familiar with the matter said.
A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed the efforts. “As we’ve shared in the past, we’re exploring ways to let buyers easily ask questions and place orders within a live video broadcast,“ she said in a statement.
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Live shopping is growing in popularity, especially in China. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. made it an important element of its Single's Day this year, a massively popular one-day event that generated $38 billion in sales. Kim Kardashian announced a new fragrance via livestream to help hype the event, for example. Amazon.com Inc. is also dabbling in live video shopping.
Facebook has tried to take advantage of e-commerce for years without much success, though its Marketplace product — a Craigslist-like feature for buying and selling used goods — has nearly 1 billion monthly users and launched just three years ago. Facebook-owned Instagram has also said that shopping will be a key focus in 2020, and recently added the ability for users to buy directly from brands inside the app.
Packagd had raised $7.5 million from Kleiner Perkins, Forerunner Ventures and Alphabet Inc.’s GV.
By Kurt Wagner; editor: Jillian Ward, Andrew Pollack and Alistair Barr
Brands are using them for design tasks, in their marketing, on their e-commerce sites and in augmented-reality experiences such as virtual try-on, with more applications still emerging.
Brands including LVMH’s Fred, TAG Heuer and Prada, whose lab-grown diamond supplier Snow speaks for the first time, have all unveiled products with man-made stones as they look to technology for new creative possibilities.
Social networks are being blamed for the worrying decline in young people’s mental health. Brands may not think about the matter much, but they’re part of the content stream that keeps them hooked.
After the bag initially proved popular with Gen-Z consumers, the brand used a mix of hard numbers and qualitative data – including “shopalongs” with young customers – to make the most of its accessory’s viral moment.