Live Shopping Turns Sellers Into Digital Storefronts

Conventional e-commerce works best when the buyer already knows what they want. Grant LaFontaine argues that it is much weaker at discovery: “If you look at e-commerce today, you have to know exactly what you're looking for.” Whatnot’s wager is that shopping can instead combine entertainment, product education, and a purchase in a single live experience.

The scale of live commerce in China is central to that wager. LaFontaine puts live commerce at 30% to 40% of all commerce there, while describing the U.S. as still in the single digits. An NIQ report displayed during the discussion describes China’s live-commerce market as roughly $900 billion. The gap, in his account, is not merely cultural. U.S. live-shopping experiences had left transactions, shipping, payments, discovery, and customer experience poorly integrated. Whatnot was built to join those pieces.

That integration produces behavior closer to entertainment or social media than to a conventional product catalog. LaFontaine says users spend roughly 95 minutes a day on Whatnot, and that most do not purchase on a given day. They are there to watch, browse, and return because the experience is enjoyable. George characterizes the result as entertainment as well as commerce, noting that more than 80% of people are not transacting on a given day.

LaFontaine does not frame that engagement as a byproduct of market mechanics. “Users don't give a shit about the market,” he says. They care whether they enjoy the experience and whether it provides value. A seller’s personality, the unfolding nature of a show, and the possibility of finding something unexpected can give people a reason to return without an immediate purchase.

He compares the appeal to visiting a mall or store—an experience he thinks has become less compelling in its traditional form. Whatnot is intended to put that browsing dimension on a phone: somewhere a customer can spend time, not just complete a preplanned transaction.

Whatnot began in collectibles because the category made the limits of an anonymous listing especially visible. Product condition, authenticity, scarcity, and seller knowledge matter; a static page cannot always make them legible.

LaFontaine’s own first sale was a holographic Chansey Pokémon card when he was in third or fourth grade. During the early days of eBay and Yahoo Auctions, he sold the card for $10. The buyer mailed a money order, which LaFontaine cashed before mailing the card from the post office with his father. The transaction was cumbersome, but it established an early connection between collecting, commerce, and trust.

His later work at YouTube and at Facebook on marketplace-related products supplied the other elements: video and marketplace mechanics. He describes Whatnot as the combination of those experiences with his continued interest in collector markets, including sneakers and Funko products.

LaFontaine and co-founder Logan began discussing a marketplace business in Tokyo in 2019, then returned to the idea after noticing friends reentering collecting through Funko Pops, comics, and sports cards. Their view was that the customer had changed: people who had collected as children now had disposable income and had grown up on mobile phones, while the market itself had changed little. They quit their jobs in December 2019 and launched an authenticated Funko Pop marketplace.

The distinction from a conventional marketplace became the company’s central proposition. Rather than reducing the seller to an interchangeable inventory source, live shopping could make the seller’s identity, expertise, and audience part of the product experience.

The seller proposition is the inverse of the anonymous marketplace model. Grant LaFontaine argues that e-commerce became highly efficient partly by obscuring who supplied goods and making it harder for merchants to build distinct brands. Whatnot is meant to put that identity back at the center.

A seller can host, demonstrate products, and develop an audience of repeat buyers rather than compete solely for placement alongside interchangeable listings. LaFontaine describes businesses on the platform ranging from one- and two-person operations to companies with a couple hundred employees, and says Whatnot is generating “billions and billions and billions of dollars” for small businesses.

At the upper end, he says, the largest businesses may be doing a couple hundred million dollars in revenue with margins of 20%, 30%, or 40% and higher. Whatnot processed more than $2 billion in sales in the prior year and had already processed more than $2 billion so far in the current year, according to LaFontaine. The company takes a small fraction of that volume, he says, and does not intend to grow by raising seller fees. Its business grows as sellers’ businesses grow.

But live video alone is not the product. Seller growth depends on the surrounding operating system: tools to run a business, customer support, trust and safety, lower shipping prices, stronger selection, and product quality. A compelling host cannot compensate indefinitely for poor fulfillment or a weak customer experience.

The buyer and seller strategies are therefore inseparable. Whatnot may give merchants a recognizable storefront and returning customers, but the platform still has to make each transaction affordable, reliable, and safe enough for those customers to come back.

Whatnot now sells in more than 100 categories, according to Grant LaFontaine. Its category logic is not that every product needs live video. His practical test is whether someone could build a retail shop around it. If customers would visit a store to browse, learn, evaluate products, or interact with a knowledgeable merchant, he believes the experience can work from a phone.

Women’s fashion is now Whatnot’s largest category. LaFontaine describes much of the offering as resembling TJ Maxx: older-season inventory, recognizable brands, and sharp prices. Sneakers have a similar discount-retail dynamic. Live selling can move enough volume, he says, that merchants are willing to offer deeper discounts, creating a better price for the buyer.

Fresh food and drink demonstrate a different advantage: making a supply chain more visible. LaFontaine points to sellers offering fish from the docks in San Diego, as well as a barbecue restaurant selling prepared food. The category is early for Whatnot, but he sees a benefit in letting buyers understand where food came from and hear the story behind it.

A seafood distributor’s early performance illustrates the case. The distributor, who had worked in fish for years, contacted Whatnot through LinkedIn. George says that during an early pilot he sold between $3,000 and $4,000 of fish. LaFontaine attributes the outcome to live discovery. The seller could introduce an unfamiliar fish, discuss its seasonality and sustainability, explain that it had just come off the pier, and identify the fisherman who caught it.

That information matters particularly for a product buyers may be reluctant to purchase from a static website. Video can show a real seller, allow questions about the product and packing, and make freshness less abstract. As George puts it, the format may also give a local distributor a route to a national market that would otherwise be difficult to reach.

Collectibles remain a foundational example of the same logic: buyers value knowledge, authenticity, and a story around a product. LaFontaine believes the category has continued moving into mainstream pop culture. But the platform’s broader claim is that live shopping can work wherever expertise, identity, context, or a strong deal makes shopping materially better than a listing alone.

Whatnot operates in about 10 countries, Grant LaFontaine says: the U.S. and Canada, five countries in Europe, Japan, and Australia. The notable result of that expansion, in his view, is how little the fundamental model has changed across markets.

The same kinds of seller businesses that emerged in the U.S.—in collectibles, fashion, electronics, and other categories—have emerged elsewhere. Buyer interest in discovery and sellers’ need for an audience have been strikingly similar, he says. That consistency makes LaFontaine bullish that live selling is a durable shopping medium rather than a category-specific novelty.

The next phase is less about adding inventory than helping sellers operate better businesses and ensuring that buyers continue to have a strong experience. LaFontaine identifies better seller tools, more categories, customer support, trust and safety, lower shipping prices, and improved selection and product quality as the work ahead.

He would like to bring cars to Whatnot, where a buyer could see a fuller video presentation of a vehicle, and eventually add liquor, beer, and wine. More country launches are also possible. But the underlying objective remains the same: help more people build businesses while making the experience good enough that their customers return.