What’s the Story?

This report forms part of our Innovator Profile series, which focuses on emerging technologies that are disrupting traditional retail and fueling innovation across the retail value chain. In this free report, we profile LiSA, a SaaS startup that provides live shopping solutions for leading retailers and marketplaces across the globe. Coresight Research collaborated with LiSA to offer insights into the company’s service capabilities and offerings.

Why It Matters

Livestream shopping is set to continue growing rapidly, with the US livestream e-commerce market set to reach $11 billion in 2021 and $35 billion in 2024, Coresight Research estimates. Brands and retailers will increasingly turn to live shopping channels to engage consumers. LiSA focuses on designing and developing live commerce solutions to meet the specific needs of large multibrand e-retailers, marketplaces and international direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand groups. The company enables these players to launch their own customized and holistic live shopping programs, which they can easily scale across multiple hosts and countries.

LiSA: In Detail

Headquarters Dusseldorf, Germany Management Team Sophie Frères—Co-Founder and CEO Philippe Frères—Co-Founder and CPO Sylvia Dudek—Business Development Lead Michael Krohmann—Technical Lead What Problem Is the Company Solving? LiSA identifies the challenge for e-retailers today as being that consumers are increasingly seeking to be entertained and inspired when they shop online. As such, the company has found that retailers are looking for quick, effective and scalable ways to transform their mostly transaction-driven online shopping experiences into social and discovery-led experiences. With conversion rates of up to 35% and engagement rates of up to 90%, LiSA-powered livestream shopping are marketed as a highly effective way for e-retailers to enable such experiences for its online audiences. The company expects the future of online shopping is social or even community-driven. With LiSA’s turnkey solutions, clients can not only easily launch and run their own live shopping channels, but are also able to expand their community reach through multiple sub-accounts. This function allows multiple brand reps, sales staff, community members or even influencers to plan and run live shopping events independently and individually—and go live directly through the given retailer’s online platform. For instance, LiSA worked with Avon Company USA in March and April 2021 to facilitate livestream shopping events with participation from multiple brand representatives to answer questions and interact with viewers. Between the two weekend-long events, more than 17,000 brand representatives participated and the brand saw very high levels of audience engagement. Competitive Advantage Beyond a carefully crafted and highly engaging user experience, the company states that its key competitive advantage is offering scalability. LiSA’s live shopping solutions can easily be scaled out among its clients’ communities and livestreaming partners, enabling rapid and organic channel growth. LiSA also pays close attention to “return on intention.” The company uses the term to the need to cater to different brands and retailers pursuing live shopping with different intentions in mind. The company seeks to understand these intentions at an early stage and offers relevant support services to clients throughout their onboarding phase, such as trial design workshops. The support and recommendations are based on company learnings from clients in similar segments, which can help LiSA to maximize said “return on intention.” Strategy for the Post-Pandemic Market Benefiting from the growth in e-commerce over the course of the pandemic, LiSA expects consumers to continue to buy more online and look for inspiration and social interaction during live shopping. The company does not expect to see a change in customer demand for social entertainment commerce as the pandemic eases. LiSA will continue to work with global online retailers to extend its offerings and advance its interactive features, such as gifting and gaming. Upcoming Developments Later in 2021, LiSA will be launching more entertaining and interactive features by integrating gamification elements into its solutions and offering artificial intelligence-powered data insights to improve presenters’ performance and audience engagement. LiSA describes its ultimate vision is to create a partnership network and solutions that require minimal set-up, which will allow brands, retailers and marketplaces to successively transform their online shops into thriving and interactive online commerce experiences.

What We Think

As consumers continue to place more orders on live shopping channels, we expect LiSA’s focus on offering scalability to its clients to distinguish its offering in the livestreaming space. In addition, we think that the company is well positioned to capture shoppers’ attention amid the pandemic-induced shift toward e-commerce with its emphasis on gamification and entertainment in its upcoming development plans.