A potential TikTok ban would have an impact on how ecommerce retailers sell and their social media marketing strategies. In Halston’s case, Downing said, the retailer’s customer base is much more involved on Instagram and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. Halston is also one of the first retailers to have joined a new social marketplace, Orme, which launched in April 2024 and works similarly to TikTok and Instagram Reels.

A key difference separating Orme from TikTok and Instagram Reels is that Orme focuses on selling products, whereas the other two platforms’ content is not necessarily product-driven. Moreover, Orme users can buy those products directly from videos, without navigating to a different part of the app or using an in-app browser that opens upon clicking a link.

Ken Downing, left, creative director at apparel brand Halston, shows one of the retailer’s dresses with a model in a video on the Orme app.

“The young consumer really understands shopping with mobile,” Downing told Digital Commerce 360. “Their phone is always in their hand, they’re always shopping and looking for new brands. … They want something that’s going to be fun and something that makes the shopping experience super exciting, and Orme’s doing that.”

Downing is also chief creative officer of Xcel Brands. Xcel owns Halston, as well as other brands including Longaberger, Judith Ripka and more. Xcel Brands CEO Robert D’Loren is one of the co-founders of Orme.

Orme marketplace differs from other social media

“What’s interesting about Orme is that it’s a very different way of shopping than if you’re being marketed from Instagram,” Downing said. “And because, unlike Instagram, you can certainly share a post with somebody, but you can’t shop directly from Instagram. It takes you to your website.”

He adds that Orme allows consumers to make income based on what they share on the app.

“Someone can pick up [that] content and share it on Instagram or any social network or platform,” D’Loren told Digital Commerce 360 in a separate interview. That user gets paid 2%. The person who shared it gets 6%. “That’s how this whole thing works.”

Although it’s still early, Downing said he feels “very safe within the world of Orme that we are protected as a brand.”

Orme has launched with seven merchants and more than 1,000 users who downloaded the app in its first week without using any email campaigns, D’Loren said in a recent Xcel Brands earnings call with investors.

Xcel launched Orme as “a joint venture with a technology company in which Xcel owns a 30% interest in this new video and social commerce marketplace,” D’Loren told investors on the call.

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Walmart Realm allows shoppers a Disneyesque shopping experience immersion and avatars with funky music playing in the background. The only thing missing are 3-D glasses. A recent sampling of the site — offering categories of home, beauty and fashion — allowed for a $113 Alden Design Mid-Century Modern Faux Leather Wingback Accent chair to be easily placed in a cart, but the feeling was almost as much gaming as shopping.

What it’s like to use Walmart Realm

While Walmart did not respond to a request for comment, William White, its chief marketing officer, emphasized Realm’s futuristic shopping experience.

“It’s fantastical, it’s inspirational, and simply put, it’s a lot of fun,” White stated. “At Walmart, we’re embracing innovation with e-commerce experiences designed with the virtual world at the heart.”

Walmart is No. 2 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales. The retailer is also No. 9 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the top 100 online marketplaces by gross merchandise value.

Walmart isn’t alone in thinking that Realm may be transformational.

Digital marketing expert Joe Karasin, owner of Karasin PPC,  says that if Realm is successful, other retailers will try similar tactics.

“Walmart Realm will most likely be a major experiential shopping tool that other retailers seek to emulate in the future,” Karasin predicted. “This is very much in line with the direction technology is heading. Amazon has the AR View option for furniture, and other retailers like Wayfair and even Value City have followed suit.”

He anticipates that Walmart may even take some of Amazon’s digital market share.

Walmart’s continuing interest in metaverse ecommerce

Realm showcases creations from the content designers at the firm Sawhorse, as well as a platform created by Emperia, both of which worked with Walmart on the project. It builds on Walmart’s earlier announcements and partnerships to create immersive shopping experiences, including one with 3-D content platform maker Unity. In addition, Walmart has worked on in-game commerce with the virtual game platform Roblox and explored use cases for NFTs.

Some critics have panned Realm as a fad, but Michael Zakkour, a Walmart observer and founder of the consultancy 5 New Digital, doesn’t think so.

“WMR is no fad; it’s a smart strategy,” Zakkour said. “The initial focus is not on growing top line revenue but rather on attracting newer and younger consumers, while also giving current customers an additional habitat in which to shop and experience Walmart.”

He added that using creators and influencers to create, curate and run the shops is innovative business.

“It creates differentiation from what is offered in-store, online, and on the marketplace,” Zakkour explained.

And Realm does differentiate. It offers virtual shops with an under-the-sea theme (but with the fun name of “So Jelly” in homage to the fish), a Wild West theme (Y’Alternative) and a futuristic, avataristic moonscape theme (Go Chromatic). In So Jelly, for example, a full-length ocean-themed Vlush-brand mirror beckoned the seafaring shopper.

But the big question is: Will shoppers bite?

“Consumers may not take to the 100% virtual shopping experience, but if they do, it will revolutionize retail in a major way,” said Karasin.

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“It’s an endless pit,” said Ahmed, who is also the CEO of textile company Artistic Denim Mills and founder of denim brand DL1961.

Orme shows users a feed of videos based on their interests, much like on TikTok and Instagram Reels. What’s different, though, is that each video displays at least one product users can buy, and they can do so before scrolling to another video.

Whereas influencers often get paid one-time fees, “there’s no ROI for us,” Ahmed said. “All the digital managers [were telling us,] ‘You have to invest!’ And we said enough is enough. We have to create a system which is an ecosystem for influencers, brands and the shoppers so that the CMOs and the owners can see where the money is going.”

He told Digital Commerce 360 that’s what led him to start Orme with co-founder Robert D’Loren. The social commerce marketplace went live in April 2024. D’Loren, who is also chairman and CEO of Xcel Brands Inc., described the marketplace as the intersection of shopping, entertainment and social media.

D’Loren said Orme intends to compete with TikTok Shop, for example, by taking a different approach to how users make money on the two marketplaces.

“Their models are based on ad dollars. … We’re not out to sell ad dollars,” D’Loren said. “We’re out to get 100 million people sharing and earning. It democratizes all of this.”

‘Flip the model’ by which influencers get paid

D’Loren cited data from consulting firm McKinsey & Co. saying that worldwide conversion rates from influencers are “at best 3%,” and conversion rates in affiliate marketing are less than 1%.

“Therein lies the problem,” D’Loren told Digital Commerce 360. “When you have such low conversion rates, and since the change in the privacy rules where you really can’t follow your customer around the internet anymore, digital marketing doesn’t quite work either. So customer acquisition cost has become prohibitively expensive. And there’s no solution for it. The only right solution would be to flip the model. Transition it from a pay-to-play model to a pay-for-performance model.”

As opposed to one-time fees, influencers who facilitate product sales on Orme can receive different percentages of those sales. If a user or influencer makes a video and shares it, then someone purchases directly from that video, the user receives 6% of the sale.

“Someone can pick up [that] content and share it on Instagram or any social network or platform,” D’Loren said. That user gets paid 2%. The person who shared it gets 6%. “That’s how this whole thing works.”

In other words, if 50 people share a creator’s video, and those 50 people each make at least one sale, the creator makes 2% of each product sold through her content, plus 6% on any sales made directly from her own video. The 50 users who shared the video then get 6% of each purchase made from their shared video.

Orme has launched with seven merchants and more than 1,000 users who downloaded the app in its first week without using any email campaigns, D’Loren said in a recent Xcel Brands earnings call with investors. Xcel Brands announced $2.3 million in net revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 2023. That’s a 44% decrease from its Q4 2022, down $1.8 million.

Xcel launched Orme as “a joint venture with a technology company in which Xcel owns a 30% interest in this new video and social commerce marketplace,” D’Loren told investors on the call.

How does Orme work?

Similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels, Orme users can swipe up within the app to view videos. Also, as on TikTok, there is a vertical list of buttons on the right side that allows users to click on a brand or user’s profile page. That page shows other videos the users or brands have made, as well as items they sell, saved recordings of shows they’ve produced, any live shows they’re hosting, and any upcoming events they have planned.

An Orme video from Longaberger, which manufactures and distributes houseware items, displays one of the brand’s wooden baskets.

The video above displays a basket from retail brand Longaberger. Xcel owns Longaberger, as well as other brands including Halston, Judith Ripka and more. Among the other options in the buttons on a video are a button to save a video, “like” it, add its products to one’s own store on Orme, and a “shop” button. A distinguishing factor between Orme and TikTok (and its in-app TikTok Shop) is that the video portion and ecommerce shop portion are not separated.

Clicking the “shop” button on the Longaberger video shows what products a user can purchase directly from that video page.

Users can then check out directly from the video page without being taken to a different part of the app or being redirected to an ecommerce website.

The checkout page on Orme slides up to temporarily cover the video a user is watching. Once a user completes her purchase, she can continue to scroll where she left off.

What happens to an order after checkout?

When a consumer completes a purchase on Orme, the app’s APIs (application programming interfaces) connect directly with the merchant, inserting the order into their system and triggering the merchant’s customer relationship management (CRM) system. In this case, that means an order placed on Orme for a Longaberger basket will appear in Longaberger’s ecommerce system. Longaberger is then responsible for sales tax, fulfillment and post-purchase communication.

“For all practical purposes, it’s their customer,” Ahmed said.

He added that these merchants don’t want to part with their customers.

And everything has to happen in real time, Ahmed said. That means Orme needs API connectivity to automatically update product information and changes to pricing, inventory, descriptions and imagery.

“And we did that without navigating the customer away from the video,” D’Loren said. “Most platforms take the customer away and they put them on the ecom site. That doesn’t happen on Orme. But the whole back end and the customer journey stays exactly the way it is with the vendor today. We didn’t want to disrupt that customer journey experience in any way, shape or form.”

How do users get paid on Orme?

Marketplaces sometimes hold a merchant’s money for up to 60 days, Ahmed said. TikTok says it initiates payout to sellers one to eight days after an order delivery date. It adds that “the exact number of days is determined based on your shipping performance.”

Orme pays its merchants their share of a sale immediately, splitting the payment at checkout, Ahmed said. Merchants like Longaberger get 75% of the total sale price, and 25% goes to Orme. From that 25%, the marketplace pays:

• Influencers it credits with getting the consumer to convert (the above-mentioned 2% and 6% referral rates).
• Credit card processing fees (Orme currently uses Stripe for this).
• The shoppers, who can choose to keep their referral earnings in their Orme account and use them like a cash-back system.

“That’s 10% they would have spent anyway,” D’Loren said. “So what are they really paying? 15%.”

TikTok announced it will take increase its fees to 8% this year on most items, from 2% plus $0.30 per sale, The Information first reported.

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Shopify is an ecommerce platform developer and service provider. Joyy is a video-based social media platform that trades on NASDAQ.

The suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that Shopline Commerce Pte. Ltd. and Shopline US Inc. created a copycat version of Dawn, Shopify’s computer program that enables the creation of customizable storefront templates.

“Shopify merchants can use Dawn to quickly launch a compelling online presence or to design their unique store,” Shopify says in its lawsuit. “It is the product of many thousands of hours of creative effort by Shopify employees and the investment of many millions of dollars and Dawn is protected by copyrights registered in the United States.”

In North America, 117 of the Top 1000 online retailers use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of the largest online retailers in the region by annual web sales. In 2023, those 117 online retailers combined for more than $9.72 billion in web sales.

Shopify sues Shopline

Shopify alleges that Shopline copied Dawn and is now distributing what it calls “a thinly disguised knockoff” called Seed.

“Shopline’s derivative of Dawn still carries damning evidence of Shopline’s wholesale copying,” Shopify says in its suit. “The file structure and layout, file names, function names, lines of code and even icon codes from Shopify’s original can still be found in Seed. The ‘Shopify’ name still appears in the code of various versions of Seed that Shopline is distributing. And Shopify has found a Chinese webpage hosted by Joyy bearing the title: “Seed Theme” that still carries headers reading ‘dawn-test.’”

Digital Commerce 360 reached out for comment to JOYY but has yet to receive a response.

“We’ve taken aggressive legal action against Shopline to uphold the integrity of Shopify’s products,” a Shopify spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue to fiercely defend our intellectual property from bad faith actors.”

The Shopify lawsuit contends that Shopline violated Shopify’s copyright both in the U.S. and globally.

“To create Seed, Shopline started by making an unauthorized copy of Dawn, translated that unauthorized copy into a different programming language, and then made cosmetic changes to the Dawn code,” the lawsuit says. “From the highest level of overarching organization to the smallest level of individual lines of code, the evidence of Shopline’s copying is overwhelming. The organization of Seed’s directory layout matches Dawn’s layout, using the same names and same labels, and has identical contents for the code. That would not be if the programs were independently developed.”

In its action, Shopify is asking the court for a cease decision and unspecified statutory damages and legal fees. The district court has not scheduled preliminary dates for a hearing.

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Adobe says its data is based on more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail ecommerce sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories.

“In an unpredictable economic environment, the latest data from Adobe Analytics shows continued resilience in the digital economy, as consumers embrace new categories online,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “Groceries is a standout, and Adobe expects that in the next three years, the category will be a dominant force in e-commerce that is on par with electronics and apparel in revenue share.”

In total, 333 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe for vendor services including — but not limited to — its ecommerce platform. Some use it for web analytics, performance and hosting, as well as cloud services and more. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database ranking the largest North American online retailers based on their annual web sales.

Top online retail sales categories through April

From Jan. 1 through April 30, consumers spent $331.6 billion online, the data shows.

Adobe Analytics projects more than $500 billion in U.S. retail ecommerce spending in the first half of 2024. That would represent at least 6.8% year-over-year growth, based on Adobe data from 2023.

Electronics, apparel and grocery sales guided retail ecommerce spending through April this year, Adobe said. Consumers spent $61.8 billion online on electronics (3.1% year-over-year growth), $54.5 billion on apparel (2.6% growth) and $38.8 billion on groceries (15.7% growth), the data showed.

The cosmetics category also grew year over year — up 8% to $13.2 billion. In all of 2023, the cosmetics category accounted for $35 billion in online sales, which was up 15.6% year over year.

Adobe found that within the grocery category, “goods with low inflation saw revenue grow by 13.4%, while products with high inflation saw revenue drop by 15.6%. The effect was less pronounced in a category such as cosmetics (revenue up 3.06% for low-inflation goods, down only 0.34% for high-inflation goods), as consumers exhibit stronger loyalty for their favorite brands.”

Consumers fight inflation while shopping online

Adobe separated its data into four price quartiles. Going back to January 2019 from April 2024, it found that the share of the cheapest products “increased significantly across categories.”

• Personal care (up 96%)
• Electronics (up 64%)
• Apparel (up 47%)
• Home/garden (up 42%)
• Furniture/bedding (up 42%)
• Grocery (up 33%)

Although to a lesser extent, the sales share of cheapest goods also grew for:

• Sporting goods (up 28%)
• Appliances (up 26%)
• Tools/home improvement (up 26%)
• Toys (up 25%)

Adobe noted that these are categories where brand loyalty has more of an impact on consumers’ decision-making. It also said consumers tend to invest in higher-quality products within these categories.

Retail ecommerce trends and forecasts in early 2024

In a different way of combating inflation, U.S. consumers continue to use BNPL (buy now, pay later) “for greater flexibility in managing their budgets,” Adobe said.

Through April this year, consumers used BNPL to spend $25.9 billion. That’s up 11.8% through the same period last year.

Adobe projects that to grow through 2024, driving between $81 billion and $84.8 billion. That would put year-over-year growth between 8% and 13%, Adobe said.

Mobile commerce also grew in the first four months of 2024, bringing in $156.9 billion in online sales. That’s up 9.8% over the same period in 2023. Adobe projects mobile sales to take a 52.5% share of online revenue in 2024 holiday spending (November through December). In the 2023 holiday season, mobile spending surpasses desktop for the first time at 51% share of November and December sales. Mobile spending in the 2023 holiday season peaked on Christmas at 61% share of sales.

When it comes to marketing channels, paid search has driven the largest share of sales this year, Adobe said. It attributes 28.2% of retail ecommerce spending to paid search, and:

• 19..6% to direct web visits
• 17.1% to affiliates/partners (17.1%)
• 15.9% to organic search (15.9%)
• 15.4% to email

Revenue that Adobe directly attributes to social media remained at less than 5% of total sales, but that share has grown 5.2% year over year in 2024. Organic search has declined 5.6%, Adobe said, driving 15.9% of total sales so far this year.

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The “Shine-Free” line, which includes a cleanser, toner and moisturizer, uses what Beekman 1802 refers to as “vegan goat milk.”

“We recognize that our traditional goat milk is probably a little bit too rich for oilier combination skin, so we developed a clone of our goat milk,” CEO Jill Scalamandre told Digital Commerce 360. “From a bio-tech position, we reconstructed it because we have the breakdown of exactly what’s inside of our goat milk — the weight, the composition — and then we re-engineered it using alternatives.”

She added that Beekman 1802 will expand into sunscreen — and other products that she did not disclose — in 2025. For now, the retailer is limiting the vegan-friendly line to “the essentials,” she said.

Beekman 1802, a brand known for its goat milk-based products, has launched a vegan-friendly product line.

CEO: Beekman 1802 vegan line to help with 2024 sales growth

Awareness and innovation are at the forefront of 2024 sales, Scalamandre said. That includes the Shine-Free line, as well as a mushroom milk eye cream that Beekman 1802 launched in January. The mushroom-based product includes goat milk. And Beekman is launching more products in the second half of 2024, she said, without revealing specifics.

“We are relatively small in the world of skin care, and we’re growing,” Scalamandre said. “We had a banner year last year — grew 20%. And we want to do the same this year. We are taking a look at our media, and we’re saying we’re definitely going to allocate — which we haven’t done before — 20% of our media to brand awareness media. It used to be performance marketing.”

Part of that includes the formation of what Beekman 1802 calls the Kindness Crew, or its team of social media influencers who will market the new products. The brand plans to have 500 women talking about their products online by the end of Q1.

Scalamandre said Beekman 1802’s largest marketing platforms are TikTok and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook. This year, the retailer is adding YouTube to the mix, she said.

Brand partnerships pay off

Beekman 1802 partnered with brands Nestle Toll House and Mrs. Potato Head on limited-edition collections. Both sold out after debuting on television channels QVC and HSN, and through Ulta. Scalamandre said Beekman 1802 is exclusive with Ulta for brick-and-mortar store sales. At Ulta, Beekman 1802 is one of the top-five fastest-growing skin care brands. It also won Ulta’s title of skin care brand of the year in 2023.

Furthermore, the Nestle and Mrs. Potato Head collections each generated more than $1 million in revenue, Beekman 1802 said. The latter helped Beekman 1802 promote its potato peel product.

Beekman 1802 x Nestle Toll House Holiday Collection

Beekman 1802 and Nestle Toll House began selling their collection Nov. 9, 2023, via QVC.com and on Nov. 11, 2023, through Beekman1802.com. It sold $2 million in a day on television, selling out. It also sold out online, but not in a day, Scalamandre said.

The collaboration with Nestle was for products that smelled like the brand’s chocolate chip cookies. The set included bar soap, hand cream, hand and body wash, whipped body cream and cookie lip balm.

“We are a brand that has a very warm, welcoming and slightly nostalgic edge,” Scalamandre said. “When you think about milk, it has a very nostalgic feeling to it. We all grew up drinking milk. And so we chose Toll House because, y’know, milk and cookies.”

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Each shared details about their recent pushes into the space. Moreover, they shared what they believe retailers should think about beforehand when launching new campaigns.

How Walmart approaches shoppable video

Jill Toscano, vice president, head of media, Walmart, speaking at Shoptalk 2024 in Las Vegas | Photo credit: Digital Commerce 360

Shoppable TV specifically encompasses online video, connected television (CTV), social commerce and livestreaming, according to moderator Amy Lanzi, CEO at the agency Digitas North America. Everyone on stage seemed in agreement that certain objectives are clear and shoppable TV is important. Nevertheless, they also conceded it can be difficult to refine an approach that works at scale.

Walmart has gone from “dabbling into it to testing into it,” explained Jill Toscano, vice president, head of media at Walmart, discussing the mass market retailer’s history with shoppable TV.

“Where we are right now is it’s actually become a viable part of our medium mix, one that we can optimize like any other digital channel,” she said.

Walmart made headlines during the 2023 holiday season with “Add to Heart.” The romantic comedy series on TikTok, Roku and YouTube included prompts to buy products seen during each episode. This area of shoppable TV is known as television commerce — or t-commerce.

Walmart is No. 2 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales. It is also No. 9 in the Global Online Marketplaces Database, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of top online marketplaces.

Where Walmart is using artificial intelligence

“One of the things that we’re doing is partnering with NBCU on their Must Shop TV technology on Peacock,” Toscano said. “And what it does is it makes certain scenes within Bravo shows shoppable.”

In addition, the Must Shop TV effort leverages “AI technology that identifies objects within a scene and matches it to” products purchasable from Walmart, she said. Those products are “being directly featured or influenced by the show” with the ability to “purchase it right there in the viewing experience,” she explained.

“It’s still a little bit labor intensive,” Toscano admitted, saying the overall effort is “still small” and “in a testing phase.” However, she sees a future for t-commerce where it becomes “automated, prevalent and way more personalized than it is today,” allowing Walmart to build off of what it has already done.

What makes shoppable video valuable to retailers

“There’s a really interesting near-term opportunity, which is conversation — and think of a video as an opportunity to have a two–way conversation,” said Chris Lamontagne, president of Fanatics Live at the sports apparel and collectibles seller Fanatics. Fanatics Live is the brand’s livestream shopping platform.

Fanatics ranks No. 25 in the Top 1000. Digital Commerce 360 categorizes it as an Apparel/Accessories retailer. The company expanded into new territory in 2024, manufacturing Nike-designed uniforms for Major League Baseball.

Regarding shoppable video, conversation and engagement as a part of the experience ranked high in importance for both Lamontagne and Toscano.

“We’re actually not looking at the direct sales that it is directly attributable for driving,” Toscano noted. “It will fail every time. But it is driving higher engagement and higher intent to shop, which is the more upper-funnel metrics which matter to us with shoppable video.”

Toscano made a point of articulating what is not working yet with shoppable video to contrast those weaknesses against what does work.

“We know what video is not good at, and it’s not good at trying to close the transaction for a shopper who knows exactly what they want because they’re further down the journey,” Toscano stated. “We’ve got search for that — way more cost effective. But what video is really good at is intercepting further up that journey.”

Advice to retailers using shoppable video

Ajay Salpekar, head of beauty for TikTok Shop US at TikTok, agreed with Lamontagne and Toscano.

“Video is a different thing from the very linear, search-driven shopping journey,” Salpekar said. “When we have conversations with brands who want to be part of the conversation or want their brands to be part of the cultural conversation, we point out that the beauty of video-driven shopping, whether it’s a livestreaming session or a nine-second short video, is that it may result in a sale — but it will definitely result in conversation.”

In sharing what he tells retail marketers who are on TikTok, Salpekar said his advice is to “engage the entire creator audience in ways that are resonant with their brands, because what works — particularly for Gen Z audiences — is content that is authentic, that comes from a place where these creators have an attachment to a brand where they use [the brand’s] product and the story is very compelling.”

Why content creators are important to Walmart

Toscano echoed those thoughts, elaborating on the role of creator content for Walmart.

“When we think about the scale of content that a retailer like Walmart needs, we in no way, shape or form can just create that from our marketing group, and so we rely heavily on tens of thousands of creators — micro–influencers — to really talk about our brand through their voice,” she said. “And it’s the authenticity that they bring to the table that makes the content compelling enough for people to want to shop because they believe what that creator is saying.”

According to Salpekar, most brands should “develop some comfort with the reality that brand-generated content might be 5% of the equation, because — despite the sophistication for brands’ in-house production or agency production — it simply cannot keep pace with the creativity in volume and quality and authenticity of content you get from the creators.”

In addition, he encourages them to “try as many new and different things simultaneously as they can, because this field is evolving so quickly that the more you try, the more you learn and the more opportunity you have to optimize what works really well for your brands.”

Testing instead of pursuing a silver bullet

Lamontagne offered a similar perspective, saying it’s better to try out many different approaches to find out what resonates than to become too focused on creating “a silver bullet piece of shoppable content.” Instead, he prefers “a bit more of a test, lead and iterate approach.”

Ultimately, Salpekar summed up what distinguishes best outcomes on TikTok from traditional retail marketing as being a matter of finding and amplifying what the community is creating.

“Whereas in traditional commerce you might as a brand be using media to amplify a SKU or a product,” he stated. “For shoppable content or community commerce, you’re using your media dollars to amplify a story or a voice or a particular creator — a particular story behind a product.”

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On stage and in the hallways at the JW Marriott Desert Springs, it was clear that retailers faced common concerns. Moreover, they have been forced to adapt on multiple fronts over the past four years, dealing with shifts related to COVID, generational changes and in many cases doing more with less.

Figuring out where customers want to go

“We want to understand where our guests are today,” said Gena Fox, senior vice president of apparel and accessories at Target. “What are the guests’ needs? And that’s part of the science that goes behind it. “There’s also the art, right? And understanding what guests might not know they need yet, but they’re going to need in the future.”

As Fox assessed, those questions at Target extend from merchandising and brand through retailer omnichannel strategies and beyond.

“When we launched our performance brand All In Motion, we interviewed 15,000 guests — women, kids, men — and understood from them at all different fitness levels. What were they wanting from their apparel as related to performance?” she explained. “And what you find is that there are nuances, but ultimately they came down to confidence. It came down to comfort.”

Omnichannel at Sam’s Club

Two other eTail West speakers, Sabrina Callahan, vice president, ecommerce at Sam’s Club, and Jordan Eddy, vice president, digital merchandising at Sam’s Club, expressed similar sentiments within their brand’s context.

“We are member-obsessed,” Callahan said. “We’re a membership model, so we have to get members in, they have to pay to shop with us, and ultimately we’re going to be obsessed with them for that full year, so that at the end of the year when they have the decision to renew, they choose yes.”

In January at CES, Sam’s Club debuted new exit technology for its store locations. It uses computer vision to speed up the exit process for customers. The technology expands upon Sam’s Club’s Scan & Go checkout system, which leverages mobile app functionality to let customers scan their own in-store purchases.

“What the team has done is developed frictionless exit technology,” Callahan explained. “So it’s first-of-its-kind application of artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to scan the baskets and lets you use Scan & Go and then ultimately [skip the line and leave] the club.”

“We’ve piloted across 10 clubs, and we’re just looking at the member feedback. Is that working? Is it convenient? And did it solve that member pain point for you?” she said. “And that’s a perfect example of member obsession for Sam’s.”

Target is No. 5 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s online retailers by web sales. Sam’s Club falls under Walmart, which is No. 2. Digital Commerce 360 categorizes these retailers as Mass Merchants in its Top 1000 database.

New retail approaches to social media and influencers

Meeting customers where they are involves digital journeys, as well as real-world paths into physical stores. Online, paths often lead through social channels.

“We have always had incredible omni capabilities as we think about our sites and our stores and how that experience comes together,” Fox said. “The newest piece is really the social component and how that is really influencing our guests — but also how we have to think about that in terms of meeting the guests where they’re at.”

For Target and other brands, that has meant meeting consumers on TikTok.

“I remember it was during the pandemic, and we were sitting at home, and my youngest was sitting on this app,” Fox recalled, saying her son was 5 years old at the time. “I was like, ‘No, no.’ We’ll get off TikTok now. But now, years later, right, like I’m sitting there on the couch at night, scrolling through TikTok and trying to figure out what the latest trends are — and getting mad at my kids when they’re on my TikTok because they’re screwing up my feed.”

Influencers as brand partners

Flashing forward to present day, Fox cites Target’s Future Collective brand as “one great example of how we have pulled this together,” centering releases around social and cultural influencers.

“The first iteration of the brand launched with Kahlana Barfield Brown, and we recently this last Sunday launched our newest collection with Jenny K. Lopez, which I’m wearing today,” she said during her Tuesday morning eTail panel. “But it’s just a great way for us to think differently.”

Prioritizing influencers in these collaborations raises brand partnership challenges as well. At Fox’s eTail panel, she described the decision-making at Target as it relates to choosing collaborators for Future Collection.

“Look at a really diverse range of perspectives,” she recommended. “Where is the guest mindset at? And how do we find a partner that is really aligned in terms of Target values?”

Fox isn’t alone in looking to TikTok for opportunities. As retailers continue to pursue social media influencers as part of their omnichannel strategies across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and elsewhere, the transactional immediacy TikTok Shop offers underscores their importance.

“The reason we found so much success on TikTok isn’t the number of users, but the ease of shopping,” said Drew Roder, director of studios at Newegg.

Newegg became an early experimenter when TikTok Shop launched, touting its own success with in-house talent who produce videos across multiple accounts to sell consumer electronics products. At their panel, Newegg’s speakers showed a short TikTok video of a neck massager, which received 19.7 million views organically, and which they said was responsible for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in sales. They also pointed to survey data from PowerReviews that showed 57% of Gen Z shoppers consider TikTok videos when making beauty-related purchases.

Newegg is No. 57 in the Top 1000, under the Consumer Electronics category.

Keeping retailer omnichannel strategies data driven

Wherever retailers choose to deploy their omnichannel strategies, tracking and interpreting data properly play key roles. Ryan Hofmann, vice president, CRM and channel marketing at Forever 21, urged data-driven and simplified approaches. Specifically, he said such a strategy can be vital when retailers are forced to do more with constrained resources.

“I think the complications come in between these, but it’s really just about audiences and messaging,” Hofmann said. “And when you think about marketing in that context or framework, now you’re focused on the audience, on the customer, right? I can either take that audience and find the right message to send to that audience. Or sometimes I start with a message and I’ve got to go find the right customer audience to send that message to.”

Optimizing and evaluating results along the way, meanwhile, can mean focusing and making decisions about which numbers ultimately matter.

“The metrics is where you need to change first and foremost,” Hofmann asserted. “Getting away from channel KPIs, opens, and clicks and impressions and spend, grow ads to really ‘How many new customers am I driving? What’s my new customer percentage mix? What’s my retention rate? How many one-and-done customers do I have versus those that are making their second or fourth, fifth purchase right?'”

In the “blend of art and science” Fox said is necessary for successful omnichannel marketing, this is where the science comes in. That can be the case even when predicting people’s needs can become more of an art.

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In reality, she said, the return to stores was “a steady incline rather than immediate.” But in 2023, the retailer saw consumers move back into stores for a more interactive, immersive experience, she said. Online, though, one trend gained a lot of traction among Benefit Cosmetics consumers: TikTok Shop.

“We’re seeing a huge increase in sales for our Benetint, which is a really original product of ours. It’s been around for many years,” Casserly said. “That has been influenced by the popularity of TikTok and TikTok Shop. We’ve also seen a big success with the launch of our pore care line, which was six products.”

Benefit Cosmetics joined TikTok Shop while the marketplace was still in beta. The ecommerce expansion for the social platform launched in the U.S. in September 2023. As of Q4 2023, TikTok Shop sales accounted for 4% of Benefit Cosmetics’ direct-to-consumer sales. Casserly said Benefit Cosmetics’ goal is to grow that to 10%. Similarly, DTC sales represent about 4% of total business, she said.

Benefit Cosmetics’ parent company, LVMH, is No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Europe Database. The database ranks the region’s largest online retailers by web sales.

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The benefit of being on TikTok Shop

Casserly said that although Benefit Cosmetics sometimes nudges consumers from TikTok to the retailer’s website, it encourages its consumers to shop within the app.

“It’s a dangerous place,” said Ella Pearn, Benefit Cosmetics UK’s senior digital public relations and influence manager, joking about how easy it can be to spend on TikTok. Pearn said the hashtag “TikTok made me buy it” being viewed tens of billions of times is a testament to TikTok Shop’s influence. (Videos posted using the hashtag had 77 billion views as of November 2023, CNBC reported.)

“Instead of adding hurdles to the buying process, TikTok has created a platform that allows its users to seamlessly complete orders without leaving the app,” Pearn said. “Then, with everything in one place, they can stay exactly where they want to be and funnily enough that is TikTok. Social commerce is certainly the future.”

Still, Casserly said the average Benefit Cosmetics customer on TikTok Shop skews “a lot younger.”

“The average spend is probably a little bit less because it’s a new way of shopping, so there is some nervousness around purchasing through there. But we are seeing that start to grow,” Casserly said. “There’s a lot of offering on there that isn’t necessarily brands you would see on websites as well. There’s a lot of TikTok-grown beauty brands that have a lot of success through TikTok Shop but not necessarily in other marketplaces. That’s another difference. It’s a different group of competitors.”

Benefit Cosmetics displays its products on TikTok Shop, where it has sold more than 96,500 items.

Advertising versus organic posts on TikTok

Benefit Cosmetics began using TikTok in March 2020, Pearn said, well before TikTok Shop launched its beta. The retailer then “started advertising with brand campaigns relatively early on, when the costs were relatively pricy. We took part in a number of brand campaigns with the one-day max format, possibly Q2/Q3 of 2020. That brand activity’s always been there. Then we sort of moved to working more with influencers, which has always been a natural step for Benefit as a brand.”

Benefit Cosmetics is “very much in digital media. It’s our largest outlet,” she said. She said Benefit Cosmetics most heavily invests in TikTok, with plans to continue growing that investment in 2024. The other top digital media channel is Meta’s platforms, she said.

One of the benefits to being on TikTok, she said, is that the “for you” page can show content from anyone, anywhere. And although some brands have found success in organic TikTok posts, as opposed to in-app ads, “there’s certainly a method to the madness of the TikTok platform,” she said.

In addition to using the TikTok Shop for sales, Benefit Cosmetics has a TikTok page to teach consumers about its beauty products and tools.

Historically, she said, Benefit Cosmetics would primarily use social media ads to target consumers interested in beauty products. The brand would then create lookalikes based on those users. TikTok, though, allows the content to be from anyone on anything, versus other platforms that use attributes to target consumers, she said.

“We’re still learning and still defining what that really looks like for us,” Pearn said. “You can create something you think is going to work incredibly well and then it doesn’t. After a decade of what has been meticulously staged, edited, polished content that’s been heavily curated across all social media platforms, we really find ourselves in a bit of a creative renaissance. TikTok has paved the way for that and for a new, much more authentic style of content. It’s leveling the playing field, and even things like livestreaming that TikTok offers makes that incredibly exciting.”

She said that makes both organic and paid TikTok content more accessible. Benefit Cosmetics previously used Instagram livestreaming when that functionality was new, but “we never saw the same results as we see on TikTok.” The brand also has livestreamed on the television network QVC, she said.

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Hiatt joined Vera Bradley in January 2023. The accessories retailer also has a fairly new CEO and chief financial officer. The relatively new leadership team presents a chance to make positive changes to the brand and connect with new consumers this year, she said.

“We will really use this as an opportunity to reconnect with what people love about the Vera Bradley brand and make sure that we are modernizing that for today and reaching those new generations,” she said.

Vera Bradley ranks No. 277 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers by web sales.

Vera Bradley’s TikTok strategy

Modernizing the Vera Bradley brand is a key focus in 2024, Hiatt said. One way to do that is by embracing TikTok. The online video platform has become a driving force behind how young consumers make purchasing decisions, according to research from Morning Consult.

Vera Bradley sees benefits from TikTok without directly needing to post.

“We’ve really benefited recently from a lot of organic TikTok related to Vera Bradley,” Hiatt said.

Videos with “#VeraBradley” have 105 million views to date on the platform, leading to better brand awareness. It also works directly with influencers on posts.

“Most brands have to work with influencers in some form or fashion. I think it’ll continue to be a strong trend,” she said.

Influencers with smaller followings can be more impactful, she explained, but there are also times to go with a larger influencer.

“It really depends on the type of messages you’re trying to send. Are you introducing yourself to new people? Or are you furthering a connection with your existing customers? And that would really dictate when you would go big or not,” she said.

Vera Bradley will invest more in influencer marketing in 2024 than it did in 2023, she anticipates. Joining TikTok Shop is the logical next step.

“We know more and more people are discovering brands and interacting with their favorite brands” on TikTok, she said. “So why not just make it an easy experience if they find something that they want to buy via TikTok Shop?”

TikTok Shop launched in the U.S. in September 2023. Vera Bradley is treating it like any other marketplace and spent time watching competitors before its own launch, Hiatt explained.

Other ways to reach new customers

Collaborating with other brands is another way to expand Vera Bradley’s reach, Hiatt said.

“Finding pockets of things that people are passionate about, whether it’s Disney or Peanuts, or the NFL, has been really fun and has really reached a broad spectrum of different customers,” she said, referring to Vera Bradley’s collections incorporating those brands.

The accessories retailer has to find ways to work with the other media brands that are true to Vera Bradley’s bold and bright patterns it’s known for, she said.

“We’ve always been a multi-generational brand, which was very rare. And we will continue to speak to all customers but want to make sure that we’re continuing to introduce ourselves to newer generations,” Hiatt said.

Collaborations with other brands are successful in bringing in new customers, who then turn into repeat customers, she said without revealing more.

Hello Kitty, Shark Week and Harry Potter collaborations have been particularly successful at bringing new customers to Vera Bradley, CEO Jacqueline Ardrey told investors in a third-quarter earnings call in December.

Vera Bradley took advantage of changing consumer habits

Vera Bradley hasn’t reported results from its fiscal fourth quarter yet, which will include the holiday season. Consumers were pickier this year when it came to holiday shopping. “They were really shopping around and maybe waiting a little bit longer to decide what they wanted to get,” she said.

The retailer has adapted to changing consumer preferences over the last year with an emphasis on travel. Much of the consumer spending growth in recent quarters came from spending on experiences, rather than goods. Vera Bradley used that as an opportunity to grow its travel accessories, Hiatt said. While that includes suitcases, it was also advantageous to expand their idea of what travel is.

“We will continue to focus on travel, but we’re also expanding how we think about travel. There’s the traditional suitcase on an airplane, but also people are taking longer weekends and road trips,” she said.

That’s an opportunity for duffel bags, travel organizers, toiletry bags, and other products beyond suitcases. 

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