Growing Sales: Popshop Live Raises $3M Seed Round For Livestreaming Shopping App

Los Angeles-based livestreaming shopping app Popshop Live raised $3 million in a seed round to develop a platform that combines social media, e-commerce and entertainment aspects to help retailers build an online community and grow their sales.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

The round was led by Floodgate and Abstract Ventures, with participation from Long Journey Ventures, Cyan Banister and Scott Banister, Shrug Capital, Backend Capital and Halogen Ventures.

Popshop Live CEO and founder Danielle Li told Crunchbase News that the new funding brings the company’s total amount raised to $4.5 million. The company previously raised $1.5 million from angel investors, local funds and venture funds, she said.

The investment will go toward hiring, building new features, developing live content, and onboarding new sellers in preparation for the company’s upcoming public launch.

“The investment will take the product to the next level, which includes developing more live content and community on the new platform,” Li said. “It will also help us onboard new sellers, and integrate with other platforms and other engagements.”

What you should know

Li began exploring this idea in 2016 and started to build the product after raising the first venture round in 2018. The platform is currently by invitation only and is set to launch publicly later this summer.

The platform combines real-time shopping with e-commerce and personal interaction via a community. The majority of sellers operate at least one physical store, she said.

“That makes for the fastest adoption of our platform because they can turn their store into a studio and the staff into hosts,” she added. “We have helped a lot of stores that had to close, especially in L.A.”

What investors are saying

Ann Miura-Ko, co-founding partner at Floodgate, said in a written statement that Popshop Live is coming in at a time “when a sense of community is needed.”

“Consumers have evolved beyond scroll and click online product feeds and are hungry for more experiential online shopping and Popshop Live is the first product that fully delivers,” she said.

Meanwhile, Cyan Banister, a partner at Long Journey Ventures, said in a written statement that she has already tried out the platform as both a shopper and a retailer.

“Popshop Live is ridiculously fun,” she said. “In five shows I generated $5,000 for charities by selling things from my personal collections. I know this is the future of retail and the team behind Popshop is incredible. They genuinely care about businesses and their customers.”

Next steps

Now that the platform has launched, Li said the company is in discussions with retailers to expand the categories it offers. Those include home products, vintage clothing, wellness and fitness, metaphysical, street wear, and food and beverage.

You can try out the Popshop Live app by downloading it from here, use the code “CRUNCH.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias