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Guest Bio:
Jason Termechi has worked at Amazon Live and TikTok Live before working independently as Live Shopping consultant. He has coached large and smaller brands in how to optimize their live shopping setup, retention and conversion.
Summary:
In this conversation, Moritz Schröder interviews Jason Termechi, a live shopping consultant with extensive experience at TikTok and Amazon. They discuss the evolution of live shopping, particularly in the U.S., the strategies brands should adopt, and the importance of metrics in measuring success. Jason shares insights on how TikTok is shaping the live shopping landscape, the challenges Amazon faces, and the role of celebrities in driving engagement. He emphasizes the need for brands to be open-minded and willing to adapt their strategies to succeed in this rapidly evolving market.
Takeaways:
- Live shopping is gaining momentum, especially during peak shopping periods like Black Friday.
- Brands are increasingly focusing on live shopping to drive sales and engagement.
- TikTok’s approach to live shopping is more integrated with social media than Amazon’s.
- Consultants play a crucial role in helping brands navigate the complexities of live shopping.
- Metrics such as conversion rate and GMV per thousand people are vital for assessing live shopping success.
- Open-mindedness and willingness to adapt are key traits for successful live sellers.
- Smaller brands can compete effectively against larger brands in live shopping.
- Preparation and strategy are essential for successful live shopping events.
- The live shopping industry is evolving, with more agencies and consultants emerging.
- The future of live shopping looks promising, with potential growth in various markets.
Full Transcript:
Moritz Schröder (00:01.003)
Yeah, works. Beautiful. mean, then we can cut out the first couple of seconds now. Sorry, right before we start, any chance we can elevate your camera? see. Otherwise you’re just, you know, always looking down. Would be great if you can bring it to eye level somehow.
Jason Termechi (00:01.154)
We’re good.
Moritz Schröder (00:24.619)
Yeah, much better. Nice. If you can go even higher, that’s even better. But yeah, nice, nice. All right. All right. I hope we’re past all the problems now and can kick it off. Jason, really great to have you on the podcast. I’m excited to be talking with you.
Jason Termechi (00:25.678)
you want me to go like that.
Jason Termechi (00:31.502)
Are we good?
Moritz Schröder (00:49.969)
And we’re going to dive really deep into live shopping because that’s what you’re all about. You’ve been working at Amazon live before you were working at TikTok shop live And now you have actually gone independent and you’re working as a live shopping consultant. So I think there’s very few people that are more qualified to talk to about the current state of live shopping, especially in the U S.
Black Friday has just come and gone. What was your experience? Have you been working with a lot of lives during that week? And can you see a trend from the last couple of years to where it is in 2025?
Jason Termechi (01:28.494)
So while I was at TikTok, I was helping a lot of my sellers prepare for Black Friday. So since I left TikTok in October, I didn’t have the chance to kind of continue working with them. But a lot of the work that we did during the year helped kind of prepare for Black Friday. So planning out like when are their big lives gonna be happening? What are their goals? What products should we be looking at? And it felt like everyone was just going bigger and bigger. We were looking at their…
average sales from like their normal lives to double or triple. And a lot of them actually saw that based on kind of like the momentum of Black Friday. And it felt like a bigger event this year than it did when I was working at TikTok last year. It kind of came and went last year, but TikTok really approached as like, this is the biggest shopping time of the year. We want all of our sellers to be going live. We want them to have bigger lives. Like we saw with iShow Speed.
Kim Kardashian did her live. So it’s like, they are really taking this seriously. And I think other sellers are starting to follow suit of not just doing a normal live during this period. It’s like, how can we make these feel bigger and better, especially during Black Friday? How do we introduce maybe more giveaways, more bundles, more special items, promote over the course of an entire month versus I’m going to promote for a week. So I think the trends that we were seeing during Black Friday were going bigger.
and just swinging bigger. Like we’re have iPads for the giveaways, we’re gonna have iPhones, we’re gonna be doing all these special things that we weren’t doing in the past because the competition is so high, but we really wanna take advantage of this peak shopping period.
Moritz Schröder (03:08.404)
It’s also cool to see that there is now such a strong focus on live shopping in particular because TikTok Shop has been around for I think two or maybe three Black Fridays now in the US. But I think in the past, the focus was more to generally drive as much GMV as possible, increase revenue year over year.
But I don’t think they focused as much on where the revenue comes from exactly. And it seems like now they really made that push for live shopping in particular. You mentioned huge names like iShowspeed and also Kim Kardashian going live. And I’m sure TikTok was very actively chasing those kind of names to go live. Do you know?
behind the curtain what was going on with these big names and how they actually convinced them to explore this fairly new and unexplored way of growing live and selling.
Jason Termechi (04:05.944)
So from the time that I was there, I feel like it was months and months of planning. Unfortunately, I was not involved with that side. But I know that they’ve always made a conscious effort of looking at the biggest personalities and finding ways to leverage their following in a way that would make sense on live work. Excuse me. would combine entertainment as well as live selling. So I felt like iShow Speed Live was a lot more on the entertaining side.
There was a of things going on where as Kim Kardashian’s, although it was entertaining, the sales were astronomically higher. So I think they’re just trying to find the balance of like, how do we involve people that are household names? In the past, they’ve had Kevin Hart and Nicki Minaj and Jason Derulo across other brands. So I think we’re going to start to see more more celebrities joining lives, especially if they own their own brand. I know that’s going to be a big push.
as they activate more and more kind of celebrities and creators who are active in the space.
Moritz Schröder (05:07.847)
I think that makes a ton of sense as a strategy for such a new phenomenon and consumers have to be trained almost to accept that as a new way of buying, but then also as a new way of being entertained and frankly, just connecting with the people that they like following anyways. Right? So if you have a Kim Kardashian who is a perfect,
face to win for such a big event like Break Friday because she has her own brand and because she has the huge following that she has. It’s a fantastic way, think, to slowly but surely get the consumers to realize that live shopping is here to stay and something that will only grow from here.
Jason Termechi (05:50.542)
Absolutely.
Moritz Schröder (05:52.596)
If you go back to the time when you were at TikTok, how did that progression look like? I think you started pretty much at the beginning of TikTok shop when it was first launched in the US. How did TikTok approach this whole conquering the US plan that they’re working on? And how did they specifically think about live shopping as one major piece of the puzzle there?
Jason Termechi (06:21.368)
So I’ll speak to live shopping specifically. So I joined, I believe it was last June, and I was managing about, let’s say two to three sellers until about March when there was a lot of changes internally. And I was now managing up to 40 sellers. And when you have like a team of 10 people and as they grow 10 times 40, you 400 sellers that are being actively managed out of a pool of
who knows how many in the thousands. So there is a conscious effort right now to help scale these sellers that are going live in mass. So how do we take what we know and apply that to the thousands of sellers? They’re very heavy on education and in-person trainings and things that they can do. So there is a very heavy push, especially on the live side. And I believe the stats that I read across Black Friday, Cyber Monday, there were 760,000 live streams.
which is mind blowing to me. It’s even higher than I would have expected. So I think this is just gonna be, this is the tip of the iceberg. In January, we went to China and we got to see all of the live rooms and TSPs there. So I think we’re a few years away, but as things progress, I feel like we are closing the gap more and more. I think just the consumer habits are not.
there yet of buying things through a live stream as it is in China. We don’t have that penetration and we don’t have the consumer habits yet. But I think as there’s more more incentive to join alive, whether it is coupons or exclusivity or at least celebrities, whatever they can start to provide that they can’t get access to during through a video or in a store, then there’s going to be more reason for people to join and buy.
Moritz Schröder (08:01.939)
It’s really interesting that you said ByteDance would actually fly people all the way to China to show them what’s already happening in China. Probably just like to educate the consumers, they also want to educate their staff abroad that this is already happening. This is already tried and true in other countries and it’s just a matter of bringing that to a new place. It’s not something…
That novel actually, when you look at how long China has been doing that, it just takes someone like ByteDance, who also has the resources to then probably make that push happen in the US and get people on board with it.
Jason Termechi (08:41.825)
Absolutely. Yeah, it was, was definitely an eye opening experience. And in China right now, you’re seeing all of the major brands going live and that’s how people shop and buy. Like we saw Adidas and Jordan brand and a number of other household names. And then now we’re starting to see on the, on the U S side, we’re seeing Samsonite or away or Disney. several others, Ralph Lauren have Gap and old Navy. They’re all joining TikTok shop. And I think that’s going to progress into live live is expensive as compared to China.
You have to pay the host and operator and the TSPs. So there is kind of that cost kind of trade off in the US. So we might not see it at the scale of China, but there is a bit more interest and I think it’s going to start to get really exciting within the next few months.
Moritz Schröder (09:28.631)
You just mentioned all the costs that come with it. And then on top of that, you have to hire a live shopping consultant, possibly. So it would be really interesting if you could give us a little bit of an overview of the different areas that you try to cover with your offering and how you help brands and maybe possibly also agencies work with live shopping.
Jason Termechi (09:51.033)
So yeah, so at TikTok, I did everything from the top to bottom. So I’m basically replicating what I did at TikTok. Instead of managing 40 sellers like I was, among other things, I want to maybe manage a group of five to 10. This allows me to work very closer with, like a lot more closer with them and more in depth and have more time to like watch and review their live. anywhere from, if they’re just starting out to if they’re already live, if they’re just starting out, it’s deciding.
What should their set look like? Who should their host be? What products should they offer? What’s their discount strategy? What’s their engagement strategy? How many times they should be going live and all of these things. And it’s not like you can kind of like, let’s only focus on a few things in order to be really successful at live. You kind of have to do it all, unfortunately.
It’s not like we’re going to turn on a camera and only do a few of these things and find success. Like you can move slowly, but in the grand scheme of things, it has to be a combination of a lot of planning preparation and reviewing your performance and finding ways to improve over time and just different action items that we can put into place.
Moritz Schröder (11:01.074)
And I can totally see how that can be overwhelming for a brand that is not used to that kind of selling anyways. And then there’s so many different levers that they could be pulling and that they need to have an eye on and they don’t know what works and what converts best. it’s such uncharted territory for pretty much all brands out there in the U S that I can totally see the need for the services you’re providing. I also saw on your website that you’re helping
with feels like actually producing the script coming up with what the live presenter should be saying. You help with set building and assembling. Is that actually things that you do yourself or do you have other third party people that you work with that focus on that specific areas?
Jason Termechi (11:51.127)
In terms of the scripting, is something that I do. there are like basic principles and best practices that can be scaled across a number of different products because it’s how, what you say, like, how do you introduce the products? What are the benefits of this product and reminding people like, how do we create urgency that there is a flash sale that it’s only on sale for 10 minutes and for them to buy and then engaging with the audience. there is kind of that basic rule book that can be applied to just about any product. When it comes to set design, it’s more about like consulting of like, okay,
what should we have our set look like? Like it can’t just be a blank wall. can’t be too much and it can’t be too little because one of the metrics that you’re gonna be looking at when you’re reviewing performance is enter room rate. As you adjust kind of the live set, is this enter room rate going up? So people are swiping. Are they clicking into your live? And the way to kind of cut through all of the noise that’s on TikTok, especially in the live or in their feed is to have something that’s really eye catching where maybe it’s branded. Maybe you can see the products.
Maybe it’s not like, it doesn’t have to be overly produced. Like we see with a lot of these more professional lives, especially from the bigger companies where they think it has to be high quality cameras and this and that. Most, companies don’t need all of that. I mean, it’s great to have and great to work up to, but if you’re just getting started, the tripod and the phone is going to work. But more importantly, it’s like, how do you display your products and how does it look on, on, on a screen? But like what’s going to draw people in and keep them engaged.
Moritz Schröder (13:18.457)
So Jason tough question here. I know all of these levers are almost equally important, but if you had to pick one area that you would want any brand to focus on, if they can only choose one, what would you choose to maximize revenue?
Jason Termechi (13:20.834)
Yes.
Jason Termechi (13:35.769)
So if I’m going live right now and I want to assess like, am I doing well or am I not doing well? There are several metrics that I would point to, but I think a few of like maybe the more important ones is conversion rate. So are people buying? Like you might not have a lot of traffic. You might not have a lot of sales, but are people buying? Is it converting? Also, I know you said just one, but it’s going to be really hard.
Moritz Schröder (14:04.61)
I know it is.
Jason Termechi (14:05.519)
GPM, which is like GMV per thousand people. that kind of, so certain people have like different varying viewpoints on this, but that basically measures their efficiency. So if you have a little bit of traffic, but you’re still able to convert and sell that number is going to be higher. And it’s like, okay, we did, we did our job. Hopefully as we get more traffic, that number is going to remain constant. will likely drop, but it should remain constant as you increase your efficiency.
Excuse me.
Jason Termechi (14:40.12)
I hope that answers your question.
Moritz Schröder (14:42.788)
Yeah, totally does. With a job description that probably five years ago didn’t really exist, at least in the US as a live shopping consultant. How do you see this industry that is really just in its infancy developing right now? I mean, I know you live in California, you live in LA, which
probably is one of the best cities to be living in if you want to work in that line of work. But can you give us a little bit of an idea of what is happening in the live shopping space? What do you see popping off? Are people changing career paths because they know that this is something hot and up and coming? Who are the people that you hang out with that do similar things? Can you give us a little bit of an idea of what is happening right now in the US there?
Jason Termechi (15:32.013)
I think overall things are very optimistic. Every brand is already taking, not every man, a lot of brands have expressed interest in doing it. They’re interested in live. don’t, don’t know like where to start, but if they already have a TikTok shop and they’re working with an agency, kind of the way that I’m positioning myself is to work with agencies who already have existing clients and to be an extension of that TSP or that agency of like, okay, your clients are already on shop, but they might need help on live.
That’s where I can come in as kind of a cost-effective solution as opposed to them kind of hiring another like live agency where it’s like, okay, you have a consultant. won’t be on, I won’t be full-time. I’ll just be on retainer and I can come in and help them.
Moritz Schröder (16:18.752)
Right. I mean, it’s also really fascinating with someone like you who has the corporate background in this field. You’ve, as I said, worked at Amazon, working with their live efforts and then switched over to TikTok. So basically the two largest players in this field in the US right now you’ve already worked for. I’m sure it gives you a great foundation to then go out and go.
Jason Termechi (16:23.183)
Thank you.
Moritz Schröder (16:44.791)
a little bit free and actually work as a consultant independently. What kind of mind shift did you need to make when you went from these very large lives that I’m sure you were part of at these large corporations to then possibly smaller clients that you’re working with right now? And what kind of knowledge could you just take from your previous experience and apply to these smaller lives?
Jason Termechi (17:09.945)
So I think that’s where the difficulty is, some of things that I’m facing right now. So it wasn’t an easy decision to leave TikTok, but I think I felt like I was ready and I wanted to of expand more on the best parts of it, which was working directly with the sellers.
Jason Termechi (17:30.755)
So going from, let’s say doing a mega lab that’s 180,000 to now working with sellers who haven’t gone live yet and maybe they’ll do like a thousand dollars. It’s a very big divide and it’s like that learning curve all over again. So it’s like taking all those learnings and case studies and tactics to do, then I had with those other sellers and being able to apply it to all the sellers that I will be working with in the future. So.
Having already like that track record of knowing what works and what doesn’t, I think will be highly beneficial to me and help them avoid all those mistakes that maybe that I made or sellers made in the past and being able to be like, okay, I already have the playbooks. I already have all of the knowledge. Like let’s apply that and kind of accelerate your growth. They just need to put the time and the effort in and kind of just use all the knowledge and all the things that I’m gonna be giving them.
Moritz Schröder (18:24.973)
Yeah, that’s such an advantage that your customers are getting that they get someone who has all this experience and that knowledge. So they don’t have to rely on those large companies and corporations actually providing that information to them. Instead, they can just hire you. You were at Amazon Live also in its very early stages.
Can you talk a little bit to what their vision was? Because I’m sure it was at least somewhat different from what ByteDance and TikTok Shop are doing in the US now. They don’t have the Chinese background as ByteDance does. So what did Amazon try to do when you were there and maybe how has that evolved since TikTok Shop has taken off as it has?
Jason Termechi (19:13.889)
It was very disjointed. So you had the Amazon influencer program and then you had Amazon live. co-exist, they didn’t coexist. They were separate entities and they didn’t work together to funnel kind of the affiliates into Amazon live where they can go live and start selling products. And there was a lot of kind of conflict between the two. And
there was a huge awareness problem at Amazon Live that I raised to them. Like, hey, no one knows Amazon Live exists. People at Amazon don’t know it exists. Externally, when I talk to creators, they don’t know it exists. So it’s like, how do you expect this to grow? And how are you driving traffic? So a lot of the times it was on the creators themselves to promote their live streams when…
it didn’t really work like that. They didn’t have the traffic. So going from like e-commerce to social is a huge challenge. That’s why I think it works better for TikTok because they’re a social platform that got into e-commerce. So when you try to go the other way around and it just doesn’t make as much sense because the traffic’s not there, the ecosystem’s not there. And quite frankly, they’re not setting themselves up for success. And a lot of the creators that I worked with at Amazon Live, they’ve already
jump ship and went to TikTok. and it makes more sense for them. So there are some creators that are still at Amazon Live, but it seems like they were more so prioritizing their celebrity clients to kind of do those larger streams. But I felt like they didn’t spend enough time to kind of build it out and really elevate the creators.
Moritz Schröder (20:55.853)
Yeah, I can see how that would be very difficult to get basically social media in-house for Amazon when this is not their core competence at all. In fact, they’ve proven time and time again in the past that they’re not particularly good at doing social media the few times that they tried. Do you know if, since you left, things have changed? they try to fix the issues that you highlighted or do they basically accept that?
Jason Termechi (21:22.735)
I’m
Moritz Schröder (21:25.27)
they’re not going to compete with the live shopping of TikTok and possibly others in the future.
Jason Termechi (21:29.743)
know how long it’s going to last. I know, I think they’re pivoting to Twitch to do live and live shopping, I don’t know how much longer amazon.com slash, I think it was slash live or whatever it was. I don’t know how much longer they’re going to kind of, um, maintain that because a lot of the people I was working with was impacted by the, the mass layoffs. So it’s like, do you guys really want to build this up? Do you believe in it? Or are you just going to pivot and go on to Twitch?
Moritz Schröder (22:00.491)
Yeah, that’s true. mean, with Twitch, they do have a very suitable platform for rolling this out or relaunching it in a certain way. I think that could be a smart play on their end. And it’s going to be interesting if they go down that route, especially as more and more platforms join live shopping with
Jason Termechi (22:08.303)
you
Moritz Schröder (22:22.771)
What not, you already have a major player, but then I think everyone in this space is just waiting for the giants like YouTube and Meta to wake up and join the race.
Jason Termechi (22:34.575)
Absolutely.
Moritz Schröder (22:36.56)
so do you think Amazon or Twitch will sort of carve out a niche for them or will they try to compete with TikTok at their game, which seems very challenging and an uphill battle for sure. Do you think there is some kind of niche that would be very suitable for them that maybe isn’t covered anywhere else?
Jason Termechi (22:54.127)
Come on.
Jason Termechi (22:59.725)
It’s hard to say it’s like, what problem is it going to really solve? Like they have a lot of creators, but it’s like, why would I go there when I can just go to TikTok? And the way that things move at Amazon, it’s just so slow. And it takes so much time to make any changes and get anything through. Whereas TikTok, things are moving a lot quicker. So it’s really hard to say, like, if I see it being super successful, like I think they’ll have like,
these one-off live streams with major creators or celebrities, but for it to be kind of like something that’s sustainable, that’s ongoing, I don’t see that happening, unfortunately.
Moritz Schröder (23:38.783)
Yeah, yeah, I can see how that would be difficult. But you never know. mean, people said that Google is done when OpenAI popped up and now they’re turning things around. So if you have enough resources, it seems like almost anything is possible in the US and Silicon Valley in particular. who knows? Time will tell, but I for one, I’m very excited to see what Meta and YouTube will be doing. Do you have any…
Jason Termechi (24:00.238)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (24:06.643)
high hopes there or maybe working in the industry, maybe you’ve heard some rumors of them eyeing that in particular.
Jason Termechi (24:14.573)
I keep hearing it’s coming. Like I keep hearing like, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen. I think I’m more optimistic for YouTube. I love YouTube. I spend a lot of time watching YouTube and I think there’s a lot of opportunity there, but they’ve just been so slow to adapt and meta. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but this could become a very crowded space. And then I feel like that might be.
good, but it also might just like turn people off from live completely.
Moritz Schröder (24:46.42)
For someone like you who’s living in LA, do you see this industry evolving in the sense that it’s going to go more premium? I mean, you have the film industry obviously based there. Are there efforts to utilize either on the talent side or maybe on the studio equipment side, the infrastructure that is already there, or is the industry still so underground and niche that that’s not really a consideration right now?
Jason Termechi (25:15.565)
I don’t think it’s underground and niche anymore. I think we’ve reached a point where I’m seeing new agencies and TSPs pop up every day. And you might see like more and more people from that world of TV and film start to break off and start agencies kind of like Orca did with their executives. So it’s like, might start poaching these people. We might see like the talent agencies spin off and like, okay, we’re going to have like a live streaming division and we’re going to be working on these things like that. So it’s like, I can foresee a lot more.
and the production only getting bigger and bigger based on the different agencies that are coming up.
Moritz Schröder (25:53.45)
Yeah, I mean, that’s such a advantage that the city has with the infrastructure already in place to then utilize that. And it only makes sense that if this is becoming a major thing, California and LA in particular would be the place to base it off of. Here in Europe, it’s not as clear. I’m still waiting and hoping that TikTok Shop will launch in Scandinavia where I’m based.
Jason Termechi (25:54.339)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (26:21.058)
But so far that hasn’t happened. It’s so fragmented here that it’s also very difficult because the markets are so much smaller than in the US. Originally I’m from Germany, which is the biggest market, but even there TikTok has a hard time getting things off the ground. I think the US… In terms of population, yes.
Jason Termechi (26:21.871)
Thank
Jason Termechi (26:35.727)
Is it bigger than you? Yeah.
Jason Termechi (26:42.915)
but the TikTok shop, because I see a lot of stuff on live and on LinkedIn about UK.
Moritz Schröder (26:50.129)
Yeah, exactly. So UK was the first market to launch TikTok shop in the West, even before the US. So they’re a lot more mature than the German market. Plus in terms of like international audience, they obviously have the language advantage over a country like Germany, which only people in Germany and Austria and Switzerland speak. So I do think Germany and other markets that were launched recently for TikTok shop will eventually
pick up speed and it’s just a matter of time, but it is going fairly slow right now. Obviously they’re bragging about the numbers that they pulled in right now in Black Friday, but if you compare it to mature markets like UK and also US, it’s basically nothing. So it’s going to be interesting how that’s going to go in the future, but also with cross country selling in Europe being a thing, I think it could potentially
be the target for live selling to reach a wider audience than just your national audience.
Jason Termechi (27:54.361)
Got it. Yeah, it’s good. It’s very exciting times.
Moritz Schröder (27:58.469)
Yeah, for sure. For someone like you who is working independently right now, how do you find your clients? Like, do you work with agencies that are working in this space and who have the need for a consultant and your services? Or do you approach people directly? How do you go about that?
Jason Termechi (28:15.705)
So it’s been a combination of the two. So I’ve had a lot of different people working at agencies reach out to me saying, hey, like your background looks interesting. We want to learn more about live and your services. Or it’s just me saying, going through LinkedIn and seeing like, this person seems interesting. And like, they might need me. And if they don’t need me now, they might need me in the future. So right now it’s more about planting the seeds. Cause I feel like things will pick up in 2026 when people come around and budgets gets solidified like, like
we actually want to commit to live, who can we, who can we speak to instead of going to like a very expensive agency, they can just come to me and be like, Hey, like, what can you do for us? And like, can help them start small, whereas opposed to an agency, it’s like, you kind of have to go very quickly. So it’s been a combination of just like, Hey, having these conversations with different platforms or different agencies. haven’t really gone directly to kind of the brands and the sellers just yet. but.
Maybe at some point I will, but I think right now my best bet is just offering myself as an extension to the agencies who already have an existing base of clients who could be interested in live.
Moritz Schröder (29:26.738)
Yeah, I see also more more agencies popping up that focus on social commerce or TikTok shop, but not so many focusing only on live shopping. So I think your expertise is quite rare there. There are people who have experience with live shopping, but it might be also from a different angle, right? You have professional hosts and presenters. You have people actually building out the studios and stages and all of that.
Jason Termechi (29:27.64)
Okay.
Jason Termechi (29:33.679)
Yeah.
Jason Termechi (29:49.775)
Ahem.
Moritz Schröder (29:55.047)
But to have someone who has seen all the different moving parts could be really useful for an agency, I’m sure.
Jason Termechi (30:03.715)
Yeah. And like, from my experience, I’m working at TikTok. work with small medium sized businesses where in the fashion category with a lot of the sellers were the hosts were the owners. And like, that’s not suitable for every brand. like some of them are going to hire, have to hire out hosts and this and this and that, but like a lot of them just did it with a tripod and a phone. And I think the most important kind of thing for sellers to understand it and brands to understand it’s like, all you need to do is just just start.
get your reps in, get your practice in. Like you don’t really need the high-end cameras just yet, maybe later down the road. But if you’re, if they’re going thinking like, I need to go to directly to an expensive agency. If they have the budget, great, go ahead and try it. But there’s chances are like they could get burned and it just doesn’t work out. And then they have to go to another agency. So like my best like kind of recommendation to them is like, just get started, try it out, see how it goes. And like, I know it’s going to take.
people away from their jobs or like you might not have like the people at your company who want to do it. But I think it’s just good to get your practice in even if it’s kind of low budget. I think having the knowledge and experience versus just outsourcing to an agency right away makes it a bit more difficult.
Moritz Schröder (31:18.695)
It’s so interesting how all these knowledge pieces that have been existing in the creator economy for 15, 20 years, like that you should just start and you, as you said, have to get your reps in and probably at the beginning, you’re to be kind of shit at it and then you get better and you can upgrade your equipment as you go along, et cetera, et cetera. These are things that people who, for example, do YouTube videos have been…
saying for as long as YouTube has been around, but then you get an industry like live shopping where brands get into it, expecting to make money pretty much right away. And you kind of have to re-educate them and tell them, hey, this is not exactly how this works. This is a long game that you have to play and you have to invest upfront for it to be profitable in the future. Is there a lot of these conversations that you need to be having or do brands usually understand that from the get go?
Jason Termechi (31:59.567)
Thank you.
Jason Termechi (32:15.235)
I think they come in with a perception of like, need to like look and feel a certain way because when you swipe through and you see like big name brands, they think that’s like the industry standard when it’s really not. would say there’s only a small percentage of brands that are actually using a very expensive agency to run their lives. But I think it’s more important for them to have that experience on their own and gain that, insights of like, okay, we did our live, like, what can we do better?
And then if they want to go to an agency at some point when they’re ready, but I think they just have this perception that live is very costly and that they need to go to an agency. But I don’t think there’s like a correlation between, between like these big name brands and GMV to be honest, like, a of them are doing well. They’re going live often. And, but when I’m thinking about some of the biggest sellers that I worked with, or I came across at TikTok, like no one’s ever heard of them.
they got big through TikTok and started to sell and get, and got really successful on live versus you have like some of these bigger names who’ve been around for a while, or it’s like, okay, yeah, they’re going to go and they’re going to have like a pretty live set and they’re going to go live often and they’re going to have a host and this and that. But like, if you’re a smaller brand, starting out, like there’s nothing holding you back from being the next big brand on TikTok live because the consumers are not always so sensitive to the brand name. And I’ve learned that the hard way because
Little sellers that I was working with, like I’d never heard of them before joining TikTok. Like some of them are just like really small stores, small retailers across the U S and in remote parts of of of the States. And I’m just like, how are you guys doing this? And like, they didn’t have a big agency backing them. So I think that’s really important for sellers. like, okay, we’re to go live. We’re going to try it out. it might not work, but to not get discouraged so quickly.
Moritz Schröder (34:05.542)
Yeah, think that’s both scary for especially the larger brands because they suddenly realized that their logo itself is not gonna turn into revenue right away. At the same time, of course, it’s a fantastic way of democratizing selling, right? I you can reach a huge amount of people potentially as a very small seller if you just know what you’re doing with live. Can you give us some examples of these brands or
companies that you worked with that were punching above their weight and actually were able to pull something off that larger brands couldn’t? there a formula to how they were doing it that you could see that others could replicate?
Jason Termechi (34:51.865)
So let me start with kind of the sellers themselves. So the biggest and most successful one that I manage was a shapewear brand. And I worked with many shapewear brands after this one because, whatever reason, we found a lot of success with shapewear brands, mainly the ones that were targeting the Spanish-speaking market. So there was one called Noelis Vajas. I found them in March. They didn’t have an account manager. They were going live, and they were doing pretty well on their own.
But I don’t think we expected them to reach the heights that they did. They’re in McAllen, Texas, which I’ve never heard of until I visited them. Took me two flights to get there and they were just doing it from their back room. And I was so proud of them because they weren’t big on TikTok shop, on the shop side or affiliate side. They jumped right into live. And the secret sauce was the founders and the owners.
Noelle and Manuel, Noelle is the main host working with her husband and she had so much energy that it was just really hard to just not watch. And then once they got kind of like the fundamentals down and improved upon like what they already knew, they were untouchable. Like they did, they’ve done, they.
normally do anywhere from like 50 to $60,000 per live in a few hours. And then the biggest one that I did with them was 180,000. They’ve already surpassed that. So all it is, is the bathroom with a tripod and camera, she has a great, they’ve built a great team, great co-hosts. And I think they just really understood kind of what was going to really move the needle.
Moritz Schröder (36:34.338)
And if you have such a gem that you find yourself and that you’re happy to then nurture and help grow even further, how do you go about coaching someone who’s already clearly doing well and something like the energy that the presenter brings is something that you probably shouldn’t mess with and certainly cannot really teach or replicate. But what other things did you see that they then improved on and
Jason Termechi (36:41.277)
You are welcome.
Moritz Schröder (37:02.722)
that helped them to reach even higher heights.
Jason Termechi (37:06.307)
I think what separated them from a lot of other sellers, like they were very open-minded. They were very willing to learn and try new things. So when we talked about like, okay, we need to do bundles. Like, okay, we’ll do bundles. So we did, took some of their best sellers and if it’s one item and then a few different colors, like, all right, we’ll create a bundle around it. And they’re like, okay, well, we’ll start with one. And I’m like, no, no, no, let’s do more. They’re like, okay, let’s start with one. And then once they saw like the success of that one, like, okay, now we’re going to do two. And I’m like, well, let’s do.
four, they’re like, we’ll do two. And then they bought in after that. So there was some point where we had like 10 bundles and it was just like, it was a lot. But I think once they start to see things that really work, then they start to kind of really buy in and start to do it more. And I think once they got the kind of the handle down on, on the pacing and the flash sales and like everything else, like the set design, we really honed in on kind of like what they’re good at and really talk them through the metrics that they should be looking at.
Because when things are slow, as a seller, you need to have someone looking at the dashboard of like, okay, this isn’t working. How do we pivot? And I think they quickly learn like, okay, we need to learn how to pivot and make things go quicker. Whereas some people get kind of stuck and like, okay, we’ll figure it out later.
Moritz Schröder (38:22.135)
Yeah, can, I understand that this is probably what separates the successful ones from the less successful ones where you just need to be open-minded and you need to not be afraid to change things up, right? You shouldn’t be stuck in your ways. And if you see things either
Jason Termechi (38:28.271)
What’s up?
Moritz Schröder (38:41.921)
between your lives. If you look at the trajectory of where you’re going with going live and also within the live, as you said, you need to monitor very closely how you’re doing. And if things are not working, you need to be willing to switch things up, which sounds easy in theory, but I can totally see that it’s very hard, especially when you’re live and you’re actually having a lot of things going on at the same time. And you’re kind of set in your ways, right? Like you are a certain
type of person and you do things a certain way to then decide, okay, we have to do things differently right now, otherwise this is gonna be a failure. There’s not a lot of people who are actually able to do that.
Jason Termechi (39:22.351)
That’s why I always encourage them like, like learn the metrics, learn the dashboard more than anything. Like the data, especially with all these new platforms coming about, like we’re getting more more intricate and we’re getting more detailed on like the data of like what TikTok provides. And then there’s going to be a whole new layer layer with all these other platforms. So it’s like really learn what’s going to work and like, look at the products, what’s doing well, what’s not doing well, what has a high click, the rate.
what isn’t converting that maybe you stuck, stay too long on like, let’s move it faster. Let’s make our flash sales quicker. So it’s like, how do they implement and adjust and starting to measure like those changes? So I think that’s what really helps the ones that are open-minded and want to experiment and kind of analyze their performance after they’ve put those things into place.
Moritz Schröder (40:12.524)
Do you have or use any third party tools that you would recommend live sellers use to track all these metrics and also to keep track of the KPIs that are most relevant for retention, but then ultimately also for conversion?
Jason Termechi (40:26.935)
I’m still in the place of like testing out a few different platforms. So, sorry, I can’t commit to any of the third party platforms just yet. But I’m still kind of. There’s one called front. There’s one called stickler where they’re able to like analyze the lives a bit more where they’re able to pull like the comments and generate sentiment.
Moritz Schröder (40:38.55)
Which ones are in the mix for you? Wanna throw out some brand names?
Jason Termechi (40:55.663)
That wasn’t available at TikTok. We weren’t able to pull comments when I was there. So I’m like, that’s actually a pretty cool feature. And there’s a bunch of other things that they have access to, but it’s not as robust as you would have at TikTok if you work there internally. But the tools are getting a little bit more more advanced just using AI as well.
Moritz Schröder (41:18.85)
Yeah, I actually had the CEO of Stickler on this podcast was really interesting. Dominic Powers was very interesting conversation also because he’s based in Southeast Asia. So he’s working with the live shopping market there. And again, it’s much more advanced as it is in the West. So he has a lot of data and insights to pull from now that they’re pushing towards the Western markets. Definitely seems like a…
Jason Termechi (41:23.471)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (41:47.937)
product worth checking out for live.
Jason Termechi (41:50.541)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Moritz Schröder (41:54.557)
what were some of the biggest lives that you were personally involved in? Like how long did people go and do you actually see a correlation between how long you go and how much you convert or does it inevitably at some point drop because you’ve gone too long?
Jason Termechi (42:10.009)
So the 180K I did with Noelle was my biggest. then with them, we’ve done 150 before that. And with another shape or seller, did 125K. And like, those are mega lives. Those aren’t like your everyday lives. Those are one offset we do one to two times a month. And those would normally be around eight to 12 hours. like,
The most important thing that we’re looking at is our hourly GMV. Like, does it make sense to continue to go live or is it just declining? Because in the beginning, it’s going to do really well. And then in the middle, it’s going to taper off a little bit. And then once you hit about like 75,000, it gets really slow. It’s like, how do we like, what can we introduce right now? That’s going to keep the needle moving or you’re just going to keep declining because all that hype and anticipation is gone. So to really sustain.
eight to 12 hours of selling. Like obviously it’s very hard on the sellers themselves, but for the audience to continue to like buy, that makes it very challenging. Cause if like they’re only seeing a few different products or it’s not entertaining, engaging, like they’re just going to get bored and it’s like, okay, we’re done. So I think it takes a lot to kind of plan and prepare for like eight to 12 hours.
Moritz Schröder (43:23.114)
Yeah, I can imagine. Or actually I can’t like the work that goes into those kind of events be in front, but also behind the camera must be insane. I’ve talked to a live host that works in London for L’Oreal and she talked about these mega lives that L’Oreal is doing there pretty routinely. And it sounded super fascinating and super exciting, but also so
Jason Termechi (43:27.747)
Richard.
Moritz Schröder (43:50.443)
draining mentally, but also physically if you’re in front of the camera for as long as she sometimes is to keep that momentum. And then also, I mean, you have to be not just there, right? You don’t have to just physically be in front of the camera, but you actually have to be entertaining and you have to talk super fast and you cannot make mistakes. Like there’s so much that goes into it. It certainly is a skill and it’s super cool to see people hone that skill and take it to the next level now.
Jason Termechi (44:19.779)
Like if I’m sitting there and I’m exhausted, like I can’t imagine that I’m like talking for that long and not being tired. I’m like, how do you guys do this? I’ve gone live for like a few minutes or like I’ll pop in and like be on the live for a few minutes, but like it’s so tiring.
Moritz Schröder (44:24.075)
you
Moritz Schröder (44:37.547)
Yeah. Do you have a setup with your clients that you sort of can copy paste? Is there a formula that you apply to pretty much any client or is it so individual and so unique and so brand specific that you pretty much always have to start from scratch when you come up with a strategy for them?
Jason Termechi (45:00.173)
I think there’s kind of like, I wouldn’t say like a recipe, but I think in the grand scheme of things of like what makes them successful, it’s things that could be scaled across any category or any type of brand. So thinking about like, okay, if I’m going to have a live, like what do I need to do? Like first you need to register the live. You need to register the live. We need to get people to sign up for this live. We need to create content and promote the live. Then we send out.
a message to either your followers, not followers, customers, non-customers, whatever segmentation that you want to do. It’s like, okay, we need to get as many people to register for this live. And then we need to think about like, okay, what products are we going to have? What’s going to be new? What’s going to be exciting? What kind of flash sales are we going to have? What kind of coupons are we going to have? What kind of giveaways are we going to have? Like, how do I distinguish this live from all the other lives? And like, obviously all the other things that we talked about, whether it comes to scripting,
and conversions and engagement, that’s all going to go into it too. So it’s like your daily lives is your testing ground of you understanding like what works and what doesn’t. And then your mega lives are like, okay, like everything we’ve learned, we’re to put into this and shoot for a much higher goal and go live for longer where it makes sense for us. So if I’m like starting new with the brand, I’m like, okay, you guys have never gone live. Like what’s going to set them up for success is really all the things that we’ve talked about. And it’s all in the preparation.
Moritz Schröder (46:30.272)
So you do have a checklist that you go by. And then I’m sure there’s a lot of unique ways that brands do their lives. probably they even have their kind of stick where it’s recognizable for their target audience that, yeah, I know this brand does these kinds of lives. And I know what to expect when I join their huge mega lives.
Jason Termechi (46:55.011)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (47:01.119)
For people who are just getting to learn about live shopping, do you see any trends that you would like them to be aware of that probably the industry or other people that are not as deep into it as you are sleeping on? Like are there trends that you see emerge that nobody outside of the industry has picked up on yet?
Jason Termechi (47:27.395)
I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t say specifically trends. think it’s just like having an actual strategy. I think that’s the most important thing of like, yes, like go live, try it out and do different things. But like, think once you’re like ready to take it serious, like really strategizing across all the things that we talked about, especially like the pre-promotion of it and then your product assortment, your host, your scripts.
your set design, and then starting to look at like, how do I increase my click through rate? How do I increase, increase my conversion rate? How do I increase my average order value? Like all of these metrics are going to make a difference as opposed to just like, we’re just going to go live and not really dive deep, too deep into the data. think once they are very familiar with their products, what does well, then they can start to find success there.
Moritz Schröder (48:20.543)
Yeah, and I can totally see how strategists like yourself can help brands with that journey. Jason, how can people find out more about your services? How can they reach out to you?
Jason Termechi (48:27.597)
Yeah.
Jason Termechi (48:33.411)
So they can find me on my website, jasonturmichie.com, or they can reach out to me on LinkedIn, where it’s just my name.
Moritz Schröder (48:40.988)
Okay, easy as that. Perfect. Jason, thanks so much for coming on.
Jason Termechi (48:42.617)
Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity, Moritz.