Guest Bio:
Jordan West is the founder and CEO of Social Commerce Club, and he’s been an eCommerce entrepreneur for the past decade. Over the years, he’s owned and founded multiple brands, navigating the ever-evolving landscape of online advertising—from Google Search and FBA to the rise of Facebook Ads. In the fall of 2023, when he saw TikTok Shop emerge and witnessed the true birth of social commerce in North America, he realized that the way consumers shop was about to change forever.
Episode Summary:
In this conversation, Moritz Schröder and Jordan West discuss the evolution and impact of TikTok Shop on e-commerce. They explore the challenges and opportunities presented by social commerce, emphasizing the importance of understanding the creator economy and building strong relationships with affiliates. Jordan shares insights on the learning curve for brands, the significance of patience in seeing results, and the strategies for effective content creation. They also touch on the future of shopping, the role of AI, and the need for genuine human connection in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
Main Takeaways:
- TikTok Shop has transformed the e-commerce landscape in just two years.
- Brands need to understand that they are selling to creators, not directly to customers.
- Building strong relationships with creators is essential for success on TikTok Shop.
- Patience is crucial; brands should not expect immediate returns from TikTok Shop.
- Content creation on TikTok should focus on authenticity and relatability.
- The Pareto principle applies to TikTok content; not all videos will perform well.
- Social commerce is still in its infancy, with much potential for growth.
- AI will play a significant role in shaping the future of social commerce.
- The importance of human connection in a world increasingly driven by technology.
- Brands should focus on products that genuinely add value to consumers’ lives.
Full Transcript:
Moritz Schröder (00:01.653)
Awesome. Cool, Jordan. So I’m super excited to be talking with you. And one of the reasons is that pretty much exactly two years ago, TikTok Shop launched in the U S and now looking back at those two years, it’s been a crazy ride. So many creators, affiliates, obviously stores making millions of dollars every month on TikTok Shop, but
Jordan West (00:07.553)
You too.
Jordan West (00:19.17)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Moritz Schröder (00:30.154)
Looking back two years ago, that was not obvious at all. So I know that you were.
Jordan West (00:35.05)
argue it still isn’t obvious. would argue that most brands are still completely in the dark. I people will poke fun at me all the time for my love of TikTok shop and of social commerce. And I’m like, this is exactly what it was like with Facebook ads back in like 2014 2015, where nobody believed in it. It’s like, now it’s like, what’s your strategy? Well, Facebook ads, right? So like, we all know this, this
Moritz Schröder (00:51.809)
Hahaha.
Jordan West (01:00.214)
way of doing things, right? And when there is something new, most people don’t want to, most brands don’t want to embrace it.
Moritz Schröder (01:07.78)
Well, I think that’s why it’s very interesting to be talking to someone like you who has a little bit more experience in e-commerce. You’ve been doing this a long time and you’ve seen the waves come and go. You’ve been around for Google ads, for Facebook ads, for Amazon. So tell me what it was like when you came across TikTok Shop back in 2023. Was it
Jordan West (01:24.981)
Absolutely.
Moritz Schröder (01:33.078)
obvious to you that this was going to be a game changer or were you also taking it aback first?
Jordan West (01:36.046)
No. So at first, all I thought when I heard about TikTok shop is I didn’t even look into it. I was just like, oh, OK, so we’re just going to send traffic to a storefront like I was thinking like meta shops or Instagram shops. I’m like, well, that didn’t do anything like it’s just another place to check out. And even recently, Meta has now pulled the check out and the check out now actually happens on Shopify, which is hilarious. So this is that’s what I thought that TikTok shop was. Right. I was like, oh, OK.
Moritz Schröder (01:49.239)
right.
Jordan West (02:05.646)
All right. Well, that isn’t really anything to talk about. And I just didn’t really care or think that it was a big deal until I realized how incredibly game changing it really was. Right. When I realized, my gosh, it’s actually affiliates. It’s actually the regular people of Tik TOK that are going to be reviewing products and talking about products and then making money on that. And this is this whole new way of doing things. I hated working with influencers when, when we owned brands, it despised it. It was always like most of the time it was a waste of
Moritz Schröder (02:36.233)
Right, right. So were you a TikTok user before you came across TikTok Shop? Or I guess we’re both not exactly the age group that usually spends a lot of time on TikTok. So how did you then figure out that, okay, this is actually something I should be paying attention to because it might change the course of e-commerce?
Jordan West (02:41.527)
No.
Jordan West (02:48.718)
Totally.
Jordan West (02:57.176)
So what I knew, it’s actually really interesting, the two of us talking, neither one of us are Americans, right? It’s really interesting. I always think that it’s really cool to be able to see things from the outside. So very similar to being a Canadian who works exclusively with American companies, right? We can see inside of the fishbowl from the outside, right? And very similarly, I actually think that it really helps that I’m not a massive TikTok user.
because you get to see from the outside and you get to observe and you’re like, okay, what is going on here exactly without being a part of it, right? That’s the awesome thing. And so when I saw this, I knew how profound TikTok had been for a lot of businesses, right? The problem was TikTok ads sucked, right? TikTok ads would never drive any meaningful amount of revenue, but then kind of sometimes,
they would because you’d look at post purchase surveys and tons of people said, well, I found out about you on TikTok, but we can never really link that to TikTok ads. It was like, okay, like was that TikTok organic? And then the tracking has always been like really bad, right? Even with like multi-touch attribution, it’s like, it’s not really there. So then when TikTok shop came around and created this, this closed ecosystem, I was obsessed. I was like, my gosh, it’s the first time we can actually track the efficacy of TikTok.
Moritz Schröder (04:17.589)
Right. And how did you then go about studying it? Because for what I understand at the very beginning, there just wasn’t a lot of resources to fall back on. I don’t know how good the documentation was that TikTok provided. So how was it all self-taught or how did you learn about TikTok Shop?
Jordan West (04:34.77)
absolutely. I mean, it’s the only possible way that you can get, you know, get into something is by doing it right, like, don’t trust the people who just talk about the thing, right? Like that, that was what we did. I was like, man, this is super interesting. So I convinced a few clients, I was like, hey, we should get into this. So we started to try it out. And then, you know, we suddenly got one of our bigger first clients, and they had some like crazy success. And then from there, we’re like, okay, well, what else works? And we try this, try this, try this.
Moritz Schröder (04:42.306)
you
Jordan West (05:03.052)
And it’s just a matter of like, we’ve worked with over 100 clients at our agency now, right? Like it’s, we’ve done a lot of this and we have failed so I have failed more than any other person that is out there right now.
Moritz Schröder (05:14.433)
Isn’t that also scary when you know there’s a chance of failing and at the same time, it’s your client’s business and money on the line?
Jordan West (05:23.806)
I yes and no. mean, we tell them right like like especially at the beginning. It was like, hey, just so you know, we don’t know exactly how this is going to go. Things are changing all the time. What we can tell you is that we’re going to do our best. We’re going to all of the inputs that we have control over. We are going to control the outputs on the other side. We do. We are not going to promise anything. And so I think that that’s the that’s the thesis that I’ve always gone off of. And that’s worked really, really well.
Moritz Schröder (05:51.52)
It’s interesting that you were able to have clients be such early adopters to TikTok shop, because I would imagine that they’re very cautious about putting their money into something like TikTok that I guess a lot of people in our age group kind of frowned upon. Was there a lot of convincing that you had to do or were they as into it as you were from the get go?
Jordan West (06:17.134)
I think I had enough brands that really wanted to test it and saw other brands being really successful that like, still like we’ve never ran an ad in our life, right? Like at the agency, like we have a hundred, like I was just quickly looking at it like five calls booked today from brands, right? Like we have a lot of interest coming in. So that’s never been an issue, right? And I do not like to try to convince people that is the worst possible thing is to try to convince people that a channel is going to work. I, we used to have to do that with Facebook ads and it was like,
Are you serious? I had to do that with somebody recently and try and convince them that Facebook ads worked. Like, like just turn them off and then and then tell me whether they work or not. Wait two weeks, turn them off and tell me whether they work or not. And it’s like, like, I don’t know, it’s it’s kind of a funny thing. Thinking about driving incrementality and like how advertising works and just all of this stuff, right?
It’s difficult. I do not, am not the type that is going to try to convince someone. I’m just like, no, if you don’t believe it, that’s fine. Just come to me when you do.
Moritz Schröder (07:19.745)
Makes a ton of sense. So were you picky in the with the kind of clients that you took on to try TikTok because you learned early on that certain businesses do better on TikTok shop than others or was it available to anyone who was willing to try it out from your end?
Jordan West (07:40.246)
when when we first Yeah, when when we first started what what we were saying to brands is like, yeah, anyone can be successful. I think the brands that are the most successful are the ones that know what a massive investment it is, right? And that it takes time, right? There is no brand that is going to break even in the first three months. Okay, you need to everyone needs to understand that no one’s going to break even in the first three months. And if you have those expectations, you are going to be sorely sorely disappointed. And that’s a really big
problem that a lot of brands have right when they go on to tick tock shop is like you’re not going to make money right away. But you will in the long term and in the long term, it’s going to be the best possible channel for your brand to it’s really interesting. I just talked like huge brand publicly traded. They want to enter a new market down somewhere. I won’t tell you exactly where just in case anyone puts the you know, pieces together, but they want to enter a new markets and only enter it using tick tock shop.
So that’s the way that they want to enter the market. That’s a really big deal guys. That’s the way this is the future. This is how brands are going to enter markets is using TikTok shop.
Moritz Schröder (08:40.736)
Wow.
Moritz Schröder (08:50.571)
Super interesting. I mean, it’s so cool that we’re still so early in this development, I feel. As you said, a lot of people have not caught on to this yet. So even though we’re two years in and you were a very, very early adopter, it’s still possible to ride this wave, especially in markets that are, guess, newly launching TikTok shop where they’re not even familiar with it yet.
Jordan West (09:15.279)
Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, there’s all of these big markets that are opening up right now. We’ve got Mexico, we’ve got Brazil is another big one. We’ve got Southeast Asia. We’ve got all of these different markets opening up. And it is just the beginning, right? Like this is still Amazon of 2014 2015 Facebook ads of that era as well. And brands are not understanding what it takes to actually be successful on the channel. And that’s the problem.
Moritz Schröder (09:42.708)
So from your experience, what does it take besides being willing to invest in the long run?
Jordan West (09:48.311)
Yeah, I mean, great, great question. so number one, you need to understand that you are not selling as a brand. You are not selling to a customer. You are selling to your affiliates, right? To the creators. Your customer is the creators. The creators are the ones that are selling to your customers. So you need to treat your creators amazingly. Well, the problem most brands have these days is that they’ve not done a very good job of that. And affiliate programs are like the ugly stepchild of
All of D to C. And so most brands don’t understand this. They don’t get how to like actually treat their creators. Well, if you treat your creators well and you get your creators doing the things like we recently, we ran a contest and it was over a weekend and one creator posted 91 videos during this contest. 91 videos, right? That is a creator that is incentivized, right? That wants to number one, win a contest. Number two is incentivized.
Moritz Schröder (10:38.845)
Ha ha ha ha!
Jordan West (10:47.885)
to post a lot of videos and obviously loves the brand and knows that she’s going to make a ton of money. Right. That’s what you’re trying to create here is like, like all like brands that don’t understand win-win, which I’m going to be honest is like a lot of brands don’t understand win-win. They’re just trying to get whatever they want. If they can’t understand number one, what does the creator want? What, what is their win? If the, you can understand someone’s win and you understand win-win, you will be successful on the channel because you can be like, okay.
That’s what they want. Let’s do that. Brands that tighten up like there’s a lot of brands that will like give like big commissions at the beginning and then like pull them back to like one or 2%. Those brands are screwed. Right? They don’t understand what these relationships are like TikTok shop the creators it’s like high school all of them talk to each other.
Moritz Schröder (11:26.312)
Hmm.
Moritz Schröder (11:35.325)
Right. How do brands best go about finding the creators that work best for their unique brand? How do they get in contact with them? Should they go through an agency like yours or should they reach out directly? What’s the industry standard there?
Jordan West (11:56.56)
Totally. So the you know, at the beginning, you it really depends what your budget is, right? Like for like, the brand to come and work with us at our agency, we’re pretty expensive, right? We’re like, we are services started at $8,900 a month. So you need to have that for a retainer for an agency like ours, right? So so what I recommend that a smaller brand comes, absolutely not right, like the brands that we talk to on the daily basis are household name brands, right? For the most part. And then there’s other brands that reach out to but
My recommendation is use a tool like Yuka or Reacher. I love the guys at Reacher. It’s a tool that helps you. I think Cold Start is like a couple hundred bucks a month. It allows you to identify the creators that are out there that you want to work with and allows you to send messages out to those creators. That is the very first thing that I would recommend that you do is look for those creators using one of those tools, start to identify them.
Now I love the blitz methodology. I’ve been talking about the blitz methodology for a while now, but the idea with the blitz methodology, I’ll just do kind of the 30 second overview is that before you reach out to anyone, right? You first tell people set a blitz date. Hey guys, everyone, we’re going to all be posting on this certain date. Now blitz is you hold onto your content until a certain date. So you and I are recording this September 4th. So let’s just say September 30th, we’re going to set our blitz date and we’re going to say,
Moritz Schröder (13:00.68)
Please.
Jordan West (13:21.835)
Make your content, but hold off on all of it until September 30th. And actually we want you to join our discord or WhatsApp group, because that’s where we’re going to let you know, because the blitz state might change. So you need to join that group to be a part of it. Now you’re going to send a sample out to them. I recommend sending out, giving them a very high commission to try to incentivize them to be a part of it. So give them a really high organic commission. Now most brands out there are willing to spend.
you know, willing to, they’re okay at scale at a two return on ad spend. That’s a 50 % commission. No brands are giving 50 % commission. So just, just remember that. Like, like it’s kind of crazy that no one is like realizing like, I could give that much commission organically. Now you can set two different commission rates. You can set an organic commission rate and an ads commission rates. Remember that right? When you’re thinking about this, those two, can have totally separate. So you can have a 50 % organic commission rate, and then you could have a 10 %
commission rate on ad driven GMV, right? So there’s a big difference in those two. So that’s the big recommendation is get people on board with this big idea of being able to get the product out there. That is how you’re going to be successful and brands who do this for 30 days and say it doesn’t work. Shame on you. Do not get into this. Don’t go into TikTok shop. Don’t do this. I’ve seen some brands that they’re recently do that. It’s a big brands. I’m like, you guys have no clue.
how long it takes to gain that momentum and attraction, even with a blitz.
Moritz Schröder (14:54.096)
And why is it that it does take longer than a month? Is it just you need to build that momentum or what makes you say that it should take at least three months until you see a return on investment?
Jordan West (15:09.315)
Yeah, I wish it didn’t. I wish it was like Facebook ads where you just turn them on and it works, but that’s not how it works. Right. The way that it works is building up a creator army that is constantly posting for you. Right. You’re right now on TikTok shop. Your your conversion rate is going to be about a third of what your D to C commission. Sorry. Your D to C conversion rate is. So remember, you’re down about a third.
So you have to send a lot more traffic over there, but also you’re going to get this massive halo from TikTok shop over to Amazon. And that’s something that you really want to look out for as you’re going through this is like, okay. We need to remember that this is pushing a ton of revenue over to Amazon, just like Facebook ads do too. Right. But most brand owners, especially, you know, younger brand owners, not younger, like as an age, but like brand owners who haven’t been around for a while, don’t really realize that.
Moritz Schröder (16:07.578)
Right. Okay. In terms of creators, when we zoom out a little bit and just look at creators and how they actually make money off of TikTok shop, I’m sure there’s plenty of amazing ones and then there’s a ton that try to make money easily and they fail horribly. What differentiates the two? Is it basically having a talent for sales or is it being great at making videos? What is it?
Jordan West (16:37.688)
No, it’s totally it’s knowing how to sell something. Right. I think that’s the biggest thing is like there. There’s a reason why all of the top creators are millennials, right? They have understood how to sell. I don’t think that I think that takes a while to realize. Like there’s very few like young people that are good at selling, right? It’s one of those skills that you learn over the years that you’re like, OK, this is how I do it. That’s why a lot of these millennial moms are making bank. There’s people who have paid their house off.
Right? Like it’s crazy. So the ones that I see do a couple of things, and let’s be honest, this is just like successful humans. Number one, they do the same thing over and over again, if it is working. Right. And so they will make a lot of these people will batch like a hundred videos in a day. That’s a crazy thing. Right. So they set up these systems and they’ve got these, these incredible systems. I’ve seen pictures of like a hundred different items being delivered to someone.
They’re just like an incredible tick tock shop creator. So they get all this free stuff and they are loving their life and they’re making so much money, but it’s because they’re putting in the work. They don’t post like one video a day, right? They’re posting like minimum 10, 15, 20 videos a day because they know that one of those is going to hit tick tock shop is the Pareto principle on the Pareto principle 80 20 of 80 20. So I always think that
Moritz Schröder (17:51.611)
Mm.
Jordan West (18:02.522)
When we send out a hundred samples, you can expect that 20 of those samples, there’s just, there’s just the way the world works, right? Like I wish it didn’t, but the Pareto principle is everywhere that we go. And, but this one is, is, is the Pareto of the Pareto. So 20 of those videos are going to be okay, right? They’re going to be like 80 of them are going to be garbage. Just so you guys know, right? 80 of those creators, you probably don’t want doing more stuff for you. That’s okay. You just need to get used to it. 20 of those are going to have some sort of virality, right?
We’re like, okay, good. So 20 of these videos are good. Now we try and get our creators per sample. Our goal at Social Commerce Club, my agency is to get five videos per sample. That’s always our goal, right? Because we know the more videos that they do, the more likelihood that they have to go viral and to get in front of the right people and to sell. That is the big thing. Remember guys on TikTok, your following has like virtually nothing to do with how viral your video goes. It is
all content based, not follower based at all. So like we have, we have creators that are doing like hundreds of thousands of dollars for products who have like 10,000 followers. So just remember that that’s a really, really important thing to remember. Um, where were we again?
Moritz Schröder (19:16.379)
We were talking about the top of the top and how they are so much better at making videos than everyone else.
Jordan West (19:25.152)
Yes, yes. Okay, great. So they just know what hits, right? They do their research and they look and see which products are hitting and they look and see how other people are selling those. And then they put their unique spin on that, right? That’s the big thing. So great tool out there. FastMos can allow you to see all of that stuff, right? And so you can go in and see all of this different stuff that people are are looking at.
And you can see what all of these different creators are doing. So that’s my, my big recommendation.
Moritz Schröder (19:57.179)
So those millennial moms that are crushing it out there on TikTok shop as affiliates, are they really as meticulous with how they make these videos or is it really user generated content, kind of easy going between changing diapers of their toddler and making a lunch for their husband, quickly making a video? Is it as…
casual as the video sometimes suggest or are they super diligent super meticulous you said they’re putting out a hundred videos per day but do they actually look at the data as meticulously? Right, okay.
Jordan West (20:31.512)
I don’t know about 100 per day, but they’ll film 100. So, so it’s kind of both, right? Like, yes, the the millennial mom is just the ultimate creator right now. So those are the ones that are that are doing that. I would say I would say it’s a little bit of a mix of both, but the kind of content that works on TikTok and TikTok shops specifically is more of that homespun content. That’s the kind of content that people want to see.
They don’t want highly produced content. That’s nuts. That’s it. She’s not working. So why would people make that content? It’s great that it doesn’t work.
Moritz Schröder (21:08.409)
To me, that’s so interesting to see how different social media platforms favor different kinds of content. Obviously on YouTube, everyone knows Mr. Beast is beyond everyone else in terms of subscribers and views. And it’s costing him so much money to make these videos, right? He’s spending millions on each video because the production costs are just so high with the level of quality he wants to reach.
Jordan West (21:26.571)
Millions of dollars, yeah.
Moritz Schröder (21:34.926)
Whereas on TikTok, you can get the same amount of views as MrBeast and put in a 10,000th of the amount that he spends. So it’s so cool to have both worlds and be able to also as a content consumer switch back and forth between your favorites on each platform.
Jordan West (21:35.162)
Totally.
Jordan West (21:54.929)
Totally, totally. Yeah. And there, there’s such different platforms. If a brand grew up on Instagram, they’re going to have a very hard time on TikTok shop, right? They’re just going to have a hard time on TikTok in general, because they understand Instagram and the Instagram person. It’s a very, very different person than the TikTok audience and the kind of content that matters there.
Moritz Schröder (22:05.198)
Right.
Moritz Schröder (22:19.052)
When a brand approaches you and they maybe are not as familiar with TikTok and what works and what doesn’t, do you have to do a lot of re-education for them to have them understand that this is a completely different beast compared to Instagram or YouTube?
Jordan West (22:35.78)
totally. I mean, we have to tell them, like the content that you’re going to get is not the kind of content you think converts. And yet it is the kind of content that actually converts. And you’re going to want to actually use this content across all of your platforms. People just don’t get that.
Moritz Schröder (22:50.263)
Right. So what kind of success stories have you seen in last two years from your clients? Can you speak a little bit to some of the clients and what they have accomplished with TikTok Shop over the course of those three years?
Jordan West (23:05.008)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, massive things, right? So we’ll talk about one, we have one shoe brand that just hit $3 million last month. Huge GMV. mean, guys, these are like real numbers that they’re hitting, like this is becoming one of their big channels, right? $3 million in one month. It’s it’s massive. But not only that, it’s like 10,000 videos posted per month. It’s, you know, the first half of the year, 1.4 billion views.
Think about the media value of all of these things, right? So like huge, huge examples when they came to us, nothing on the platform. In fact, no search volume for them on the platform. We ran a, it’s not easy to find search volume on TikTok. And so we were able to run an internal report. And in December, after, you know, scaling them for a while, their search volume was almost a million searches in the two weeks that we had done that for. Like it’s just,
crazy numbers. And before that, there was zero searches for them on the platform. This is a big brand. No one was searching for them. And now they are. That’s a really, really big, huge sign that something good is happening. I call it the halo effect, right? It’s, it says halo. And I’m actually, building software right now called halo, because I really believe in it that much right now. some other success stories. I mean, we’ve seen, omni channel is a really big thing here. So like at social commerce club, we grew up in DTC.
Moritz Schröder (24:02.776)
and…
Moritz Schröder (24:20.503)
You
Jordan West (24:31.481)
Right? Our agency, I’ve got, you know, pretty big agency now and our agency are absolute killers on D2C. But what’s even better is when we combine those things. So I think about one brand that we’ve worked with for a while who we’re working with across platforms and they’re winning creatives. When they first came to us, we were able to double their return on ad spend half their CPA using TikTok shop creative. That is the cool thing.
Right? That’s the really, really unique, amazing thing about TikTok shop that people don’t really realize is like that content travels so incredibly well.
Moritz Schröder (25:10.23)
Yeah, totally. It feels like TikTok shop is such a fast moving machine and it’s constantly changing and evolving and the whole ecosystem around it is growing and expanding. How do you, on top of everything you’re doing with your work, stay up to date with the latest trends, the latest news? What resources do you consume? Do you talk to other people working in the same space? How do you…
make sure that you’re always up to speed with what is working right now with TikTok Shop.
Jordan West (25:43.352)
totally. So I mean, the biggest resource is TikTok, to be totally honest, like, they’re incredible. We’re really tight with the team over at TikTok. So they’ll tell us everything that’s going on. And so that’s the really big thing that we’re constantly looking at. There’s some information out there on Twitter and LinkedIn. But for the most part, we work with so many clients that we are the ones that are pushing out the information. So if you want to know stuff about TikTok shop, you just need to follow Social Commerce Club and follow me because
Moritz Schröder (25:52.375)
Nice.
Jordan West (26:11.441)
That is really at the end of the day, like where we’re getting all of this info from is like, this is working. This isn’t, this is working. And I’m just constantly telling people out there what is working and what’s not. And that’s like my entire goal every single day is like, ah, can I share something interesting that’s helping people understand how to scale this channel?
Moritz Schröder (26:30.676)
It’s been really cool to follow you on social media, I have to say, because I still feel like there’s not as much information available as there is about other ways of doing e-commerce. are a little bit more legacy maybe. And maybe that’s due to TikTok shops still being relatively new and relatively little adoption still has happened. But it’s been really cool to have someone like you really being at the forefront of this and pushing it.
Jordan West (26:44.379)
For sure.
Moritz Schröder (26:58.41)
whether it’s through social media posts or your newsletter, the work that you’re doing with your agency. So that’s been really a good resource for me, have to say personally.
Jordan West (27:06.971)
Well, thank you. Thanks. That’s that’s what I wake like I literally wake up in the morning every day and I’m like, what can I share that’s going to add some value to people today? And without anything in return, right? It’s just like a matter of like, I just want to share this stuff because I think it’s really interesting and brands need to understand what the new world looks like.
Moritz Schröder (27:26.44)
Exactly. So speaking about how the world looks like right now, let’s talk a little bit more about how the world maybe looks like in five years. Do you have any kind of vision of where this will go and lead to? What do you think social commerce as a whole looks like in five years?
Jordan West (27:47.932)
Well, something really interesting, Neil Patel had a talk recently about the future of AI search. And interesting that his talk actually was like, hey, I’m not nearly as concerned about AI search as I am about social search, right? I mean, TikTok two years ago took over Google, right? For the most searched platform for products. So just remember that, like there is that much search going on on Instagram, on TikTok, all of these places.
Moritz Schröder (28:06.966)
Wow.
Jordan West (28:16.977)
is the place where most people are starting their searches. In fact, I we had to buy a couch, I moved into a new house and we wanted to buy this like really big I had this idea of this big comfy couch. I started my search on tik tok was the very first place that I went because I was like, I just want to see what people are putting out there and then I watched some videos here and there and I totally decided on the perfect couch. So glad that I bought it. But I wouldn’t have made that decision. Now like now I think how our kick I’m to go to Google and see some
product images. Like that’s not what I want. I want to see videos. I want to see real life videos of these products. That’s where I think that people are going to win.
Moritz Schröder (28:47.605)
Hahaha
Moritz Schröder (28:56.521)
And if you can buy a couch on TikTok shop, there’s really no limit to what kind of a product you can sell through TikTok shop, I guess.
Jordan West (29:04.173)
No, totally, totally exactly. And so people don’t understand that. And couches are doing well on TikTok, by the way, on TikTok shop, which is crazy. So here’s, here’s what people don’t understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Huge commissions. So here’s what people don’t understand is that the halo effect of TikTok shop goes everywhere. So you’re going to start to see it in your Google search console. You’re going to see branded search, go way up. You’re going to see branded search, go way up on
Moritz Schröder (29:10.549)
Great commissions as well, I guess.
Jordan West (29:31.996)
TikTok and on Instagram, right? Those are very hard things that stuff I’m trying to measure on halo. Because I think it’s a really interesting thing to be like, do we continue to put more money over here? Because this is causing this halo of branded search here and branded search here, because those are really important. It’s really important to see branded search happen on Amazon. Then we know we’re going to continue to double down on that, right? But most people are looking at it in the wrong sort of way. They’re looking at it purely from a sales perspective, which is like, I get that.
but it’s not quite there yet. Right? Like, yes, one of our brands did 3 million bucks last month. That’s huge. But right. There’s bigger channels for that. Like Metta is still like a behemoth comparatively. Right. And so as social commerce continues to become the way that people buy in North America, brands need to look at it and realize all of the huge effects that this has on their brand.
Moritz Schröder (30:27.03)
Yeah. And I could imagine that that really flies under the radar for most brands as of now, especially if you’re a large brand and there are upticks that might be caused by TikTok, but you don’t even notice it if you don’t specifically look for it. So you might be selling a little bit more on Amazon that month and you don’t even realize it has to do with a viral video on TikTok, right?
Jordan West (30:49.882)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yes.
Moritz Schröder (30:54.737)
That’s going to be very interesting when the majority of businesses wake up to that.
Jordan West (30:59.612)
Totally. And right now it’s still so few of them, right? Like we’re still doing so much education right now. I feel like my entire job is just educating people on what the platform is, how to use it, why brands have to be on it and invest in the channel and lose some money at first. Right? I think most people are not saying that. And it’s something I want everyone to understand. Like you need, you’re going to go on there and you’re going to lose a bit of money at first, but you have to be on the channel.
Moritz Schröder (31:23.933)
Right, right. How do you think about life shopping? Do you think it’s going to become anywhere close to how big it is in China? Or do you think that it’s going to more be an afterthought because we’re just a different kind of culture, a different kind of consumer here in the West?
Jordan West (31:44.135)
I don’t think that it’s going to be like I’m probably different than my peers, but I just don’t think that live shopping. It’s not something I’m putting my money into. I’m not I’m not investing heavily in live shopping because I just don’t think that it’s nearly as big as short form. I think that if brands are going to invest in long form, they should be investing in building like long form YouTube content.
not live shopping content. That’s just, know it’s, it’s probably a bit of a, an interesting take for people out there, but like, that’s the way I look at it. But again, I’ve been wrong so many times, so who knows.
Moritz Schröder (32:20.148)
Do you use live shopping with your clients or do you tell them to basically avoid it?
Jordan West (32:28.646)
No, so we just partner with with big live shopping agencies. So if our if the brands that we work with want to be big on live shopping, the problem is like it’s is the juice worth the squeeze right now. There’s a lot of a lot of money and a lot of effort that that you put into that. And it’s very hard to run ads on that after. So it’s it’s kind of like while it’s going, that’s great. And you can run ads while it’s going. But that content isn’t necessarily. And again, I could be wrong.
I could be wrong. I don’t like it personally. I don’t like it as a consumer. I don’t think that it adds as much value out there. Will people do it? Like will the QVC thing happen? Maybe I’m I’m a bigger fan of of, you know, social commerce on on the side of regular people being able to talk about products and make money. I think that’s a really interesting thing. It’s a huge democratization.
of influencer marketing when before you had to build up this big audience, you had to really influence. Now it’s like, you can just make some cool, like, you like this product, talk about it. you just happen to get paid for it. Cool. That’s cool. That’s really cool.
Moritz Schröder (33:39.407)
It certainly is. I have no doubt that UGC content will continue to grow and continue to become the backbone of social commerce. I am curious to see how it plays out with live shopping, just because in China it is so massive. I think it’s more than 30 % of all e-commerce done through live shopping, which is insane for a country the size of China.
Jordan West (34:02.288)
Isn’t that wild?
Moritz Schröder (34:07.217)
and that many consumers, mean, it’s billions and billions and billions being made there. So I do feel like there’s definitely a lot of potential there and maybe just nobody has cracked that nut yet of how to make it work in the West. But time will tell.
Jordan West (34:11.653)
Yeah.
Jordan West (34:25.242)
totally. And I think that there will be a percentage that is sold through live shopping. Like there’s the traffic with big live shopping platform, whatnot, right? It’s it’s out there. People are doing some meaningful revenue. I just I personally am not going to invest my time or energy in live shopping. It’s not what I I’m not passionate about that portion of it. I am passionate about seeing brands grow omni channel growth and brands that have awesome products, getting them in front of consumers and understanding how to sell.
in the stainage. That to me is what I love.
Moritz Schröder (34:58.726)
Makes sense. You focus a lot on social commerce as a whole. Your agency is even called social commerce club. Yet to me, seems social commerce in the West pretty much means TikTok shop these days. Do you feel like other platforms will try to catch up? Will they manage to catch up? Will they find their own way that is unique and different from TikTok shop? How do you think about the metas, the Instagrams, the YouTubes of this world?
in the day and age of social commerce.
Jordan West (35:30.118)
I think YouTube will get it first. The problem is they have not yet gotten it and they don’t understand it quite yet. So I think that there will be platforms that get it. I think that TikTok is so far ahead of everybody else right now. And I’m very interested to see what Instagram is going to do. I think that Instagram is the first place that it’s going to happen. And it makes a lot of sense. People are spending tons of time on reels, right? So I don’t
I’d love to have a good answer for you on who’s going to be next, but I’ve talked to all of them, right? Like they all reach out to me, right? To talk about their social commerce offerings and no one has yet shown me anything that is of interest. think where it’s going to start is on social search. I think that’s going to be the first place people are going to continue to use Instagram and TikTok on social search. And I think that’s going to be a really big part of that. But you know, Meta just stopped.
taking checkouts on Facebook and Instagram shops and it’s now going through Shopify. What does that mean? I don’t know. but it’s definitely going to be difficult. How do you run an affiliate program like that? If it’s not a closed ecosystem, I don’t know.
Moritz Schröder (36:31.047)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (36:40.06)
Yeah, I think you need to have that closed ecosystem and there are so many moving parts in it, including something like fulfillment that TikTok is also doing. So there’s so many things that need to fall into place for a platform to be successful as a social commerce platform. And I also don’t really see Meta putting the money into that right now, also with the AI race as it’s.
Right now, I think they have other priorities. Also, they were more focused on social commerce, it seems, three years ago than they are now. They’re sun setting products and features that would be essential to have such a closed ecosystem.
Jordan West (37:11.484)
Totally.
Jordan West (37:26.604)
Totally, totally. Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly right. That’s what scares me. Or maybe they’re just having a huge pivot. I don’t I don’t know, right? We don’t know exactly what they’re trying to do. But they seem to be very focused on their investments in AI, you know, with those like crazy, like $100 million bounties and stuff like that, which is just wild.
Moritz Schröder (37:48.099)
It is. How do you think AI will affect social commerce?
Jordan West (37:54.12)
Well, I think that there’s a lot of brands that are making a lot of content using AI. I don’t like it. I’m just going to be honest. Like I don’t like it. And yet I think that it’s part of this coming wave. I think that humans will always want to connect with humans. I see a world like on LinkedIn and X where it might become like a ghost town, right? Because people don’t want to interact with just
bots, right? A lot of people see it all over LinkedIn, this bot commenting all the time. It’s like, that adds no value. There’s no value that’s being added. So I’m scared. I’m scared for I think that we’ve already been through this with social media. And now we’re going through this with with AI and I don’t know if we’re prepared for yet.
I don’t know if we’re, we’re, we quite understand what we’re giving up as humanity with, with allowing some of these things that I don’t think are very big value ads. They’re, they’re hacks right now that are not big value ads in the future.
Moritz Schröder (38:58.011)
Do you think it would be possible to roll some momentous movement like the wave of AI back, not only affecting social media, but that’s where we see it. At least I see it mostly because I spent quite some time on social media for better or worse. And I do see all these AI generated videos, AI generated content, AI generated bots answering other bots. So
Jordan West (39:06.213)
No. No.
Moritz Schröder (39:26.905)
I don’t feel like there’s a way to escape that dystopian future anymore, but I’m worried like you are because I used to love social media in the form of YouTube 10 years ago when I grew up with social media in my 20s. It was an amazing source of knowledge, of learning, of community. And I’m afraid that we might lose that if AI takes over.
Jordan West (39:30.407)
There isn’t.
Jordan West (39:49.616)
I am too. I’m very, very worried about it. And I think that I don’t know what to do yet. I don’t know what that looks like. But I can tell you that people are going to be spending less time on social media. I think that if AI continues on like this, it’s just not a place that people at least have a fake connection with people on real people on social media. All the AI and following those kind of like, that’s a big thing Gary Vee has talked about, right, is that he’s like really big right now.
on that you should create your own AI influencers. I think it’s think it’s horrible. I think it’s garbage. I don’t like it as a human. think that it’s a terrible thing. But it’s a really great hack right now. Sure. Go ahead. Like if all that you’re interested in doing is making a bunch of money and then dying, go for it. That’s just not what I’m interested in. Like I’m having my fourth kid in the next week. You know, like I’m interested in like having real deep human connection.
Moritz Schröder (40:31.813)
Right.
Moritz Schröder (40:37.626)
Mm.
Jordan West (40:46.587)
and like living out this human experience, not making everything easier. Right? Like, I think that’s one of the big problems that we have right now as a society is everybody just wants everything easier. And it’s like, I actually want things harder. I just finished a 72 hour fast. Like, I want to do hard things every single day, because that is actually where I get the most enjoyment is doing hard things. Right? When you push yourself and you push your body, you push all these things. That is where enjoyment comes from in my like, and satisfaction in life.
Moritz Schröder (41:00.198)
You
Moritz Schröder (41:16.986)
I couldn’t agree more. I feel similarly. think social media for many people is an escape though, or at least a break from pushing themselves in other areas. So I’m not sure how much they want to do quote unquote hard things by consuming hard content and how much they’re willing to give into AI produced content that is maybe
Jordan West (41:30.623)
huh.
Moritz Schröder (41:43.829)
even more viral and even easier to digest than what we currently use.
Jordan West (41:49.268)
We are going to North America is going to turn into Wally if you’ve ever seen that movie before. Like it is going to be Wally it already is Wally. I mean like like just look around it’s like them like no one’s happy. Right like no one’s happy with all this like what we’re doing like we should probably look at that and think to ourselves like what do we need to do as a society like what do we need to like actually care about and and I don’t know I don’t know how to get
Moritz Schröder (41:54.447)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (42:08.772)
mean.
Jordan West (42:17.691)
people other than my family to live in a different way.
Moritz Schröder (42:22.551)
If even people in Canada are not happy anymore, then we really have to worry, I think.
Jordan West (42:25.946)
no, totally.
Moritz Schröder (42:29.857)
And I mean, I live in Scandinavia, I live in Stockholm, considered one of the happiest places in the world. And I can tell you people are not that much happier here either.
Jordan West (42:38.512)
Yeah, yeah.
Moritz Schröder (42:40.624)
But do you think about these questions like more philosophical questions when you do your day-to-day work? Because, I mean, you work very directly with social media. You work very directly with consumerism and selling online. Do you feel like sometimes you need to get away from it and you feel like, my God, this is really speeding up and intensifying in a way that I almost can’t control anymore with how
instant nowadays people can shop and find things and purchase? Or do you feel like that doesn’t really tie into how you live your everyday life?
Jordan West (43:21.733)
I heard a really interesting interview recently with, the former CTO at Google, Mo Gadot, and he’s been really, really vocal about AI and about what AI is going to do and AI safety. And he’s now saying, like, I just, there’s, there’s no more. I’m not going to talk about the safety anymore because we’re past that point. Now I’m going to talk about what the next 10 to 15 years is going to look like. And he thinks the next
10 years are going to be the worst 10 years we’ve had that we can think of in a rich and poor sort of way, right? Like people like us, my gosh, I mean, like we’ll just figure out how to leverage it and I already have in huge ways, right? And then you’re gonna have this whole class of people that just lose their jobs and we don’t know what we’re gonna do with that. But one of the really interesting things that he talks about, that he talked about was how, you know, in 10 to 15 years, we’re going to have this AI at our fingertips where
Moritz Schröder (43:52.239)
Great.
Jordan West (44:18.128)
It doesn’t really matter. We just talk to it and something appears, right? We just we have this thing that’s going to make us and I know we can’t really picture that, but I have almost no doubt that it’s going to be like that. And then what will happen to consumers? Well, it’s similar. Like we already have this idea of like, you know, I have the Amazon app and it’s just like, I need something. Okay. I just order it. And it just kind of shows up and it’s incredible. And I never think about that. And I think that I think that that’s where we’re
going is into a world like that eventually. And in the meantime, I only want to work with brands that I think their products add value to people’s lives. Right? I don’t want to work with I mean, I we turn most supplement brands down. Because I’m like, I just don’t believe in your product. Right? I think that it’s witchcraft or whatever. Which is oil. I don’t know whatever the people say, right? Like I’m like, this is like, I just don’t believe in it. And so we just don’t work with those companies. But
Moritz Schröder (45:07.948)
Right.
Jordan West (45:14.43)
Companies that add value to people’s life, right? Those are the ones that I wanna work with, right? We’re working with some really huge brands. You know, I just think about my, anyway, my floor is being cleaned by one of them recently and I’m like, I love this product. I’m so glad that we get to work with the biggest one in the space. That makes me happy, right? Like those are the kinds of brands that I love to work with because…
Moritz Schröder (45:29.879)
Yeah.
Jordan West (45:41.108)
Because those products actually add some value to people’s lives and they’re the kinds of things they use every single day. And that makes me happy.
Moritz Schröder (45:51.469)
Do you feel like those products will percentage wise increase as the entire GMV that is generated on TikTok Shop? Or is it mostly products like the supplements you just mentioned where, you know, you can be a little bit skeptical about how useful they actually are. Do you have like an overview of what products do best on TikTok Shop?
Jordan West (46:17.614)
I just look at I just look and see what’s happened with Amazon. Right. And like you just look and see and you’re like, OK, so that was the biggest shopping platform before. Like, just remember, everyone made fun of it all the time, said that it was for cheap junk. There’s still big brands that are like, well, I don’t know if I should be on Amazon. It’s like really everyone shops on Amazon. So there was that there still is cheap junk on Amazon. Right. But there’s some really good brands on Amazon, too.
And it’s the same thing on TikTok shop. You start low, lowest common denominator, and then you go up from there. And so will there be different versions? Absolutely. There’ll be a higher version of everything, right? And a better version of everything. I am always in for the better version. I know that sounds like a rich person thing to say, but like, I love to buy something once rather than like one thing 10 times.
And so I would be into that. So if there’s now creators that are only working with like high end brands, like I saw Dyson on there recently, right? I was like, Oh, good. Okay, good. A good brand like Dyson is on there and they were selling decent amounts. Ninja shark ninja has been on there. And doing like massive numbers, millions upon millions of dollars. I mean, we still do more than shark ninja does, but but just letting you know and and if
Moritz Schröder (47:21.421)
It’s awesome.
Moritz Schröder (47:37.196)
Hahaha.
Jordan West (47:38.0)
If anyone from from Ninja ever wants to talk to Social Commerce Club, highly recommend it.
Moritz Schröder (47:43.373)
Do you feel like every company should be doing social commerce or are there a select few for which it makes sense and for others it simply doesn’t.
Jordan West (47:55.505)
I think that there are some companies where it’s going to be more difficult because their cost of goods is too high to send out that many samples. And so there needs to be a modified version of that. The modified version that I have is product gifting along with white listing on other platforms. You just need to know your unit economics. I think for 99 % of brands, it probably makes sense.
Moritz Schröder (48:04.107)
Mm.
Moritz Schröder (48:17.555)
How does a brand like Dyson go about it? I mean, they’re not going to send out expensive vacuum cleaners to every content creator, right?
Jordan West (48:25.712)
No, they have to be a lot more choosy. So they would come and work with an agency like ours. Dyson, I wish you would have come. I don’t know why you didn’t. I never saw you come through. I never saw you come to the website, anything like that. What did we do wrong? But no, seriously, you’ve just got to pick a smaller amount of creators pay bigger retainers to those creators, to get them to promise to make more videos for you. That’s that’s what it comes down to. But I think that if you can justify the ROI, if you can do the math on that, then that’s where it makes sense.
Moritz Schröder (48:32.651)
You
Moritz Schröder (48:56.083)
Right. Who are the people in these massive companies like for example, a Dyson that then are actually reaching out? Like what is their title? Because something like TikTok Shop didn’t exist until two years ago, at least in the US. So who now in these giant companies feels responsible to reach out and learn and implement social commerce?
Jordan West (49:20.638)
I’ll tell you who shouldn’t reach out, who it should not be with. And that’s head of marketplaces. A lot of people put this in their marketplace category and that’s the wrong place to put it. So marketplaces being like an Amazon, a Walmart, blah, blah, blah, right? Like target all those, those are all demand capture channels, right? Tick-tock shop is not a demand capture channel. It’s a demand generation channel. It should be with direct consumer and with your e-commerce. That is where it needs to live. And most brands are not doing that right now. Now,
Moritz Schröder (49:22.827)
Hahaha.
Jordan West (49:50.155)
most, most bigger brands. so the people that reach out that, that do really well are VPs of Ecom. That’s a big one. CMOs, lot of CMOs reach out of, usually like a CMO of like a hundred million dollar brand somewhere in there would reach out. those are the kinds of people head of digital, right? The, the one that’s, that’s going to, to find those, those are the ones that reach out to us.
Moritz Schröder (50:11.903)
Okay. And when they reach out, are they all in or is it still kind of stigmatized to reach out and talk, tick tock shop? How do they perceive it?
Jordan West (50:23.262)
For the most part, most people understand. So because I have such a prolific YouTube channel, most of them have watched through most of my YouTubes. And so they understand. They’re like, yeah, no, we’re all in. We understand. We’ve watched Jordan’s YouTube. Like we get it. So don’t worry. That’s been a really big game changer for us because I mean, that’s why YouTube is so incredible.
Moritz Schröder (50:33.257)
Nice.
Moritz Schröder (50:48.297)
Yeah. And it ties back into what I was saying earlier that different platforms have different purposes, right? And you have this long form content on YouTube that does extraordinary well, especially if you have a niche that you own, like you do for social commerce. I think that’s fantastic.
Jordan West (51:03.817)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Moritz Schröder (51:10.051)
I believe that you’re still running your own e-commerce businesses on the site next to having an agency or was that only in the past? And if you still do run them, do you use them to experiment?
Jordan West (51:20.976)
I have sold them. I’ve sold them all. I no longer I am brandless. So I have no more brands. had eight at one point and I no longer have those. So I I’m taking a little break. I’m I’m right now in the midst of spinning up software. Right. So well I bought a bought a software company that we’re turning into a few things that we want right now. And that’s really, really exciting.
so those are the things that I’m up to. And I do a lot of consulting with software and brand founders. that’s what my normal Thursdays are. Actually, I dedicate one day a week to doing that. And I love doing consulting. It just brings me so much joy helping. I was just on with a brand earlier who doubled year over year. They were totally stagnant and we just implemented a bunch of stuff and that helped a ton. And it’s really fun to get to work with small brands like that when at our agency, you know, we have like over 50 people on the team and I don’t get to touch accounts in the same way that I used to.
Moritz Schröder (52:16.126)
Yeah. Do you think that third party SaaS ecosystem around TikTok Shop will continue to expand the way it has been or will it just be consolidated by large companies buying everything up? How do you foresee that developing?
Jordan West (52:34.599)
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think that there’s going to be a ton of software built around this. Yeah, I think I think that this is going to be one of those things that’s like, I think that we won’t even understand the ecosystem right now. I think it’s hard to know. There’s like a few software tools. I’m obviously building some like, we don’t know yet. But I think that there’s going to be a huge amount of software built around this ecosystem.
Moritz Schröder (53:03.496)
Yeah, it really makes me think that we haven’t seen anything yet when it to social commerce. mean, if all of that comes into play and then their agencies popping up left and right in a way that we haven’t seen with any other social platform before, it’s going to be amazing to see what social commerce looks like in five years, I think, with all of this developing simultaneously.
Jordan West (53:27.157)
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, this is why I’m into this, right? Because it’s such a fun industry. I love being on the cutting edge of this stuff. That makes me super, super happy.
Moritz Schröder (53:40.381)
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, one thing that obviously comes to mind that could halt, put all of this to a halt is if TikTok gets banned in the US. What were your thoughts early this year when I think for 12 hours or so TikTok was down? Did you see everything crashing down around you or were you positive that Trump would postpone at least a shutdown?
Jordan West (54:08.851)
I mean, as soon as I saw the message that the political message on the on the app, I was like, Okay, this is just a show. All right, he’s gonna put it back on. Okay, no, I’m not worried about TikTok going away in any form. If there’s one thing Americans love more than food, it’s money. So
Moritz Schröder (54:16.968)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (54:27.497)
Do you think the platform itself and TikTok shop would change a lot with a change of ownership or at least partially change of ownership as it’s been discussed to keep TikTok alive in the US?
Jordan West (54:42.361)
I think that whoever buys it is going to figure out how to continue to run it in the way that it’s been run, where it is the like go to platform that people use the most amount of time on. So I don’t see any issues with it going forward. I everyone’s like, it’s all about the algorithm. It’s all about the algorithm. They’ll figure it out. They’ll like, yeah, I’m not I’m not worried about that.
Moritz Schröder (55:03.432)
Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (55:07.868)
No, and regardless, I think the plan is that Tencent would stay involved and they would be able to continue to use all their insights that they’re constantly gathering in China and with their native app there, Douyin, and keep putting that into a TikTok, even if partially they have to sell the company maybe in the US.
Jordan West (55:27.529)
Yeah, totally.
Jordan West (55:31.667)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I think that whatever happens, it’s not going away.
Moritz Schröder (55:37.478)
Yeah, hopefully not. I mean, you’re in Canada, I’m in Sweden. We both actually don’t have TikTok shop yet in our countries. Are you looking forward to it? Is it coming soon in Canada?
Jordan West (55:45.971)
No, no we don’t.
Jordan West (55:51.101)
I am looking forward to, if it does come to Canada, I am looking forward to being a creator on there. that’s what I want to do. I love talking about products. Like I, it’s one of my favorite things is like find an awesome tool and tell everyone about it because you should be using it. And I’m looking forward to that. That’s what I want to do. And if it comes to town, I’m totally going to be a creator just for fun. Like it’s such, such a fun thing.
Moritz Schröder (55:57.254)
Mmm.
Moritz Schröder (56:18.289)
Is it not possible for someone like you creating an account that then would work as an affiliate account, even if you’re not based in the U S are there no workarounds to make that happen?
Jordan West (56:29.758)
there’s work grounds. Like you just have to get an American phone, like with an American SIM and buy it in the States and then use a VPN and use an American SIM. That you can totally do it. But I haven’t been that hardcore in wanting to do it.
Moritz Schröder (56:34.45)
Okay.
Moritz Schröder (56:45.16)
I understand. Okay, last question. I know you soon will have four kids.
Jordan West (56:46.186)
I’ve already got a few jobs.
Jordan West (56:53.3)
You these were a lot of good questions. Like I love this. I’m going to take this transcript because there was just so many great questions.
Moritz Schröder (57:00.296)
I love talking to people who are really in the trenches of something that is as new and exciting as social commerce. You’re about to have four kids. What do you think shopping will look like for them when they’re in their 20s?
Jordan West (57:17.302)
I think that while I’m, I’m going to hold off for them on social media as long as possible. I think that social media should be illegal for kids under 16. I just don’t think that our brains can handle it. I maybe even under 19. Like I just don’t think that I mean, you see the issues with with kids and it makes a lot of sense. So I don’t I don’t hope for them at all that they’re going to
do that. I mean, I what I hope for for my kids is that they don’t care about things. I know that’s terrible to say as a person, a purveyor of of these, but like, I hope that they’re like, I just want to buy some like good stuff that helps me in my life. Right? That’s what I think I don’t think retail is ever going to die. I think that there is you know, I own Meta Ray bands. I love those. I think that they’re a really cool tool for brands to live stream. And
Moritz Schröder (57:49.709)
Hahaha!
Moritz Schröder (57:54.472)
You
Jordan West (58:12.71)
in retail, but I think that the experience I think what’s going to happen with AI is that people are going to crave human connection. And so they’re going to continually go towards more human things. And so that I think is going to be more retail. I am not betting on retail going away in any sort of sense, because I think that we’re going to get to this point where we’re like, no, I’ve spent too much time with the robot and fake people. I just want to go see a human.
Moritz Schröder (58:40.634)
Right. Yeah. Maybe we get to a point where the things you buy online are experiences and things that you do with your real life friends rather than products.
Jordan West (58:50.876)
Totally. Yeah. Yeah.
Moritz Schröder (58:54.414)
And I for one would love to see that for my children when they grow up. Also, I think it’s going to be so niche how you shop and how you consume. It’s not going to be one size fits all anymore. So I think for whatever subgroup you feel you belong into, there’s going to be products marketed towards that. And that’s going to…
Jordan West (59:09.247)
Hmm
Moritz Schröder (59:19.886)
somehow make you feel like this is something that is actually worth spending money on and not just an impulse buy.
Jordan West (59:26.058)
Totally, totally. And that’s kind of what I hope for this world, right? Is that people stop buying so much junk that they don’t need and they buy the things that are like, that that genuinely makes my life better. You know, my, shoes that I use to hike every day, those matter to me. Those make my life better. Right? Like that’s yeah, that’s what I hope for people.
Moritz Schröder (59:50.256)
Couldn’t agree more and I think that’s a very good way of concluding this. Jordan, it’s been really a blast talking with you and really appreciate you taking the time.
Jordan West (59:59.87)
Yeah, yeah, you too. Thanks for having me. This is great.
Moritz Schröder (01:00:03.482)
My pleasure.