Pokémon cards, sneakers, luxury accessories, laundry detergent containers… Everything can be bought and sold on Whatnot, this live shopping app with a TikTok twist.
An auction room atmosphere under ketamine! “It’s Sunday evening, 10:30 p.m. As random as possible. And yet, it costs 140 euros on second hand goods,” says Mehdi, 37, with his nose on Whatnot. The concept of this hybrid app? Combining traditional marketplace, online auctions and live shopping platform where sellers “perform” under direct feedback from their buyers. But what really makes the app popular are its “ fire sales », auctions rarely exceeding 50 seconds, where products are snapped up at starting prices of 1 euro – PDD 1€ in the jargon.
Small sales make big profits
In the United States, Whatnot announces that it has exceeded $2 billion in sales via the livestream. In France, known as a dry land for live shopping, Frenchies are starting to impose their style. “Since the summer of 2024, I have seen French people, Germans, English people, whereas before, I never saw them,” remarks Mehdi. Pierre Tettart, Managing Director of Whatnot in France, announces for 2024 “a turnover multiplied by 10 since January” and “several tens of thousands of users per day, mainly millennials”. “We arrived at the right time: the pandemic accelerated live shopping, and we brought together all the features that allowed Whatnot to retain users. »
Up to 12 hours of non-stop clearance
Users largely come from the world of collecting (30% of sales), the real DNA of the app is Pokémon cards, the interactive marketplace is expanding its playing field. Two categories are now essential on the app: the “luxury” and “anti-inflation” lives. At the head of the “Shop ton stock” account, Brice has positioned himself in this last niche. Coming from the “Amazon juggernaut »this serial e-entrepreneur deals in Prévert-style inventories (from laundry to children’s toys) in PDD at €1. Reason for the success of its “live clearance” lasting up to 12 hours? Low prices? Not only that. « People want to find human connection. A real sales community where sellers and buyers know each other,” he describes.
Shoppertainment and live therapy
Here we touch on another specificity of Whatnot and competing apps like Voggt: more than sales, these marketplaces claim to be shoppertainment, concept merging shopping and entertainment. “I have comments like: thank you for this evening, even more incredible than if we had binged Netflix! », laughs Brice. A transformation of the clientele into an audience which allows for a rather tasty “hacking” of uses. Darren, aka Thriftworx, a Scotsman who sells French antiques, disguised as an astronaut from his attic in Limoges, testifies: “I had to cancel a live show. At the last minute, I decided to go live, without the products. There were a few customers connected, they wanted to chat. We talked about our problems. It was good for me in the end, and it kept my visibility up. »
Self-narrative capitalism
However, apart from the criticisms that one might be tempted to level at Whatnot and other platforms of its kind – irresponsible overconsumption, carbon footprint, etc. – the latter inform us about this phenomenon identified in the already aging business of influence: the omnipresence of personal branding as a driving force of commercial exchanges. A “self-narrative capitalism” highlighted by Nathan Ferret, lecturer at ENS de Lyon in a thesis on the practices of gamers on Twitch, and defined as “a set of social relationships which make the media construction of oneself a source of enhancement. » In summary: in our ultra-technological societies, economic value is no longer based solely on concrete work, but on telling a story about oneself. “Whatnot is an exemplary case,” concludes the sociologist.
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