Yahoo Finance Walmart to pilot in-app live shopping on TikTok
Walmart (WMT) will pilot TikTok's new shoppable product on Friday with a livestream event allowing viewers to shop inside the wildly popular short-form social video app.
On Friday, Dec. 18, at 8 p.m. EST, Walmart's TikTok page will host its first-ever livestream shopping event using TikTok LIVE. The event features content from ten of the app's influencers like Michael Le (@justmaiko), who boasts more than 43 million followers, showcasing brands and apparel available at Walmart.
“The TikTok community will be able to tap on a product when they see a Walmart fashion item they like during the event. This makes it easy to add the item to their cart and check out, all while doing what they love – enjoying fun content from their favorite creators," Walmart's chief marketing officer William White wrote in a blog post.
Called the "Holiday Shop-Along Spectacular," the hour-long event will showcase the TikTok creators doing closet tours, living room runway shows, or dance-offs while touting brands found at Walmart such as Champion, Jordache, Kendall + Kylie and the retailer's private-label brands like Free Assembly, Scoop, and Sofia Jeans.
“We're constantly looking for ways to innovate the shopping experience for our customers. We're moving faster than ever to find new and improved ways to better serve our customers and meet them where they are. We created this event for, about and by our community, reflecting the lives, passions and styles of a diverse set of creators, so everyone watching will feel represented, no matter who they are or how they outfit their closet,” White added.
As the world's largest retailer, more than 265 million customers visit Walmart each week worldwide across its 11,500 stores in 27 countries and its e-commerce websites. In the U.S., Walmart has a fleet of nearly 5,000 stores, with 90% of the U.S. population living within 10 miles of a location.
TikTok, which has 100 million months active users in the U.S., opens up Walmart to new and younger customers, especially from the tech-savvy millennial and Gen-Z generations.
“We're excited that we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this innovation in a shoppable live stream – a first on TikTok in the U.S. It gives us a new way to engage with users and reach potential new customers, while bringing our own brand of fun – with the help of fashion-loving TikTok creators – to the platform," White wrote.
In September, Walmart, the global retail giant known for its Supercenter stores, said it’s entered into an agreement with ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to buy a 7.5% stake in the newly formed TikTok Global, investing alongside Oracle for a total of 20% in the company. At the time, Walmart said TikTok Global would create 25,000 news jobs and pay more than $5 billion in new tax dollars to the U.S. Treasury. CEO Doug McMillon would also join the five-person board and work toward an initial public offering in the U.S. in the next year. The deal has not closed.
Julia La Roche is a correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
