Whatnot expanding and growing

Four-year-old livestream shopping app Whatnot connects buyers and sellers of collectibles, including sports cards, sneakers, comics, and vintage and secondhand clothing. The platform has grown into the one of the world’s largest live shopping marketplaces for sports cards, enabling $800 million worth of sales in 2022. (Whatnot takes an 8% commission on transactions). The company empowers its sellers by encouraging them to approach the app as content creators, while providing a robust e-commerce backbone for their operations.

Over the past year, Whatnot has strengthened the community that has developed around this content. First, to support sellers, it introduced a new Seller Hub with data and analytics to help them better manage their inventory as their businesses grow. In addition, it introduced a feature that allows sellers to bring their audience to another livestream at the end of their show, to keep the relationship going. (It also gave viewers the option to “tip” a show host in a sign of support).

For buyers, Whatnot introduced an array of trust and safety features. It integrated Professional Sports Authenticator’s grading services into sport cards sales to confirm a card’s authenticity; instituted procedures to ensure that buyers receive all the cards they purchased in a particular card break; and created a dedicated investigation team to prevent fraud.

The company also began partnering directly with brands, including Dolls Kill and Staud, to allow them to host sales and product drops on the platform. Whatnot was most recently valued at $3.7 billion.\