During the pandemic, loads of people discovered livestreaming. Whether it was a concert, religious service, or opera performance, millions of people under lockdown learned how to enjoy events from the comfort of their living rooms.
For retailers, however, the opportunity to invite clients into their stores and showcase new merchandise without having to engage with them physically represented a powerful—and Covid-approved—mode of selling.
Even though livestreaming lost some of its luster for brick-and-mortar retailers when shoppers began returning to stores, it remains an essential part of the sales strategy at PearlParadise.com, a Los Angeles–based pearl jewelry e-tailer that staged its first livestream event in July 2023. Since then, the company has found great success using its website as a platform to sell unusual pearls and one-of-a-kind pearl jewels to clients around the world in real time, says Jeremy Shepherd, the company’s president and chief executive.
“When the product is priced under $1,000, 100% of it sells,” Shepherd tells JCK. “When it’s in the $10,000 to $50,000 range, we’re happy if we sell one and really happy to sell two. The most expensive thing we’ve sold via livestream was a conch pearl necklace that cost over $90,000. They have to make a split-second decision. When we start out with pieces from $100 to $500, it’s a battle to see who claims it first. And we have people battling. If they don’t process their credit card, it goes to the next person, etc. We got the idea by going to Asia and seeing that livestreaming was taking over the market in China. We thought, ‘Let’s try this out.’”
Over the course of dozens of shows—typically, two to four per month, each about two hours in length and featuring about 40 pieces in total—Shepherd and his wife, Hisano Shepherd, the designer of little h and the host of the livestreams, have learned that the key to real-time video selling is making the sale into “an event.”
“And in order to be an event, the product has to be special, not a simple traditional pearl,” Shepherd says. “So we go down to the Sea of Cortez in Mexico for one of their harvests, and give people the opportunity to buy their favorite pearls from the harvest. We went to Lake Kasumigaura in Japan, where they only do a harvest once a year. The entire harvest goes to one buyer and we sat down with the pearl farmer and he selected all his favorite pearls. Every time we do one of these livestreams, it’s almost like planning a wedding. It has to be exciting, and it has to be limited.”
The livestreams have been so successful that farmers and producers are now approaching the Shepherds with offers to collaborate. “We did a conch pearl event once and had several conch pearl dealers send us all these special lots from their private collections,” Shepherd says. “That was our biggest livestream ever. We also had a contract with Justin Hunter’s pearl farm in Fiji. We had been buying his pearls since 2019 but hadn’t been selling them. We brought in the entire J. Hunter five-year harvest. We have had three livestreams and they’ve just about sold out.”
Top: An image from a recent PearlParadise.com VIP—Very Important Pearls—livestreaming event (all photos courtesy of PearlParadise.com)
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