Livestreaming sales are popular in the United States, but the prevalence of counterfeit goods has become a problem for TikTok and others

In recent years, live streaming has become extremely popular in China, and a number of phenomenal live streaming companies such as Xiao Yangge and Dongfang Zhenxuan have emerged. There are countless examples of people getting rich overnight through live streaming.

But overseas, the live streaming sales model seems to have been tepid. It was not until the last one or two years that consumers in Southeast Asia and many European countries began to gradually adapt to placing orders and shopping in live streaming rooms, driven by TikTok, and now this trend has finally reached the United States.

Nowadays, many cross-border brands have increased their investment in online business in the United States, and platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Youtube and eBay have also begun to layout the live streaming sales track.

But as the industry continues to grow wildly, some problems have gradually surfaced.

Problems of selling counterfeit goods and infringing copyrights frequently occur, and live broadcast rooms have become the hardest hit areas

In the US market, many sellers use TikTok live streaming to sell high-value-added products such as jewelry, luxury goods, and cosmetics. Depending on the size of the seller, the number of people in the live streaming room will also vary, ranging from dozens to thousands of people watching.

However, with the rise of live streaming, related problems have also emerged, the most serious of which are various counterfeiting and infringement issues. It is understood that it is very difficult to hold people accountable for infringements during live streaming. Relevant American lawyers said that monitoring infringements in live streaming rooms is similar to playing "Whack-a-Mole", and it is usually difficult to catch the other party.

Data shows that there were at least 4.6 million copyright infringement incidents worldwide in 2023, up from 4 million in the previous year. According to Amazon's Brand Protection Report, Amazon, the largest online e-commerce platform in the United States, identified and seized more than 7 million counterfeit products from sellers on its platform in 2023, up from 6 million in 2022.

Luke DeMatte, an intellectual property lawyer at Michael Best & Friedrich, said live streaming is a "safe haven" for infringement unless law enforcement agencies can find a way to solve the current dilemma in the future.

Typically, lawyers and the brands they represent use machine learning software to search images, product descriptions and ads on e-commerce platforms to detect possible infringements, but live video presents additional challenges.

Lawyers and software companies argue that artificial intelligence and algorithms can currently only spot static images and text that infringe on brands’ copyrights and trademarks.

Michelle Murphy, a small business attorney , said she receives five to 10 notifications a day from an AI vendor that tracks intellectual property infringements on static images listed on Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and TikTok. Of the hundreds of alerts she receives, none are related to live shopping.

“When you see infringing products being sold on a TikTok live stream and then being taken down, you should expect that at least a lot of that product has been sold during that time,” Dematte said.

Both TikTok and Amazon said they have advanced technology to prevent merchants from selling counterfeit goods. TikTok said it would use algorithms and manual labor to jointly monitor live videos, while Amazon said it would assign dedicated personnel to monitor live streaming sales.

But DeMatte and other U.S. trademark attorneys acknowledge that the real-time nature of live transactions makes it difficult to identify and weed out fakes, even as new technologies designed to detect infringement continue to develop.

Cary Kamel, director of the Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Center at Michigan State University , said e-commerce platforms that launch shoppable videos need to "make sure they have mechanisms in place to prevent criminal activity or monitor criminal activity in real time."

It seems that the fact that all the major giants are so concerned about the problems caused by live streaming sales reflects their optimism about this field. According to data from research firm eMarketer, Americans will spend $1.32 trillion on e-commerce platforms this year. According to CoreSight Research, as traditional retailers such as Macy's, Inditex's Zara, Nordstrom and Kohl's begin to adopt the live streaming sales model, its share of overall e-commerce sales may reach 5% by 2026.

The live streaming model is rapidly becoming popular in Europe and the United States. Although some problems may arise in the process, it will also bring more opportunities to related industries.

More and more sellers are turning their attention to TikTok

According to data from FastMoss, a big data intelligent analysis platform , the total transaction volume of goods in the TikTok Shop in the United States on Black Friday last year was as high as more than 33 million US dollars. A TikTok service provider in the United States revealed that the GMV of TikTok in the United States has exceeded an average of 14 million US dollars per day, and he expects that the daily GMV of TikTok e-commerce in the United States will reach 100-200 million US dollars in 2024.

This news undoubtedly attracted more sellers and individuals to join the game and want to get a piece of the pie. In the first quarter of this year, many cross-border sellers released a large number of recruitment positions, many of which were related to TikTok, such as TikTok celebrity operations, TikTok anchors, and TikTok store operations.

Referring to the development path of Douyin in China, TikTok's sales market has just opened up. Many small and medium-sized sellers on Amazon have also chosen to join in : "TikTok stores in the US are very popular now. My cross-border store has been registered. I feel that there is still a chance to make a name for myself."

In addition, many top domestic live streaming companies have also begun to turn their attention to TikTok. It was previously reported that Douyin celebrity "Crazy Little Yang" said in a live broadcast that he had settled in TikTok and started to develop cross-border e-commerce, and he had built multiple IP matrix accounts on the platform.

On the other hand, Dongfang Zhenxuan, another major live-streaming e-commerce giant in China, is also recruiting for multiple TikTok positions, including content operations manager, overseas store operations, operations manager and business manager, with salaries ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 yuan.

Industry insiders analyzed that Dongfang Zhenxuan has a unique advantage in terms of language, as many anchors speak fluent English and have a good understanding of overseas culture. In contrast, other businesses need to recruit anchors who are good at English, which lags behind in the initial stage.

According to reports, TikTok expects to expand its e-commerce business in the United States tenfold to US$17.5 billion by 2024, and this goal may be adjusted based on business development.

The rapid growth target set by TikTok has put considerable pressure on competing platforms such as Amazon and Temu, but cross-border sellers are very excited about this because it means the platform will see huge growth.

TikTok

Live streaming sales