Business
Have followers and something to sell? TikTok may want to make a deal
It is just past 10 p.m. and Aaliyah Arnold, the 20-year-old founder of BossUp Cosmetics, is selling to the TikTok universe.
As she livestreams from a Culver City filming location, about 750 people around the world watch her announce a flash sale for a mystery box containing six to eight BossUp products. Typically priced at $101.96, the bundle is now 49% off — for the next few minutes only. On viewers’ smartphone screens, a countdown timer and a red “Buy” button appear, along with a flurry of heart emojis.
“Make sure you’re shopping shopping shopping till you can’t shop no more!” Arnold, in a light pink Santa Claus sweatshirt and a full face of glam, says into one of several cameras arranged around her. To the side of the makeshift stage, members of a production crew, fueled by energy drinks and a steady stream of fast-food deliveries, ready the next group of products.
Arnold and co-host Daniel Rene hype heavily discounted BossUp products during a marathon TikTok livestream filmed in Culver City last month.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Arnold is 10 hours into a marathon selling spree and still has two hours to go. Like a Gen Z version of QVC, TikTok Live shopping events are part of a push by the social media platform to combine the convenience of mobile commerce and the frenzied consumerism of limited-time deals with interactive, unscripted entertainment. By the time her livestream ends at midnight, Arnold will have racked up $70,000 in sales and 10,000 new followers.
TikTok launched TikTok Shop — a feature that enables users to buy directly within the app — in the U.S. last year, and since then small-business owners, celebrities and major retailers have been using the livestreaming function to boost their sales and engage with customers in real time. Brands might use a Live to unveil a line of boots and take questions from viewers on sizing, or to demonstrate how to use a new hairstyling tool or kitchen gadget.
Although anyone with at least 1,000 followers can livestream themselves, TikTok has been reaching out to influential users like Arnold who have large followings and a proven ability to sell and inviting them to be a part of its TikTok Shop Partner program.
In exchange for a cut of the action, the company offers professional services to help sellers turbocharge their businesses. That includes helping them produce, as Arnold described, “huge mega livestreams” — splashy multi-hour events professionally filmed in studios, event spaces and homes around Los Angeles.
A look at how Arnold’s recent TikTok Live shopping event appeared on viewers’ mobile screens around the world. Live selling enables customers to interact with sellers in real time.
(TikTok)
TikTok’s push into the e-commerce market comes amid a backdrop of uncertainty over the company’s future in the country. The app faces a nationwide ban after years of back and forth with the U.S. government over national security concerns; the ban is scheduled to go into effect Jan. 19 unless TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests its U.S. operations.
Online live selling has been a retail phenomenon for years in China but has been slower to catch on in the U.S., where it accounts for only a tiny fraction of e-commerce revenue. That’s despite the 1990s popularity of television channels like QVC and the Home Shopping Network, and more recent live-shopping efforts by tech companies and retail brands including Amazon. In 2022, Facebook shut down its live-selling feature after two years; Instagram pulled the plug a few months later.
Livestreaming e-commerce was estimated to total $31.7 billion in the U.S. last year, according to Coresight Research.
“This pales in comparison to China’s livestreaming market, which was valued at $512 billion in 2022, revealing the significant growth opportunity in the U.S. market,” the firm said.
With a built-in audience of 170 million American users, many of them extremely online young adults well-versed in shopping on their mobile devices, TikTok is trying to push the watch-and-shop trend into the mainstream.
Rene and Arnold demonstrate BossUp’s lip oil to viewers during her livestream.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Live selling is “redefining the future of shopping on TikTok Shop,” said Nico Le Bourgeois, head of U.S. operations for TikTok Shop. He said the number of Live shopping sessions hosted on the app every month has nearly tripled in the last year.
Longer and higher-quality Lives drive more sales on TikTok Shop; that’s a win for sellers and for the social media company, which takes a single-digit percentage cut of sales on the platform, set at 6% and called a referral fee. Le Bourgeois declined to say how much revenue live selling has generated but said the number of people shopping on TikTok Shop every month has nearly tripled since its launch 15 months ago.
When they told me, “Can you do Live for 12 hours?” I was like, “You guys are sick, no.”
— Magdalena Peña, founder of beauty and hair-care brand Simply Mandys
TikTok Lives have become a pillar of brands’ sales strategies for the holiday season, and cheerfully chaotic livestreams are being held around the clock. From Nov. 13 through Dec. 2, nearly half a million Live shopping sessions were hosted on TikTok, for a total of more than 660,000 hours.
On Nov. 24, rapper Nicki Minaj hosted a two-hour livestream for her line of press-on nails that became the highest-viewed TikTok Shop Live ever, with 80,000 viewers simultaneously watching at one point. A few days later, Canvas Beauty Brand founder Stormi Steele surpassed $2 million in sales during her Black Friday livestream, a new record for a single TikTok Live.
The foray into e-commerce marks an evolution for a platform that had been known primarily as a place to endlessly scroll through frothy short-form videos. In short order, the company has shown that it “isn’t just entertainment — it’s a retail accelerator,” Oliver Chen, a retail analyst and Columbia Business School professor, wrote last month.
Arnold started BossUp when she was 14 and joined TikTok a year later in 2019. She would spontaneously host livestreams by broadcasting herself from her iPhone, which grew her fan base and got the word out about her burgeoning cosmetics brand.
But if viewers wanted to buy products, Arnold had to direct them to BossUp’s website because TikTok wasn’t shoppable back then. Many wouldn’t follow through.
Arnold founded BossUp when she was 14 and joined TikTok a year later. She would casually livestream from her iPhone, which grew her fan base and got the word out about her burgeoning beauty company.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
After the introduction of TikTop Shop in September 2023, BossUp sales swelled and Arnold’s casual livestreams caught the attention of TikTok. The company emailed Arnold with an offer to set her up with a Los Angeles agency called Yowant that specializes in working with online creators.
Arnold now flies from her home near Houston to L.A. every few weeks to host lengthy TikTok Live shopping sessions produced by the agency, which negotiates payment directly with its clients. Yowant provides her with producers and engineers, and assembles a stage with lighting, cameras and large monitors that display questions and comments as soon as viewers type them.
TikTok Shop employees, meanwhile, help her decide on a sales strategy for each Live, planning out the optimal date, a catchy soundtrack, how steep the discounts should be and which third-party affiliate products she should sell alongside her own, for which she receives a commission.
TikTok Shop has built me up like crazy.
— Aaliyah Arnold, founder of BossUp Cosmetics
Right at noon on the day of her Live last month in Culver City, the crew lets out a roar of cheers as the cameras are turned on.
“Deals and sales and giveaways — you don’t want to miss it, join in join in join in!” Arnold shouts over the commotion. “The biggest Live we’ve ever done, it’s starting right now…. Get a drink, get a snack, let’s go!”
“This is so overstimulating,” types one viewer.
Arnold and co-host Daniel Rene kick things off with a flash deal for BossUp’s Color Changing Lip Oil, usually $12.99 but marked down to $5. “Tap tap tap, shop shop shop!” she says before reminding viewers that shipping is free. Orders begin to pour in.
Seconds later a bullhorn blares, signaling the end of the deal, and Arnold is immediately on to the next discount. She does several makeup tutorials during the Live, deftly lining her lips a deep mahogany shade as a cameraman zooms in on her voluminous pout.
“People pay good money for lips like that!” Rene says approvingly.
In an interview with The Times before the livestream began, Arnold said TikTok Shop “has built me up like crazy.” She declined to provide revenue figures, but said that in the 12 months after TikTok Shop was introduced, BossUp sales increased nearly 500% compared with the 12 months prior.
That enabled her to purchase a house in June and bring on family members as employees. She bought a truck for her grandfather and a packaging warehouse for her fast-growing business.
Arnold’s recent TikTok Live in Culver City brought in $70,000 in sales over 12 hours.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Despite the uncertainty around TikTok’s future, business owners are forging ahead with all-out Live sessions in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Over six days starting the day before Thanksgiving, Magdalena Peña, the founder of beauty and hair-care brand Simply Mandys, hosted three TikTok Live sessions for a combined 29 hours. The first brought in more than $1 million in sales.
Like Arnold, Peña was approached by employees at TikTok Shop shortly after the e-commerce feature was rolled out.
“When they told me, ‘Can you do Live for 12 hours?’ I was like, ‘You guys are sick, no,’” she recalled. “There’s no way.”
The professional services and other perks that came with TikTok’s support, however, persuaded her to reconsider. The company, for example, offered free advertising and to pay for 30% discounts for first-time buyers.
There were some stipulations: Peña, 37, could no longer include her daughter in her livestreams because she was underage; wasn’t able to showcase products not linked to TikTok Shop; and had to ship orders within two days.
“The better you follow the rules,” she said, “the more TikTok helps you.”
Magdalena Peña, the founder of beauty and hair-care company Simply Mandys, during a TikTok Live last month.
(TikTok)
Since partnering with the company, she has filmed TikTok Live shopping sessions in Culver City and West Hollywood. Peña is responsible for paying her travel costs to the Live sessions, driving with her husband and business partner from their home in Sanger, Calif.
That is, until a few weeks ago, when the couple bought a small plane. Simply Mandys’ revenue through November of this year was already quadruple what it was in 2023 — a jump Peña credits to her Live events on TikTok, which she called a “total game-changer.”
She said she is still adjusting to the frequent travel and the long days of filming, finding motivation in the adrenaline rush that comes when she sees the sales figures climb during her Lives.
“I do everything possible to hit the goal,” she said. “I tell my team, ‘I’m not leaving here until I hit that number.’”
The iPic dine-in movie theater chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and intends to pursue a sale of its assets, citing the difficult post-pandemic theatrical market.
The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company has 13 locations across the U.S., including in Pasadena and Westwood, according to a Feb. 25 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach division.
As part of the bankruptcy process, the Pasadena and Westwood theaters will be permanently closed, according to WARN Act notices filed with the state of California’s Employment Development Department.
The company came to its conclusion after “exploring a range of possible alternatives,” iPic Chief Executive Patrick Quinn said in a statement.
“We are committed to continuing our business operations with minimal impact throughout the process and will endeavor to serve our customers with the high standard of care they have come to expect from us,” he said.
The company will keep its current management to maintain day-to-day operations while it goes through the bankruptcy process, iPic said in the statement. The last day of employment for workers in its Pasadena and Westwood locations is April 28, according to a state WARN Act notice. The chain has 1,300 full- and part-time employees, with 193 workers in California.
The theatrical business, including the exhibition industry, still has not recovered from the pandemic’s effect on consumer behavior. Last year, overall box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada totaled about $8.8 billion, up just 1.6% compared with 2024. Even more troubling is that industry revenue in 2025 was down 22.1% compared with pre-pandemic 2019’s totals.
IPic noted those trends in its bankruptcy filing, describing the changes in consumer behavior as “lasting” and blaming the rise of streaming for “fundamentally” altering the movie theater business.
“These industry shifts have directly reduced box office revenues and related ancillary revenues, including food and beverage sales,” the company stated in its bankruptcy filing.
IPic also attributed its decision to rising rents and labor costs.
The company estimated it owed about $141,000 in taxes and about $2.7 million in total unsecured claims. The company’s assets were valued at about $155.3 million, the majority of which coming from theater equipment and furniture. Its liabilities totaled $113.9 million.
The chain had previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019.
In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls.
The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.
Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E. Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said.
Originally built in the 1940s as an aircraft facility, the complex has a history as part of aerospace and defense industries that have long shaped the South Bay and is near a host of major defense and space contractors. It is also close to Los Angeles Air Force Base, headquarters to the Space Systems Command.
Workers test AstroForge’s Odin asteroid probe, which was lost in space after launch this year.
(Varda Space Industries)
Varda is one of a new generation of aerospace startups that have flourished in Southern California and the South Bay over the last several years, particularly in El Segundo, often with ties to SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s company, founded in 2002 in El Segundo, has revolutionized the industry with reusable rockets that have radically lowered the cost of lifting payloads into space. Though it has moved its headquarters to Texas, SpaceX retains large-scale operations in Hawthorne.
Varda co-founder and Chief Executive Will Bruey is a former SpaceX avionics engineer, and the company’s spacecraft are launched on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Varda makes automated labs that look like cylindrical desktop speakers, which it sends into orbit in capsules and satellite platforms it also builds. There, in microgravity, the miniature labs grow molecular crystals that are purer than those produced in Earth’s gravity for use in pharmaceuticals.
It has contracts with drug companies and also the military, which tests technology at hypersonic speeds as the capsules return to Earth.
Its fifth capsule was launched in November and returned to Earth in late January; its next mission is set in the coming weeks. Varda has more than 10 missions scheduled on Falcon 9s through 2028.
For the last several decades, the Mariposa Avenue property served as the research and development center for Mattel Toys. El Segundo has also long been a center for the toy industry as companies like to set up shop in the shadow of Mattel.
The Mattel facility “has always been an exceptional property with a legacy tied to aerospace innovation, and leasing to Varda Space Industries feels like a natural continuation of that story,” said Michael Woods, a partner at GPI Cos., which owns the property.
“We are proud to support a company that is genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and are excited to watch Varda grow and thrive here in El Segundo,” Woods said.
As one of the country’s most active hubs of aerospace and defense innovation, El Segundo has seen its industrial property vacancy fall to 3.4% on demand from space companies, government contractors and technology startups, real estate brokerage CBRE said.
Successful startups often have to leave the neighborhood when they want to expand, real estate broker Bob Haley of CBRE said. The 9-acre Mattel facility was big enough to keep Varda in the city.
Last year, Varda subleased about 55,000 square feet of lab space from alternative protein company Beyond Meat at 888 Douglas St. in El Segundo, which it started moving into in June.
Varda will get the keys to its new building in December and spend four to eight months building production and assembly facilities as it ramps up operations. By the end of next year, it expects to have constructed 10 more spacecraft.
In the future, Varda could consolidate offices there, given its size. Currently, though, the plan is to retain all properties, creating a campus of three buildings within a mile of one another that are served by the company’s transportation services, Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Barr said.
“We already have Varda-branded shuttles running up and down Aviation Boulevard,” he said.
Ships near the Strait of Hormuz before and after attacks began
Every day, around 80 oil and gas tankers typically pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast that carries a fifth of the world’s oil and a significant amount of natural gas.
On Monday, just two oil and gas tankers appear to have crossed the strait, according to a New York Times analysis of shipping activity from Kpler, an industry data firm. Since then, one tanker passed through.
“It’s a de facto closure,” said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer of Pickering Energy Partners, a Houston financial services firm. “You’ve got a significant number of vessels on either side of the strait but no one is willing to go through.”
Tankers have been staying away from Hormuz since the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that began on Saturday. A prolonged conflict could ripple broadly across the global economy, threatening the energy supplies of countries halfway around the world and stoking inflation.
International oil prices have climbed 12 percent since the fighting began, trading Tuesday around $81 a barrel, and natural gas prices have surged in Europe and in Asia.
A senior Iranian military official threatened on Monday to “set on fire” any ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. Vessels in the region have already come under attack. Several oil and gas facilities have also been struck or affected by nearby shelling, though the damage did not initially appear to be catastrophic.
Where ships and energy facilities have been damaged
A fire broke out Tuesday at a major energy hub in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, from the falling debris of a downed drone, the authorities said. On Monday, Qatar halted production of liquefied natural gas, or fuel that has been cooled so that it can be transported on ships, after attacks on its facilities.
The sharp reduction in tanker traffic is reducing the supply of oil and gas to world markets, pushing up prices for both commodities. And the longer that ships stay away from the Strait of Hormuz, the less oil and gas get out to the world, which could raise prices even more.
Shipping companies have paused their tankers to protect their crew and cargo, and because insurance companies are charging significantly more to cover vessels in the conflict area.
On Tuesday, President Trump said that “if necessary,” the U.S. Navy would begin escorting tankers through the strait. He also said a U.S. government agency would begin offering “political risk insurance” to shipping lines in the area.
In addition to tankers, other large vessels regularly go through the strait, including car carriers and container ships. In normal conditions, nearly 160 make the trip each day.
Some ships in the region turn off the devices that broadcast their positions, while others transmit false locations — making it hard to give a full picture of the traffic in the strait.
The Shiva is a small oil tanker that has repeatedly faked its location, according to TankerTrackers.com, which tracks global oil shipments. It is suspected of carrying sanctioned Iranian oil, according to Kpler. The Shiva was one of the two tankers that crossed the strait on Monday.
The oil and gas that typically move through the strait come from big producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and United Arab Emirates, and are exported around the world.
Where tankers moving through the Strait have traveled
In 2024, more than 80 percent of the oil and gas transported through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asia. China, India, Japan and South Korea were the top importers, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Countries have energy stockpiles that could last them into the coming months, but a continued shutdown of the strait could damage their economies.
Several big disruptions have roiled supply chains in recent years, but the tanker standstill in the Strait of Hormuz could have an outsize impact.
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