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.’”
Comcast has officially spun off its cable channels, including CNBC and MS NOW, into a separate company, Versant Media Group.
The transaction was completed late Friday. On Monday, Versant took a major tumble in its stock market debut — providing a key test of investors’ willingness to hold on to legacy cable channels.
The initial outlook wasn’t pretty, providing awkward moments for CNBC anchors reporting the story.
Versant fell 13% to $40.57 a share on its inaugural trading day. The stock opened Monday on Nasdaq at $45.17 per share.
Comcast opted to cast off the still-profitable cable channels, except for the perennially popular Bravo, as Wall Street has soured on the business, which has been contracting amid a consumer shift to streaming.
Versant’s market performance will be closely watched as Warner Bros. Discovery attempts to separate its cable channels, including CNN, TBS and Food Network, from Warner Bros. studios and HBO later this year. Warner Chief Executive David Zaslav’s plan, which is scheduled to take place in the summer, is being contested by the Ellison family’s Paramount, which has launched a hostile bid for all of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Warner Bros. Discovery has agreed to sell itself to Netflix in an $82.7-billion deal.
The market’s distaste for cable channels has been playing out in recent years. Paramount found itself on the auction block two years ago, in part because of the weight of its struggling cable channels, including Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV.
Management of the New York-based Versant, including longtime NBCUniversal sports and television executive Mark Lazarus, has been bullish on the company’s balance sheet and its prospects for growth. Versant also includes USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, Syfy, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass and SportsEngine.
“As a standalone company, we enter the market with the scale, strategy and leadership to grow and evolve our business model,” Lazarus, who is Versant’s chief executive, said Monday in a statement.
Through the spin-off, Comcast shareholders received one share of Versant Class A common stock or Versant Class B common stock for every 25 shares of Comcast Class A common stock or Comcast Class B common stock, respectively. The Versant shares were distributed after the close of Comcast trading Friday.
Comcast gained about 3% on Monday, trading around $28.50.
Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts holds 33% of Versant’s controlling shares.
As a stunned world processes the U.S. government’s sudden intervention in Venezuela — debating its legality, guessing who the ultimate winners and losers will be — a company founded in California with deep ties to the Golden State could be among the prime beneficiaries.
Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Chevron, the international petroleum conglomerate with a massive refinery in El Segundo and headquartered, until recently, in San Ramon, is the only foreign oil company that has continued operating there through decades of revolution.
Other major oil companies, including ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, pulled out of Venezuela in 2007 when then-President Hugo Chávez required them to surrender majority ownership of their operations to the country’s state-controlled oil company, PDVSA.
But Chevron remained, playing the “long game,” according to industry analysts, hoping to someday resume reaping big profits from the investments the company started making there almost a century ago.
Looks like that bet might finally pay off.
In his news conference Saturday, after U.S. Special Forces snatched Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in Caracas and extradited them to face drug-trafficking charges in New York, President Trump said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and open more of its massive oil reserves to American corporations.
“We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said during a news conference Saturday.
While oil industry analysts temper expectations by warning it could take years to start extracting significant profits given Venezuela’s long-neglected, dilapidated infrastructure, and everyday Venezuelans worry about the proceeds flowing out of the country and into the pockets of U.S. investors, there’s one group who could be forgiven for jumping with unreserved joy: Chevron insiders who championed the decision to remain in Venezuela all these years.
But the company’s official response to the stunning turn of events has been poker-faced.
“Chevron remains focused on the safety and well-being of our employees, as well as the integrity of our assets,” spokesman Bill Turenne emailed The Times on Sunday, the same statement the company sent to news outlets all weekend. “We continue to operate in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.”
Turenne did not respond to questions about the possible financial rewards for the company stemming from this weekend’s U.S. military action.
Chevron, which is a direct descendant of a small oil company founded in Southern California in the 1870s, has grown into a $300-billion global corporation. It was headquartered in San Ramon, just outside of San Francisco, until executives announced in August 2024 that they were fleeing high-cost California for Houston.
Texas’ relatively low taxes and light regulation have been a beacon for many California companies, and most of Chevron’s competitors are based there.
Chevron began exploring in Venezuela in the early 1920s, according to the company’s website, and ramped up operations after discovering the massive Boscan oil field in the 1940s. Over the decades, it grew into Venezuela’s largest foreign investor.
The company held on over the decades as Venezuela’s government moved steadily to the left; it began to nationalize the oil industry by creating a state-owned petroleum company in 1976, and then demanded majority ownership of foreign oil assets in 2007, under then-President Hugo Chávez.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves — meaning they’re economical to tap — about 303 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But even with those massive reserves, Venezuela has been producing less than 1% of the world’s crude oil supply. Production has steadily declined from the 3.5 million barrels per day pumped in 1999 to just over 1 million barrels per day now.
Currently, Chevron’s operations in Venezuela employ about 3,000 people and produce between 250,000 and 300,000 barrels of oil per day, according to published reports.
That’s less than 10% of the roughly 3 million barrels the company produces from holdings scattered across the globe, from the Gulf of Mexico to Kazakhstan and Australia.
But some analysts are optimistic that Venezuela could double or triple its current output relatively quickly — which could lead to a windfall for Chevron.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The finale of Netflix’s blockbuster series “Stranger Things” gave movie theaters a much needed jolt, generating an estimated $20 to $25 million at the box office, according to multiple reports.
Matt and Ross Duffer’s supernatural thriller debuted simultaneously on the streaming platform and some 600 cinemas on New Year’s Eve and held encore showings all through New Year’s Day.
Owing to the cast’s contractual terms for residuals, theaters could not charge for tickets. Instead, fans reserved seats for performances directly from theaters, paying for mandatory food and beverage vouchers. AMC and Cinemark Theatres charged $20 for the concession vouchers while Regal Cinemas charged $11 — in homage to the show’s lead character, Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown.
AMC Theatres, the world’s largest theater chain, played the finale at 231 of its theaters across the U.S. — which accounted for one-third of all theaters that held screenings over the holiday.
The chain said that more than 753,000 viewers attended a performance at one of its cinemas over two days, bringing in more than $15 million.
Expectations for the theater showing was high.
“Our year ends on a high: Netflix’s Strangers Things series finale to show in many AMC theatres this week. Two days only New Year’s Eve and Jan 1.,” tweeted AMC’s CEO Adam Aron on Dec. 30. “Theatres are packed. Many sellouts but seats still available. How many Stranger Things tickets do you think AMC will sell?”
It was a rare win for the lagging domestic box office.
In 2025, revenue in the U.S. and Canada was expected to reach $8.87 billion, which was marginally better than 2024 and only 20% more than pre-pandemic levels, according to movie data firm Comscore.
With few exceptions, moviegoers have stayed home. As of Dec. 25., only an estimated 760 million tickets were sold, according to media and entertainment data firm EntTelligence, compared with 2024, during which total ticket sales exceeded 800 million.
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