There were a lot of sales going on this past Cyber Monday, as many sites across the web slashed prices in a celebration of consumerism.
But few sites had the star power that BeachMint did. Yesterday, the company launched a unique Facebook application including a live video stream featuring the likes of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Kate Bosworth, and Rachel Bilson. The celebrities are, of course, all affiliated with BeachMint’s sites — the Olsens are attached with StyleMint, Bosworth with JewelMint, and Bilson with ShoeMint.
During the two-hour stream, each of the celebrities (as well as several other guests), introduced a series of products that were available in limited quantities — users could purchase these products, watching the inventory counting down in real-time. In effect, it was an online, social version of Home Shopping Network.
The traffic is still being tabulated, but BeachMint reports that there were at least 50,000 people who tuned in during the course of the event (and that number may be as high as 100,000). Cyber Monday was also BeachMint’s biggest sales day ever, and it was responsible for one of the biggest climbs in the company’s userbase since it first launched. In other words, it worked.
BeachMint didn’t come up with the concept alone — they got a lot of help from Randi Zuckerberg and her new firm RtoZ Media. Zuckerberg says that RtoZ hasn’t actually launched yet, but that after speaking with BeachMint cofounder Diego Berdakin two weeks ago, she decided to take the project on.
Zuckerberg coordinated numerous live events during her time at Facebook (she created the company’s ‘Facebook Live’ channel), so she’s had experience with similar projects. And she says that BeachMint’s event generated “some of the most exciting engagement in the community” that she’s seen before, noting that many of the viewers were using the app’s live chat to discuss the items being sold.
Unsurprisingly, BeachMint says that it intends to hold similar events again in the future. If you’re interested in watching a replay of the live stream, you can find one at Stylemint.tv