Selling clothes on TikTok Live works. A piece is shown, someone comments "I want it", and then comes the part nobody sees: dozens of WhatsApp messages, reservations waiting for confirmation, and pieces held for people who never pay. I built a demo on my own initiative, modelled on a fashion shop that sells on live streams, around one simple idea: instead of reserving by message, the customer buys by the reference they hear in the live.
The problem: reserving by message
The usual model goes like this: each piece shown in the live is reserved by message. After the live, someone has to answer every message, work out who was first, send the payment details, wait for the bank transfer, and put back on sale whatever went unpaid.
- Messages get lost. In a busy live the comments scroll past quickly and WhatsApp fills up. Working out who asked first becomes detective work.
- Reserving costs nothing. People who reserve in the heat of the live don't always pay the next day. The piece sits there, and whoever really wanted it has moved on.
- The live is held hostage by admin. Every hour live creates hours of messages, which limits how many lives you can run a week.
The flow: buying by reference
On the site, each piece has a three-digit number. In the live, the seller says "reference 104, 24 euros". The customer opens the site and types 104 into the box that always sits at the top of the shop.
- The piece appears on its own. With its photo, size and price, and the page already scrolled to it. If it has sold, that shows straight away.
- Payment happens on the spot. Three steps: name, mobile and email; payment by MB WAY or a Multibanco reference; confirmation. There are no card fields.
- First to pay takes it. Every piece is one of a kind. The moment the payment goes through, the piece comes off sale for everyone.
The reference box is the centre of everything, so it never leaves the screen: when the customer scrolls down, it moves into a fixed bar. Typing an exact reference overrides the category filters, so nobody searches for 101 with the "Men" filter on and finds nothing.
The locker and a single shipment
The second problem is postage. Someone who buys a piece in every live doesn't want to pay for three deliveries. So every paid piece goes into a locker, where it is kept for a period the shop sets (30 days at no cost, in the demo). Whenever the customer likes, they choose a destination and ask for shipping. The pieces are already paid for, so they pay only the postage, once, whether it is one piece or six.
It is simpler for the shop too: instead of packing one piece at a time, it sends everything in one parcel when the customer asks.
What it takes to run it for real
The demo shows the journey, but it processes no payments, and the locker and sold pieces are stored in the visitor's own browser. The catalogue, prices and postage are examples. A real shop needs these pieces:
Payments with automatic confirmation
MB WAY and Multibanco references through a payment provider, which tells the site when the money arrives. Without that, someone is back to checking transfers by hand, which is exactly what this was meant to avoid.
A short hold during payment
This is the most important part. If two people type 104 at the same time, both can start paying. The server has to hold the piece for the first one for a few minutes while MB WAY is approved, and release it if the payment doesn't arrive. Only then is "first to pay takes it" true, and nobody pays for a piece that is already gone.
A locker that follows the customer
The locker has to live on the server, tied to a mobile number or email, so the customer can see it on another device. It doesn't need a password: a link by email or text is enough.
An area for the shop
Before the live, the shop uploads the day's pieces with photo, reference, size and price. During it, it sees what is selling. Afterwards, it has the list of requested shipments, with each address and the pieces going in each parcel.
Habits in the live itself
Say the reference clearly, hold it up on a card in front of the camera, and keep the shop link handy. Technology solves half of it; the other half is customers getting used to typing a number instead of a message.
Who it is for
It fits best for shops selling one-off pieces or small quantities, such as second-hand, vintage or end-of-line stock, that go live often. A shop with deep stock and several sizes of each item is better served by a normal online shop, where the live is just one more way to bring people in.
If you sell on live streams and the messages already take more of your time than the live itself, get in touch and I will look at what makes sense for your volume with you.