Stickler Wins Innovation Award at TikTok Shop Global Development Summit

Live commerce startup praised for its standout platform services

Live commerce startup Stickler last week pocketed the top innovation award at TikTok Shop’s inaugural global development summit and was praised as a clear standout by the social network, streaming video company and industry leaders.

“The moment I saw this, we knew it was what we wanted. Your solution looks really good. Now, let’s get it in front of sellers,” said JP Stoop, head of TikTok Shop App Store and a judge of the competition.

Singapore-based Stickler, founded in January 2023, was among a select group of 100 invited to attend the two-day event on TikTok Shop’s San Jose campus. Developer Summit 2024 featured two days of in-depth discussions among TikTok Shop’s internal product leadership, existing partners and elite seller clients. The live commerce platform offered attendees insights and access to its plans and roadmap, as the global market for live selling gathers steam. And those partners, besides competing for awards in two categories – TikTok Connectors and an Innovation Challenge – shared information about their own activities and services.

Stickler placed first in the Innovation Challenge, which focused on working products, prototypes and plans for services that could be developed to work with planned and upcoming releases of TikTok Shop APIs. Judges noted that Stickler, with its fully functional platform services, has already “been in the trenches with us” in different markets around the world and expressed their intent to find ways to integrate and further promote its valuable services to sellers.  The excitement around Sticklers new AI based selling tools for streamlining Live Selling was palpable from the judges and audience alike.

“This award recognizes not just what we’ve been doing for over a year with TikTok Shop and sellers on the platform,” said Stickler CEO and founder Fionn Hyndman. “It points to how integral our services will be as live commerce takes off around the world. We appreciate the kudos, but we’re just getting started. We are already an important part of the live commerce ecosystem. You’re going to see and hear much, much more from and about us in the coming months.”

Richard Crossman, Stickler’s head of product, who was also in San Jose to collect the award, said the speed of TikTok Shop’s evolution in the U.S. market since its launch in September 2023 has been astounding.

“We met sellers who are driving tens of millions of dollars through live commerce on TikTok Shop, and their challenges are the same as those we’ve seen in Southeast Asia. We’re very excited to help scale their results from live commerce in the same we have for clients in Asia.

During the summit, leading sellers on Tiktok Shop emphasized the importance of live commerce, but noted it needs to be easier to understand and access as it develops.

Adam Sommers, the co-founder of Willow Boutique, one of the US’s premium live selling channels, and a Business Development executive for the TikTok Seller Partner (TSP) EK Creative said “I gravitate to live selling. It’s something that we really doubled down at the early stages of TikTok. You know, making a connection with your customer, I think has a lot of value. But we need to simplify it and stream with better tools. We need guidance on what works and how to make it better.  This is a massive opportunity, but we need more help to make the most of it.” the seller said.

Stickler offers a three-pronged solution for brands and retailers of all sizes who seek to maximize their live commerce results. Its suite of app services simplifies or automates entire processes, allowing brands and sellers to do more with less, working faster, more-efficiently and at lower cost than if they had to build or create their own teams and live commerce platform integrations.

Stickler Live is a comprehensive backbone service for live stream enablement. With it, sellers can import products, craft engaging content and manage their streams. Moderator tools ensure a smooth, audience-focused experience, and post-live analysis offers valuable insights for improvement.

LiveScope tracks and analyzes competitor live streams, helping sellers understand their strategies and performance metrics. Its multi-language transcription and dashboard offer a comprehensive view of market trends and competitor moves.

LiveStage manages scheduling, lets brands connect with top talent, as well as ensuring compliance and training for a live commerce team. LiveStage also features ML/AI-driven grading and sector-specific training.

Live commerce – as the name suggests – allows viewers to buy what they see during a live video without ever leaving the stream. Sales in the U.S. were estimated at around $50 billion in the fledgling market in 2023. What has brands, platforms and service providers excited is that is under 5% of the near trillion USD in sales recorded last year in China, currently the world’s most-developed market for live commerce, showing its potential elsewhere. While live commerce in China is dominated by Alibaba, Douyin, JD.com, Pinduoduo and other platforms, the market is wide open across the rest of the world, offering opportunities for platforms like TikTok, Amazon and others. And for those live commerce offerings to take off, the platforms will have to encourage and nurture creation of an ecosystem of sellers and service providers like Stickler.

Hyndman and team have been offering Stickler’s custom app to brands in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia since 2023. It recently inked a partnership agreement with Interpublic’s IPG MediaBrands, and it works with other major groups including GroupM and Dentsu to provide services to the advertising giant’s clients across the APAC region.

Stickler has a private custom app on TikTok’s App store and is open for partner applications, but will shortly release its app in public app stores, but encourages interested merchants to contact the company directly for early access.

Stickler initially raised seed funding in late 2022 and completed a further Friends & Family round in late 2023 after building out its services across several major brand groups, eCommerce enablers and agencies across eight markets. They are currently seeking institutional funding.

About Stickler Pte Ltd

Stickler is a Live Commerce (Live Selling) enablement platform. We work with brands, creators, agencies and ecommerce companies to help them scale Live Commerce. We help manage the work flow and optimisation and help sellers do more with less resource. We don’t believe in multi-streaming, we believe in being as effective as possible when you do stream. We are a multi-platform tool, designed with sellers at heart, aiming to make their Life, and their Lives easier