Can the influencer economy thrive outside of TikTok and Instagram?

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On new social commerce platform Bond, storytelling takes centre stage. Built as an alternative to traditional social media, brands and creators can curate themed collections; the latter can host live shopping sessions, linking directly to brands’ pages. All of it is shoppable in-platform. The option to purchase is designed as an extension of a user’s engagement with creator and brand content. On the backend, brands have access to a dashboard with inventory, analytics and partnerships data visibility.

Both brands and creators have their own pages that users can follow, linkable for ease of discovery. Today at launch, over 50 brands including Bally, Altuzarra and Re/Done are on board, and 65-plus creators are signed up, including Kit Keenan and Valeria Lipovetsky. Creators and brands can also curate collections and host live shopping experiences. 

The goal is to provide a more enticing setup for social commerce, with the view of migrating parties from social media apps to Bond’s own platform. Can it work?

“Our mission is to combine live content and curation to form the ultimate destination for discovery,” says co-founder and CEO Maddie Raedts, who previously founded influencer marketing agency IMA (which was acquired by S4 Capital-owned MediaMonks in 2019). “It’s the first time that incentives are aligned for all three stakeholders.” It shouldn’t feel overly commercial, she adds. “It’s really about content, discovery and curation first — and then comes shopping as an ultimate byproduct of that. We believe that when you’re the most inspired, that’s when you shop.” 

As of now, the creator economy lives on social media platforms: brands pay influencers for posts and stories featuring their products, and also purchase ads. The current structure is suboptimal for brands and creators, Raedts argues. Brands have limited access to data insights about their consumers and page personalisation, and flag high fixed selling fees as a drawback (37 per cent complained about this in a recent Hubspot survey). Creators are subject to the whims of social media giants — and their algorithms — and are paid a flat fee, no matter if their post generates 50 or 5,000 sales. At the same time, platforms’ attempts to formalise into shopping apps have stumbled. Instagram removed its Shop tab in January for instance, while the TikTok Shop rollout has undergone a rethink. The US rollout has slowed, and plans to expand in Europe have paused, according to the Financial Times. 

It’s still big business. Goldman Sachs says the creator economy could reach half a trillion dollars by 2027. Plus, that US retail social commerce sales are forecast to grow almost 30 per cent this year to $68.92 billion suggests Western consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to buying on social media, says Permele Doyle, founder of influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.

“We’ve not yet seen any of the major platforms nail social commerce,” says Doyle. “Western consumers are used to using social media platforms as a space for escapism where they seek inspiration, entertainment and information over shopping opportunities. At the moment [social] shopping features feel too transactional to the Western consumer.” Because of this, she says, creators are the key to brands generating sales through social media: “the ‘sell’ needs to be more subtle and offer engaging content in return.” 

Bond’s point of difference is that it’s built for social commerce, as opposed to attempting to integrate it after the fact, says Raedts. Timed to the launch, Bond is announcing its $2 million seed round, led by Nordstar with participation from Day One Ventures, Nomad Capital, Intermix founder Khajak Keledjian and Airbnb and Facebook angel investor Daniel Gutenberg. It’s the right time to launch (and invest in) this type of company, Drake Rehfeld, principal at Day One, says, because a change in economic cycles means a change in buying habits. Its challenge will be acquiring an audience that makes it worth it for brands and creators to set up shop.

“We’re not in a recession yet, but we’re in that realm, and that will make people more conscious about the things they’re buying,” he says. “Bond is a way to communicate details about products from a trusted source.” 

Rethinking the social “sell”

Bond is banking on entertainment and storytelling to incentivise shopping — and avoid seeming like a hard sell. The three-party approach is at the core of the solution. 

“Consumers will go where the best content creators are; creators will go where the ad dollars are; and brands will invest in the platforms where the most eyeballs are,” Billion Dollar Boy’s Doyle says. “It’s a cyclical relationship triangle between the three parties.” (It’s a plus for the platform too, Doyle notes, as it takes a cut of the profit.)

Data insights are easy to access. Via the brand dashboard, brands can see how creators are performing; how many views shows and products are getting; and what’s selling well. Through this, they can also control their inventory.

Acquiring talent and shoppers

Similarly, there’s incentive for creators to get on board. It’s more evergreen than traditional social media, which tends to be more transactional, Raedts says. “On Bond, if somebody buys this shirt off of [a creator’s] show months later, if it’s still available, [they] get that ongoing share,” the CEO explains. 

It also offers a more direct line of communication with followers. “I knew I wanted to get involved because allowing my followers to see a more raw, unedited, version of myself is important to me in building connections,” Keenan says. For influencer Ruby Lyn, who says she’s tried many commerce apps, this is the first to offer direct communication in a “seamless” way. 

To this end, Bond wants to improve the user experience. Raedts acknowledges that it’s not easy to change consumer behaviour — but expects the “frictionless format” Bond offers will be enough of a draw, when combined with creators’ sticky followings. “The creators have such tight-knit communities that they’ll follow them wherever they go,” she says.

“Creators have shown that it is possible to successfully migrate their content and build followings of existing and new audiences across platforms,” Doyle says. “The key is ensuring the content is adapted to the platform it sits in.” Bond hopes to pull users to the platform by offering access to exclusive, original content not available elsewhere. 

Customer acquisition will be a challenge. Consumers are already in the habit of checking Instagram and TikTok; trawling YouTube and Pinterest. Some frequent Discord, where the likes of Prada and Nike have communities. Convincing consumers to download and dedicate time to yet another platform is no small task.

Though it’s a difficult sell, customer acquisition is not impossible — particularly given Gen Z’s loyalty to influencers. “The emergence and success of disruptor platforms such as TikTok shows that the status quo can change,” Doyle says. “But only if the platforms offer a genuinely new proposition to the customer and give something back to them.”

For now, one of Bond’s draws is live shopping content. It’s an offering that’s proven difficult to get off the ground in the Western world. But Raedts thinks it will resonate within the context of Bond, which will enable direct shopping. Investors agree — live shopping e-commerce garnered $380 million in funding last year, up from $36 million in 2020, according to Pitchbook. And unlike traditional live shopping platforms, the feature is only one of Bond’s many commerce pillars (it sits alongside static merchandising and collections).

Brands are interested. “Live shopping has been something we’ve wanted to try for a while now, but we weren’t sure how to execute it in a way that felt authentic to Re/Done,” says co-founder and CEO Sean Barron, who is keen to integrate the Bond partnership into the brand’s commerce strategy. “We’re excited to work with Bond due to their creator-led, content-first approach.”

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