Val Zapata turned his sneaker collecting hobby into a seven-figure business. She leveraged the live sales platform Whatnot to grow her business. Zapata predicts a live selling boom in the US and advises honing your live selling skills to succeed.
Thank you for registering!
Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed on the go. Download the app
By clicking “Sign Up”, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You can opt-out at any time by visiting our settings page or by clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of the email.
When Val Zapata resumed her childhood hobby of collecting sneakers at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, she wasn’t looking to make money.
Finding unique sneakers on marketplaces like OfferUp and Facebook has been a way to relax during stressful times. If she flips a pair and makes money, that’s a bonus.
The more she bought and resold, the more viable the business became. And it was much more fun than her day job working as a life insurance broker.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I can’t quit my job right now, but obviously I love working, so I need to figure this out,'” the 27-year-old told Business Insider.
In 2021, she created an Instagram account, The Shoe Game Co., and gradually ramped up her side hustle.
“I started selling five or 10 pairs of sneakers a day and started doing some basic math,” Zapata said. At the time, he was living at home with his parents and working on a shoe project with his father. “How do I make $50,000 a month? How many pairs of sneakers do I sell a week? Can I make $10,000?”
Eventually, she says, sales on Instagram plateaued. “It was a huge amount of work for a not-so-wide reach. I was trying to sell the same sneakers to maybe two or three customers in the same rotation who were already buying sneakers from me. On Instagram. There were three moments when I couldn’t get past that breaking point.
The move to live selling changed everything.
Scale to 7 digits with live sales platform Whatnot
Zapata first learned about the platform Whatnot in 2022. She had developed a habit of watching YouTube channels and following major companies in the shoe industry, and one of them mentioned selling on Whatnot.
Related articles
She downloaded the app and learned it was a marketplace where sellers could host live shows and sell their products in real time. She attended the show and it was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.
“It was crazy. We were having shows with 600, 700, 800 people. People were buying things within three seconds,” she said. “It was like Facebook and Twitter meets eBay. When I started looking at it, it was so much fun and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to be really good at this.'”
Although she applied and was approved to sell on the platform, she did not immediately start hosting shows. She followed a friend who was also starting a live Whatnot show.
“It was like a crash course in what to do and what not to do,” Zapata said.
Still, her first show was a “tumult” and not profitable. “I made about $50, which was probably negative after I received the box.”
One of Zapata’s biggest company costs is boxes. Courtesy of Val Zapata
Her father encouraged her to stick with it, likening it to his job selling cars.
“My father knows that the F-150s get the most activity in Houston, but they might not get the same activity in Nevada. ‘What do they want? It’s like, ‘Are you there? You’ll figure it out.'” They don’t want to, and what are they going to bid?” Zapata said. “Slowly but surely, I started making 3%, 4%, 5%, and then one day I was making 15%, and then one day I was selling $25,000 in one day.”
Currently, most of her sales come from her live Whatnot shows. Initially, she hosted every day. She and her father converted the game room in their parents’ home into a studio.
“Technology has improved a little bit now, but back then it was just my iPad, so you could see the chat, and I was using my iPhone, so you could see me from the chat,” Zapata said. Ta. “I had a small tabletop ring light that was probably $15 on Amazon. There were some racks of sneakers in the background.”
Her current streams are short, 1-2 hour “power hours,” but during her first few months on the platform, she’ll be going live for several hours at a time. “I’d be exposed to such intense energy for eight or nine hours that I’d wake up exhausted, because we’d have a show, and my dad would turn the flow back on. , my background would have been perfect, and it was just a way for him to continue his work and encourage me.”
After just one month at Whatnot, Zapata says he’s done well enough in sales to leave his insurance job in September 2022.
Her company expanded to include streetwear offerings, bringing in up to $500,000 in sales in a single month. BI viewed her Whatnot seller dashboard and saw that her business was generating over $4 million in sales by 2024.
Premonition of live sales boom in the US
Zapata, who leads a team of eight employees and rents a 6,000-square-foot warehouse to store inventory, hopes to run a business that earns him seven figures a month. She believes her current sales strategy will help her achieve that goal.
“Live selling is just the beginning. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “This is a big deal in other countries, but it’s not a big deal in the U.S. It’s going to be big. There will be streams with 10,000 viewers, but it’s going to be a small stream. .”
Her advice for online or brick-and-mortar store owners is to hone your live selling skills. Zapata has found success with Whatnot, but there are other live selling platforms such as Bambuser, Channelize.io, Facebook Live, and YouTube Live.
She honed her skills by observing top sellers.
“When I wasn’t livestreaming, there was someone in the background, someone I admired, someone I liked the way they talked in chat and the way they sold sneakers,” Zapata said. . “I ask, ‘So what are they doing?'” They create intros, interact, get really creative about what they offer to the community, and spend time educating. I am. ”
She learned that sourcing good sneakers is only half the battle. She may be able to snag a unique pair at an incredible deal, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t sell.
The more you can educate your buyer, the more successful she will be.
“Holly might come in and bid and say, ‘I love those pink sneakers,’ but I told Holly that not only are these really cool pink sneakers, but these are Kobe Bryant’s “If you say it’s a 2020 collection item, Holly might be willing to bid on it for a little bit more,” explained Zapata, who has all products starting at $1 during the live show. The successful bidder will take home the item. “But if I don’t know and share, they’re just consumers bidding and trying to get a good deal. So I knew early on that I had to give them the knowledge. I learned it.”
She also spends a lot of time reading reviews and making adjustments based on buyer opinions.
“When I look at my reviews every morning, I think, ‘This is bad. This has to be fixed. This has to be solved,'” she said, adding: You are the one who moves yourself. ”
