With an average one million livestreams a month, Supergreat is just one of the many, primary-color-heavy, Gen Z-friendly shopping streaming apps to hit the market over the past few years. Other players, like Flip, Newness, and TalkShopLive, all feature their own takes on the undeniable trend of livestreaming in beauty. Supergreat’s origins date back to 2017, in an entirely different category than beauty. “Supergreat evolved naturally from a mental wellbeing app we created in 2017 that centered safe, supportive, video-based communication. The most popular groups were mainly young people discussing self-esteem—very often related to beauty and sharing tips and information with one another,” shares the app’s co-founder and CEO Tyler Faux. Today, the app offers “a community you can trust with unfiltered reviews tailored to you.”
The uninitiated might wonder what role a streaming shopping platform plays in the social media domination of apps like Instagram and TikTok. The intimacy shared in a livestream is a great place to start. While creators on both apps can “go live,” the majority of content is premeditated or static. Supergreat’s Head of Community & Marketing, Enid Hwang, sees the app as “a participatory community, not simply a place to consume content.” Members on most streaming services follow a model similar to Supergreat where they are rewarded for their own reviews, being active, and watching livestreams.
Supergreat differentiates itself in the way it rewards active participation on the app. By joining challenges, like recreating looks or interpreting trends, and generally contributing to the community online, members earn digital currency called “Supercoins.” Faux explains users can “turn Supercoins into new beauty products to try by getting a discount on purchases or redeeming entirely free products supplied by brand partners.”
Up your participation and production value—great lighting and clear videos are a must—and you might even be chosen by Supergreat’s community manager to become a Supercreator. Unlike other platforms, the upgrade from creator to Supercreator doesn’t have anything to do with audience size. “The qualities that make someone a wonderful livestream host aren’t necessarily the same as building a curated feed or content on other platforms,” Hwang shares.
Over 150 brands, like Tower 28, Kosas, and Glossier, have found success on Supergreat’s community-first platform. Connecting their inventory seamlessly to the app’s backend is just one perk. By empowering Supercreators to “sell on their behalf,” brands earn access to their top reviewers and sellers within the community. Marrying experience with unfiltered reviews, plus simple shopability, is a win for curious consumers. For a brand looking for honest feedback in real time, it’s just as much of a dream come true.
Community-led Faux explains that feedback from consumers remains consistently opposed to the ultra-polished, Photoshopped finish of other apps, which minimizes trust in the name of #sponcon. Seeing a “regular shopper, filter-free is critical to Supergreat,” he finishes. Livestreams on Supergreat are lively and personality forward. With an average of 1,500 engagements for a 30-minute livestream in the form of comments, questions, poll votes, and more, it’s hard to look away. Creators, and especially Supercreators, on the app seem to effortlessly toe the line between the hard sell and an off script ramble.
This distinction is what separates the audiences of these beauty streaming competitors. Another player in the space, Newness, feels a little older than the 65% Gen Z audience of Supergreat. The focus is a little fuzzier, more candid. Flip, perhaps the platform with the closest resemblance to TikTok, highlights big brands in a style similar to early 2010s beauty creators on YouTube. Supergreat leans more heavily toward values like sustainability, inclusivity, or cruelty-free/vegan formulations and away from dupes, celebrity style, and household makeup brands of yore.
Growing at 4,000 reviews every week, it’s easy to see the ways Supergreat’s empowerment of the everyman as a beauty curator has paid off. Hosts’ commissions are clearly highlighted in the checkout process, another nod to the empowerment of transparency from every angle of the app. As streaming increases in popularity across the beauty industry, there’s lots to learn from the creator-first ethos of Supergreat.
