01Insight
The community is the core of the business.
“It's like going to a party every night at your friend's. Everybody chats with each other. They know where they are, how their kids are.”Sally, community member
Live shopping Built
from zero
Vogue called Covet by Christos the “leading live shopping platform in the West”, but the entire business was built on Instagram Live.
- +58%Revenue per minute
- +43%Buyer conversion
- 86%Sales on web
- ~$350KBuild cost
previously on Instagram…
Thriving community, zero technology. $200M+ in luxury sales on Instagram Lives, held together with workarounds.
Covet by Christos was a live luxury resale show: hosts unboxed designer pieces on Instagram Live, and the first viewer to comment SOLD got it.
The viewer experience was improvised, not designed.Moderators had no tools to run the business, only to stream it.
so Ipicked up the phone…
6 Interviews · 
30 min - 1 hr each
With the people who show up every night. Before designing anything, I listened.
02Insight
SOLD isn’t a button;
It’s a ritual
“This is better than reality TV. The banter drew me in. That night, I bought something.”Jennifer, community member
03Insight
The audience is tech-resistant, not tech-illiterate.
“If you make it too hard, they lose interest.”Lisa, community member
+Also
Weekly Live Show Observations
Moderator workflow mapping
Competitor Audit
Consumer characterization
01browsing
#78 E26021074 T&C. Tiffany Hardwear Graduated Link Necklace Sterling Silver [18”]
Items only existed as fleeting chat messages, limited by Instagram’s chat functionality.
03connecting
Dibs
CBC rituals existed, but Instagram couldn’t support them.
02buying
SOLD
Viewers had to type “SOLD” in chat to buy, with no confirmation, cart, or checkout.
01catalog
#0085 IB26020085 Gucci Dionysus Medium Blooms GG Supreme
#0021 G26020021 Gucci Bamboo Fringe & Rose Leather
Products were announced verbally and published as unstructured chat comments.
03selling
Every sale, regardless of value, rarity, or format, ran through the same “SOLD” flow, preventing scalability. No auctions, no variants, no structured FOMO.
02products
Moderators manually tracked sales in ad-hoc spreadsheets, manually invoiced, and manually coordinated across hosts.
How might we design and build the new platform for a community that never asked us to change?
One that feels like a natural
upgrade✦✦✦
and reinforces exclusive, curated
discovery.
-
ModeratorNew
Host tools
The production side the audience never sees.
-
ViewerUpgraded
Buy Now
The "SOLD" moment, structured, not stripped.
-
ViewerNew
Auctions
Bidding as entertainment, not transaction.
The three features, step by step
Instagram Live:
Covet by Christos Live:
Scroll or tap for the next step ▸
The details
Instagram LiveBefore
Swipe to claimUpgraded
ReactionsNew
Product historyNew
In-show DMsNew
Type SOLD.Hope you were first.
Swipe.Know it's yours.
Reactout loud.
Every piece,remembered.
DM withoutleaving.
The community didn’t just accept the change. They asked for it.
-
+58%
Revenue per minute
-
+43%
Buyer conversion
-
+36%
Sell-through rate
-
86%
Sales on web
- Timeline
- Nov 2024 – Feb 2025
- Team
- 4 people
- Build cost
- ~$350K
“I was dreading the change to your website, but now I only want the website. I’ve never been so quick to accept change.”
Jarenboczan, community member
-
Design the system before designing the screens.
Stakeholders requested features post-discovery (e.g., variants) that changed how both the design and back-end had to be built. The architecture absorbed it — but next time, I’d push for a more event-driven product model from day one, so new selling formats are additive rather than reconstructive.
-
Earn trust before advocating for change.
Christos IS the brand — deep community knowledge, strong opinions. I learned to lead with demonstrated understanding (research presentations, regular demos) before pushing design decisions. One concept I championed didn’t ship, but the insight behind it shaped the final experience. That’s the right outcome.
-
Polish is a process problem, not a design problem.
Because this community would scrutinize every microinteraction, “joy” couldn’t be aspirational — it had to be delivered pixel-perfect. That meant evolving the design-to-dev handoff: writing detailed implementation specs for animations and transitions that wouldn’t normally get documented. The craft was only as good as the process that protected it.