DropHouse’s flagship TechDrops channel reached number one in TikTok Shop’s UK LIVE rankings during its first week, marking a significant opening for the Cheshire-based business as it expands its live-shopping operations.
The result follows DropHouse’s decision to focus its business on live commerce, combining entertainment, community and real-time auctions to sell consumer technology to viewers across the UK.
According to figures supplied by the company, DropHouse now sells more than 30,000 technology items each month. Its live auctions attract more than five million viewers monthly and have generated over 60 million LIVE impressions, with the audience spanning UK adults aged between 18 and 45.
Revenue has increased by 980% since the company began its transition towards live shopping, prompting investment in a substantially larger warehouse and content-production space in Cheshire.
From Viral Content To Live Commerce
DropHouse is owned by Liam Bond and Ashley Job, who previously worked together at LADbible and UNILAD, growing an audience of millions across multiple platforms. The pair have applied their experience of building highly shareable social content to a retail format in which entertainment and purchasing take place simultaneously.
Bond said the shift was a natural progression for a company already built around social media, products and audience behaviour.
“We have always been focused on creating viral content and selling products and brands through relatable online content. We demonstrated that during our days at LADbible,” he said.
“But with the emergence of live streaming and live shopping, we knew we had to switch up our operations and focus.
“We really believe live shopping is going to grow at an astonishing rate over the next five years, and we want to be at the centre of that.”
The model moves beyond conventional e-commerce product listings. Viewers watch hosts demonstrate and auction products in real time, interact with the show through comments and make purchases without leaving the platform.
It places the presenter at the centre of the transaction, combining elements of television shopping, social entertainment and a fast-moving auction room.
TechDrops Reaches Number One
TechDrops was developed as DropHouse’s flagship destination for consumer technology, featuring products offered through live auctions and limited-time deals.
The channel’s arrival on TikTok followed the company’s early success on live-auction marketplace Whatnot. After seeing the audience and commercial momentum DropHouse had built there, TikTok was keen to work with the business and support the next stage of its growth, according to the company.
The partnership gave DropHouse an opportunity to bring the TechDrops format to one of the world’s largest content platforms, where the discovery of a product, the entertainment surrounding it and the purchase itself can all happen in the same place.
Liam and Ashley meeting the TikTok Live Auction team in London, July
In its first week, TechDrops climbed to the top of the UK LIVE show rankings and became the platform’s biggest tech sellers in the country, giving the company an immediate foothold in an increasingly competitive market.
Bond said TikTok had shared the founders’ belief in the long-term potential of live shopping.
“TikTok have been amazing with us,” he said.
“They believe in live shopping and they believe we have everything in place to be at the forefront of it for years to come, so we’re really honoured to be working with them.”
The show is currently presented by live-auction hosts Declan Colclough and Wiktor Konieczny, who combine product knowledge with the pace and personality required to keep a large online audience engaged.
Bond said the programme quickly developed an identity and community of its own.
“TechDrops really became a beast of its own pretty quickly,” he said.
“We rapidly grew a community of people who loved to buy low and sell high. Within months, we had people shopping on TechDrops every day and then reselling what they bought.”
Some customers have used products purchased through the auctions to build their own resale businesses on marketplaces including Vinted and eBay.
“There are people in the community who have started making a living from buying from us and selling themselves,” Bond added.
“They are the people who remind us of ourselves. They are the people we want to help on their journey, and that is what TechDrops is all about.”
Live Shopping Moves Into The Mainstream
DropHouse’s expansion comes as live shopping develops into a significant part of the UK’s digital retail economy.
TikTok reported in July 2026 that its UK LIVE shopping format had grown by 55% year on year, with more than 6,000 live-shopping sessions taking place in the country every day. The platform also said more than 300,000 small businesses were selling through TikTok Shop.
For retailers, the attraction lies in shortening the distance between discovering a product and completing a purchase. For audiences, the format provides entertainment, live demonstrations and the opportunity to ask questions before buying.
Job said the opportunity was to make digital retail feel less transactional and more like shared entertainment.
“Buying online is already frictionless. Live shopping makes it entertaining,” he said.
“We see the future as a blend of content and commerce, where buying feels more engaging and community-driven rather than transactional.
“That means now focusing just as much on creating an engaging vibe as we do on the products themselves. It’s a balance.”
That balance has become central to DropHouse’s approach. Its presenters are expected to understand the products and the commercial objective of each broadcast while performing for an audience accustomed to fast-moving social content.
The company believes the best live hosts are not simply salespeople. They are content creators, entertainers and community leaders capable of sustaining energy across a broadcast while responding directly to viewers.
Operational Growth Behind The Screen
The visible part of a TechDrops show may take place in front of cameras, but its rapid growth has also required a significant expansion behind the scenes.
DropHouse’s move into a large new warehouse in Cheshire provides additional space for stock management, content production, live studios and order fulfilment.
The transition became necessary as daily volumes increased from a few hundred orders to more than 1,000, creating new demands across picking, packing, dispatch and customer service.
“The growth has been crazy,” Job said. “Operationally, it is not easy going from a couple of hundred orders per day to more than a thousand orders per day, so we had to grow up fast.
“We brought in an experienced fulfilment team that has allowed us to continue growing on the creative and shopping fronts, while having the safety net of an incredible team behind us that can get customers their orders in a very short amount of time.”
The larger Cheshire operation is expected to support continued recruitment as DropHouse increases the number and scale of its live shows.
Alongside fulfilment and warehouse positions, the company sees an opportunity to create a new type of career for local presenters and content creators.
DropHouse plans to identify and develop talented new hosts who may not come from traditional broadcasting backgrounds but have the personality, confidence and commercial awareness to build a live audience.
The format provides content creators with an opportunity to express their personalities on screen while developing skills in presenting, entertainment, product storytelling and community management.
Building A Live-Shopping Business From Cheshire
For Bond and Job, the ambition is to make Cheshire a base from which DropHouse can develop new shows, recruit creative talent and reach national audiences.
The company’s early performance with TechDrops suggests that live-shopping businesses do not need to be located in London to compete for attention at scale. The combination of a regional fulfilment operation and national digital distribution allows a show produced in Cheshire to reach millions of viewers around the country.
The challenge will be maintaining the spontaneity and community that helped TechDrops grow while building the operational structure required to handle higher order volumes.
DropHouse believes its background in viral media provides an advantage. Its founders view a live auction not simply as a retail broadcast, but as a piece of entertainment in which audience participation, presenter chemistry and the excitement of securing a deal are central to the experience.
Its partnership with TikTok also places the company within a rapidly developing ecosystem of platforms, retailers and creators attempting to establish what the next generation of online shopping will look like.
With TechDrops reaching the top of the UK rankings in its opening week, DropHouse has established an early position in a format likely to attract growing interest from brands, retailers and content creators.
Its next phase will be defined by whether it can turn that early momentum into a durable live-shopping operation — creating jobs in Cheshire, developing a new generation of on-screen hosts and continuing to build a community around the increasingly blurred line between content and commerce.
