“Ok, these are Celine. Black, Celine sunglasses for $250. These are fire.”

Christos Garkinos’ voice sweeps over an Instagram Live on a Sunday evening with the rhythmic and impassioned pace of an auctioneer’s chant.

“Let’s get this moving. You look gorgeous in those sunglasses. These are Celine. #91 putting the price up right now. … $250 Sold! Congratulations Nicky! I think Nicky’s new. Welcome Nicky. Congratulations.”

Applause and champagne toast emojis begin to stack up in the comments from the 100-plus shoppers who have tuned in for “Covet by Christos,” the live stream shopping show Garkinos has hosted since he first took to Instagram Live to sell Louis Vuitton handbags in March 2020.

A cross between a charismatic emcee and a best friend giving you advice in the dressing room, Garkinos has been a fixture across multiple eras of live selling, including traveling trunk shows and his own fashion line – Eureka! – on the HSN shoppable television network in the 2010s.

But it was his pandemic pivot to Instagram that turned Garkinos into the king of live luxury resale. He estimates he has generated approximately $100 million in revenue via Covet by Christos, with an average show generating roughly $22,000 in sales of luxury vintage, beauty, loungewear and home decor. There are no returns.

Garkinos’ success is partly down to sheer ubiquity: Covet by Christos streams six times a day, 45 times per week, for a cumulative 4,000 hours over the last five years. But he was also early to what has become a full-fledged live shopping boom. Long popular in Asia, the concept only caught on in the US with the launch of TikTok Shop in 2023. Suddenly, direct selling was in users’ feeds, and they liked what they saw. In the US, live streaming shopping’s sales are expected to hit $68 billion in 2026, up from $20 billion in 2022, according to Coresight Research.

Garkinos has expanded Covet by Christos to TikTok and other platforms, and has hired 10 hosts to manage the growing amount of content (Garkinos himself now hosts about 30 percent of the live shows). His first book, “Covet the Comeback: How a Son of Greek Immigrants Found Success, Lost Everything, Then Built a Fashion Empire” is out on March 23.

His entire empire is built on a loyal following – the Stos Squad – who have followed him from platform to platform, and even meet up for in-person shopping trips around the world. It’s a small community, but a wealthy one: Garkinos says his top five shoppers spend upward of $1 million through Covet by Christos annually.

“I don’t need thousands of people, I just need the right people,” he said. “It’s community first, products second … I want people to have fun and be entertained.”

Origin Story

A fan of HSN since he was 14, Garkinos said he would cry with happiness when Adriana Pappel would sell out of her line during a show. His first jobs included sales and marketing for Clorox, Virgin and Disney, which helped him understand the importance of knowing the customer.

In 2013, Garkinos starred in the Bravo show, “Dukes of Melrose,” chronicling his life and daily dealings at LA luxury reseller Decades Two. The show lasted just one season. A couple of years after his women’s clothing line “Eureka by Christos Garkinos” shuttered in 2016, he took his luxury resale trunk shows on the road.

He regularly traveled to mid-tier US markets to host high end trunk shows, creating shopping opportunities in cities that he says, “have a lot of money, but no luxury stores.” When the US began to enter lockdown in 2020, Garkinos was in Chicago for a trunk show of vintage Louis Vuitton bags. He found himself with $150,000 worth of high end accessories to sell, plus $30,000 owed to consignors from trunk shows earlier in the year.

With no other options for selling the inventory, he turned on Instagram Live and began pitching Louis Vuitton. The audience for his initially weekly shows grew through word of mouth during the lockdowns, as people looked for new activities they could do from home.

Covet by Christos continues to be propelled by word of mouth, with between 500-2000 people tuning into each live show. He tightly curates the categories and products sold through the platform and says that there is a waitlist of 250 brands all interested in being sold during a live show. Garkinos purposely refrains from seeing the product in person before a show so the audience gets his natural reaction to each piece.

Friendly Competition

Garkinos attributes that tight connection forged with his audience during the depths of the pandemic for his success today.

“It’s like going shopping with 125 of your closest friends,” said Faryl Gilston, founder and chief executive of the shoe company Farylrobin, has been shopping via Covet by Christos for a few years, and counts a 1966 Hermes Kelly bag as one of her best purchases.

“Women are excited for you when you buy something,” she said. “Sure, sometimes you’re competing for a certain piece, but everyone applauds for one another when someone lands it.”

The most devoted members of the Stos Squad take annual shopping trips to locales like London or Dubai in what they call “Christos Con.” Some women who connect during the Instagram Live shows have become friends outside of the platform and get together offline, whether for lunch or a Christos Con shopping trip to Greece.

“We’ve gotten people through health issues and financial issues,” says Garkinos. During the recent LA wildfires, the Stos Squad raised $100,000 for one of the vintage resellers on Covet By Christos whose home burned in the Eaton fire. Members of the community donated a luxury item for a live show dedicated to raising funds for the fire victim and her family.

Garkinos dreams of one day launching the “Netflix of shopping,” where he can offer live selling independent of any social media platforms.

“In a way, it is so much bigger than shopping,” Garkinos said. “I’ve been watching this type of selling for 35 years. I know what to do.”