TikTok Shop saw more than $100 million in sales on Black Friday, as the social media app's bet on live shopping in the US appears to be paying off.
What To Know: TikTok launched its Shop e-commerce platform in the fall of 2023 and has been pushing its creators and sellers to adopt the live shopping format which drives billions in sales in other markets, like China.
“We want people to discover new products,” Nico Le Bourgeois, TikTok Shop’s head of US operations, told Business Insider in late October.
“To be surprised. To feel like shopping can be different. And as a part of that, if we can have many customers shop in live and realize that this is really cool, I think we will have done a good job.”
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U.S. shoppers participated in more than 30,000 live shopping streams on Friday alone. Home goods, fashion and beauty products are among the most popular categories.
Canvas Beauty, a seller of hair-care products on TikTok Shop, hit $1 million in sales within two hours of going live on the app, the company said.
Sellers are joining TikTok Shop as a way to diversify their revenue streams from other sites like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). CNBC reports that TikTok Shop was a hot topic at a conference for Amazon sellers in October. A session on "how to scale your brand" with TikTok Shop drew a full room of Amazon sellers.
"Amazon comes with a ton of competition," e-commerce strategist Rafay MH told the crowd at the conference. "TikTok is the opportunity for free eyeballs and sales."
Salesforce estimates that one in five online holiday purchases in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada will be made through online marketplaces like Shein, Temu, TikTok Shop, and AliExpress.
Potential TikTok Ban: President Joe Biden signed a bill in April that requires parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. Without a sale of TikTok, app stores and internet hosting services will be prohibited from offering the app in the U.S.
President-elect Donald Trump has flip-flopped on the issue of a TikTok ban and the future remains uncertain for the app.
Creators continue to flock to TikTok and sellers seem to be taking the looming ban of the app in stride.
"The sellers here, creators, they're building their livelihoods on TikTok," a TikTok spokesperson told CNBC. "We're going to continue to show up for that. There's a huge opportunity for us."
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