TikTok is expanding further into retail with its Chinese parent company launching its 'Project S' plan to rival the likes of Amazon and Shein. In recent weeks, TikTok users have begun to see a new in-built shopping feature called 'Trendy Beat', which offers products seen in viral videos, such as clothing and hygiene products.
Every item advertised through the feature comes from China and sold by a company that is owned by TikTok's Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, the Financial Times reports. This represents a major shift in how shopping is done on the platform, which currently allows other vendors to sell items through TikTok Shop, from which TikTok take a commission.
The hashtag '#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt' now has over eight billion views and the social media company has actually dubbed the experience "an infinite loop of shoppertainment". TikTok's own research found 52 per cent of millennial UK users bought a product because they saw it on the site in the last year, rising to 60 per cent of Gen Z users.
On Trendy Beat, TikTok announced: "We are always exploring new ways to enhance our community's experience, and we are in the early stages of experimenting with new shopping features."
Users of TikTok will see a difference in their experience using the app, with viewers encouraged to visit the Trendy Beat shop while viewing videos. There will be no new TikTok shopping app, as the marketplace will stay strictly on the existing video sharing platform.
Though there is no indication that users will be stopped from selling their own products just yet, increasing sales of their own in-house products will be more profitable in the long term. TikTok's push to sell its own products is reportedly known as 'Project S' and hope to rival fast-fashion giant Shein and Temu, which sells heavily discounted products advertised on social media.
As reported by the Financial Times, in order to boost its ecommerce business, ByteDance has recruited employees from Shein, with Bob Kang, a major e-commerce figure at TikTok, obsessed with replicating Temu's success. Temu's US sales were 20 per cent higher than Shein's in May, according to Bloomberg, and has been the most downloaded app in the country for months.
