TikTok dreams of bright Christmas amid live shopping boom

TikTok expects its highest Christmas sales this year as its once-struggling livestream shopping feature takes off in the UK.
TikTok Shop enables users to buy products while watching videos from social media influencers and brands, as well as on live broadcasts on its in-app marketplace. The Chinese-owned company takes a commission on sales made through the platform.
The platform’s ecommerce division, launched in the UK in 2021 as its first market outside of Asia, was not an immediate success. It initially failed to meet sales targets and was mired by reports of a culture clash with its employees in London over unrealistic targets and expectations to work more than 12 hours a day.
Such practices triggered staff resignations and complaints from its ecommerce team in 2022.
However, in the past year TikTok Shop has reported significant growth among both businesses and users making purchases through the app.
The ecommerce platform now has more than 200,000 businesses actively selling products in the UK, double the number that were using TikTok Shop last year.
They include Sweaty Betty, the athleisure company, and Karen Millen, the womenswear brand, as well as the beauty companies L’Oreal and Nivea.
Overall, its latest accounts show that TikTok in the UK and Europe fell to a $1.5 billion loss last year as the video app set aside $1 billion to address regulatory investigations and lawsuits.
The loss at the social media powerhouse, which faces a potential ban in the United States amid claims that user data could be vulnerable to exploitation by Beijing, came despite a 75 per cent rise in revenue to $4.6 billion.
Jan Wilk, head of operations at TikTok Shop UK, said: “Live shopping and video commerce with real creators and brands is the future.”
The livestream shopping model has expanded significantly over the past year, with 5,000 daily TikTok Shop LIVEs happening in the UK this year, double the number that were taking place at the start of 2023.
Cosmetics products have performed particularly well on the platform with Made by Mitchell, the beauty brand, recording sales of over $1 million in a 24-hour period.
Mitchell Halliday, founder and chief executive of Made by Mitchell, said the emergence of livestream shopping sessions on TikTok had “completely changed how we connect with our audience, especially during key shopping moments like Christmas”.
The growth of TikTok Shop comes as the platform has forecast a 58 per cent increase in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter from retail and ecommerce brands in the UK compared with the same period last year.
Advertising on social media sites has also been found to drive consumers’ shopping behaviour. According to Nielsen, the research company, 61 per cent of TikTok users have made a purchase either directly on TikTok or online after seeing an advert on the platform.