TikTok Shop can look deceptively simple. Upload products, attach shopping links to videos and wait for TikTok’s enormous audience to do the rest.
The brands generating meaningful business on the platform are doing something quite different. They’re treating TikTok Shop as its own commerce ecosystem, with merchandising, creators, content and promotions designed specifically for the platform.
Speaking at Coterie New York, Jamie Williams, Head of Womenswear & Specialty Retail, TikTok, said that’s what separates sellers that gain traction from those that don’t.
“TikTok Shop is not a place that you can really kind of put your toe in and think that you’re going to find success,” she said. “The best brands really…have the understanding of what they’re using TikTok Shop for.”
The opportunity is becoming harder to dismiss. Williams said TikTok Shop’s platform growth is up 80% year over year, creator participation has increased more than 120% and brand growth is up 97%. During its previous Black Friday/Cyber Monday event, the platform generated more than $500 million during the first four days.
But getting products onto the platform isn’t the same as building a business there.
Don’t Treat TikTok Like Another Storefront
On most e-commerce sites, the customer arrives with some degree of purchase intent. TikTok can create that intent.
A shopper might encounter a product in a short video, see it demonstrated by a creator, join a livestream and purchase without leaving the environment. That makes content and commerce difficult to separate.
Live shopping is an increasingly important part of the equation. Williams said more than 35% of TikTok Shop’s fashion business is now driven by live.
SKIMS demonstrated what the format can look like at the high end. Its hour-long holiday livestream with Kim Kardashian combined a collection launch, celebrity, entertainment and promotions.
Crocs takes another approach, using recurring lives to build consistency and community around its products.
The takeaway is that on TikTok Shop, shopping itself can become the content.
Give Creators Something to Sell
That starts with the assortment.
Williams recommends making a broad assortment available because an unexpected item can surface through TikTok Shop’s discovery mechanisms. But brands should concentrate their marketing resources around a smaller number of hero products.
Those products need sufficient inventory if demand spikes, but they also need something worth talking about.
“What does a hero product mean to you?” Williams said. “You’re really thinking about how much inventory is there? Is this product super unique? Is there a call to action that really will motivate customers to want to buy?”
Crocs has leaned heavily into that strategy, using TikTok Shop for exclusives and product drops while surrounding those launches with creator content, live programming and promotional support.
It has also taken the strategy offline. Williams pointed to a New York activation that put people dressed as giant Crocs in Times Square and brought consumers onto a double-decker bus. The idea was bigger than generating a transaction inside TikTok Shop. The platform became part of a larger product and entertainment moment.
Creators Can Become the Content Engine
Brands also don’t have to produce everything themselves.
Williams said roughly 65% to 80% of fashion brands’ TikTok Shop business is driven by affiliates, making creator recruitment one of her first recommendations for companies entering the platform.
“If I was a one-woman show, I know I can’t create 10 videos a day,” she said. “I would begin to use creators immediately.”
HEYDUDE shows how that can scale. Williams said the footwear brand grew more than 654% during Black Friday, generates 20% of its GMV through livestreaming and increased its female users by more than 100%.
Its approach combines exclusive products, short-form video, creator challenges, brand campaigns and offline experiences. Rather than treating influencers as one-off media buys, the brand encourages creators to keep producing content, increasing the number of opportunities for a product to catch on.
TikTok’s own campaigns can add another layer of amplification. The platform runs fashion moments throughout the year around events and shopping occasions including Swim Week, back-to-school, Fashion Week, Halloween and Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Brands can use those programs to place products within moments already receiving broader platform support.
Don’t Expect an Overnight Hit
Perhaps the most useful example for apparel brands, however, is PacSun.
TikTok internally calls the initial period after launch the “cold start.” Williams said it can take one to three months for a brand to gain traction. That’s also around the point when companies that aren’t seeing results may start pulling back.
PacSun waited much longer.
“They went for almost a year with no traction, but it took one creator with 5,000 followers to kind of build a viral jean that has lasted them for over two years,” Williams said.
That experience challenges two common assumptions: that TikTok Shop success should happen quickly and that it requires enormous influencers.
It also points to why brands need enough experimentation to discover what actually resonates. The breakout product may not be the one marketing expected, and the creator who ignites it may not have a massive following.
The brands finding success are effectively increasing their chances of that connection happening. They put enough merchandise on the platform to enable discovery, concentrate resources behind products with breakout potential, seed creators, experiment with live, participate in platform campaigns and then amplify what begins to work.
That requires giving up some of the control fashion marketers are accustomed to. But TikTok Shop’s success stories suggest that unpredictability can be an advantage when brands build enough infrastructure around it.
“You really never know what creator is going to pick it up, or what product is going to resonate with people,” Williams said. “And more times than not, it’s the product that you least expect.”
