TikTok Shop has become the Internet’s favourite shop

In the first six months of TikTok Shop’s existence, the new online retail platform has been flooded with a plethora of products. More than 729,000 units of a $5.35 “car freshener” with a “barbershop” or “fruity cereal” scent and more than 150,000 units of an $18 “3D Dragon Egg Surprise” have been sold. TikTok Shop is already approaching $4 billion in annual revenue according to YipItData, which would put it on par with Abercrombie & Fitch, which made $4.28 billion last year.

The most successful products in the TikTok Shop tend to be clothing, beauty or health products. A $25 bottle of 60 capsules of “MultiMineral Sea Moss“ has sold more than 205,000 times; a $14 “hair detangling brush“ has reached more than 853,000 units sold. But most importantly, they’re cheap. Two brothers from Brooklyn have made more than $1 million in revenue selling homemade turmeric and lemon soap in just five months.

Virality is built into the app itself, but TikTok Shop has also incentivised other creators to leverage the traction of a successful product by selling it themselves, in exchange for a commission on each sale. That, in turn, fuels success. “It’s a more democratic and much more chaotic reinvention of QVC,” wrote Dan Frommer, retail analyst and editor of The New Consumer, in a recent story. You can read the full review on Forbes.co.uk.

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