As a part of its expanded effort to get extra folks shopping for merchandise within the app, TikTok is providing retailers a raft of incentives for the vacation season, starting from overlaying the prices of supply, to important money incentives, based mostly on gross sales progress.
Certainly, TikTok is reportedly providing some TikTok Store retailers as much as $20k in incentives based mostly on gross sales progress within the app.
That is all a part of TikTok’s main push to transform the platform into an eCommerce superpower, re-creating the identical path to success that the app noticed in China, with the native model of the app.
On Douyin, the China-only model of TikTok, reside procuring, particularly, has been an enormous winner, with the platform producing $US490 billion in gross merchandise gross sales in 2024. Douyin has expanded its in-stream gross sales to all components of procuring, together with groceries, meal supply, and extra.
That’s made the platform a key ingredient within the lives of thousands and thousands of younger Chinese language customers, and solidified Douyin as a necessary app, past simply trending video clips.
However what’s been much more spectacular right here is Douyin’s speedy ascent, with the platform going from just about no commerce exercise in any respect within the app in 2019, to that $US490 consequence final yr. That’s the template that father or mother firm ByteDance has been working from in its efforts with TikTok, nevertheless Western shoppers have been much less eager to combine procuring into their TikTok stream.
However there are indicators that issues are altering on this respect.
In accordance with experiences, TikTok Store noticed a significant gross sales improve in Q3, placing the app on monitor to publish a large leap in total gross sales quantity for the yr.
As reported by Digiday:
“Between September 2023 to August 2024, TikTok Store recorded $1.1 billion in gross merchandise worth (GMV), and shifted round 67 million items of inventory, in accordance with knowledge from Appeal.io. This elevated to $2.5 billion GMV and round 139 million items of inventory between September 2024 and August 2025.”
So although it’s not reaching the heights of Douyin, TikTok store gross sales are more and more steadily, and TikTok’s hoping that it will ultimately allow it to duplicate its procuring success in Western markets.
Although its slower progress has annoyed its Chinese language administration, who’ve typically blamed variations in Western work tradition for slowing its eCommerce growth.
Although the variation appears principally aligned with broader cultural variations, with Chinese language customers displaying a higher desire for built-in apps, which allow them to undertake a spread of duties on one platform, whereas Western customers appear extra content material to maintain social/leisure and procuring apps separate.
These traces are blurring over time, as demonstrated by Pinterest as properly, however they’re unlikely to duplicate Chinese language app adoption developments for a while but.
Which can probably proceed to frustrate TikTok possession, even when it does see a significant gross sales increase this yr.
TikTok’s future within the U.S. may even play a key half. America is TikTok’s greatest income market, and if the app is ultimately banned within the U.S., that’ll put an enormous dent in TikTok’s world procuring takeover plan.
So what does that imply for TikTok sellers? Effectively, for now at the least, TikTok clearly stays targeted on boosting gross sales, and selling gross sales within the app, which suggests extra alternative for retailers seeking to faucet into this push.
But when TikTok’s administration continues to be annoyed by gradual progress, compared to Douyin, and TikTok suffers restrictions in overseas markets, that might have an effect on this ingredient. Which might see much less deal with in-stream procuring, although it’s growing gross sales year-over-year.
