TikTok ready to challenge Shein and Temu in American e-commerce
TikTok is ready to launch an e-commerce business for US consumers. The social media platform will compete with Chinese-founded shopping platforms such as Temu and Shein in the United States.
After the challenge launched to Threads and Twitter-X with text-only posts, TikTok is preparing for another race, that of e-commerce.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the popular social app owned by the Chinese ByteDance wants to sell Made in China products to Americans. Its Chinese equivalent Douyin already has an e-commerce business in China, Reuters recalls.
Now TikTok will try to replicate the success of other famous shopping platforms founded in China such as Shein and Temu, grabbing a share of the global e-commerce market starting from the US one.
The company had already quietly launched TikTok Shop , the app's e-commerce business, in the US last November. But TikTok Shop focuses on enabling small to medium-sized local sellers to sell goods to TikTok users in their regions.
TikTok's move to grow its US e-commerce business comes at a complicated time in the country. The social media platform is facing intense scrutiny from US officials over data security concerns.
All the details.
TIKTOK'S NEW MOVES IN E-COMMERCE
TikTok is set to launch an e-commerce business in the US to sell products made in China to consumers. The video-sharing platform will make the program available in its largest market in early August.
As the Journal explains, TikTok's initiative is similar to Amazon's "Sold by Amazon" and will handle warehousing, shipping, marketing, transactions, logistics and after-sales services for manufacturers and merchants in China.
THE DIFFERENCE WITH TIKTOK SHOP
Actually, as mentioned at the outset, TikTok has already kicked off e-commerce with TikTok Shop running in the US, UK, and Asia, but the new initiative is markedly different from the new program. TikTokShop aims to replicate China's $400 billion live-streaming shopping industry outside the mainland.
However, TikTok Shop transactions don't bring dollars to TikTok. Sellers host shopping broadcasts on the platform, but consumers ultimately have to check out via brand websites, and third-party shipping partners fulfill the orders.
For the new e-commerce project, TikTok is buying its own inventory and running its own logistics network, Quartz points out. With the new initiative, TikTok aims to increase the total amount of goods transactions on the platform from $5 billion last year to $20 billion this year, the Journal notes.
THE CHALLENGE TO SHEIN AND TEMU
Hence, TikTok will take on fellow US-based Chinese shopping platforms Shein and Temu, which have offered online shoppers incredibly low prices and a wide variety of choices.
Temu, a Chinese-owned retailer based in Boston, has seen greater success this year thanks to a popular Super Bowl ad and TikTok exposure. Meanwhile, Shein has become one of the most popular clothing brands in the world. The platform earned $100 billion from sales in 2022. But that success hasn't come without criticism, Forbes recalls. The fast fashion empire of which Shein is a major player has also faced criticism for its environmental impact, as well as worker protections.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia-on-demand/tiktok-pronta-a-sfidare-shein-e-temu-nelle-commerce-americano/ on Thu, 27 Jul 2023 11:57:22 +0000.