(NEXSTAR) – Where can you buy a new pair of trendy sunglasses, an influencer-branded skincare line and a foldable chair that fits in your palm (for 27 cents!)? TikTok Shop, the online marketplace where you can buy useful kitchen tools or useless tchotchkes with a quick click, is increasingly where folks are spending their money.
TikTok cites research from 2024 proclaiming TikTok Shop was the fastest-growing online retailer last year.
In some ways, the platform works like other major e-tailers like Amazon. You can search for specific products, read reviews, and purchase products that get shipped straight to your door. But the social media side of TikTok makes the shopping experience very different from Amazon.
TikTok users can buy products they see in creators’ videos and livestreams. One example displayed on TikTok Shop’s site shows a creator doing a makeup tutorial. Users can click a “shop” icon to purchase any or all of the makeup products and tools used in the video.
While TikTok is the marketplace, it’s not the manufacturer. The products on its platform come from all sorts of places. Some you may have heard of – like Nike, Benefit Cosmetics and Crocs – but other products come from “foreign shops that have a hodgepodge of items,” as TikTok personality Alyssa Pannozzi put it to the New York Times.
Some of the products are drop-shipped, the same business model that cheap Chinese retailers Shein and Temu rely on. What that means is the seller doesn’t maintain an inventory of the product they’re selling. Say you buy a dress from a business that uses drop-shipping. The business won’t have the dress in your size waiting in a warehouse somewhere. Instead, once you place the order, they notify the supplier, which will fulfill the order and ship it to you.
Is TikTok Shop be impacted by tariffs?
Because some of the products sold on TikTok Shop are made abroad, like in China, they’d be subject to any tariffs on imported goods the U.S. government has in place.
While the sky-high tariffs on Chinese imports are currently on pause, lowered from 145% to 30%, there is uncertainty about how things may change over the next few months. While peak tariffs were in place, TikTokers were making videos showing how much more expensive goods sold on the platform had gotten.
There’s another looming issue for TikTok Shop: the legal ban on the entire TikTok app that’s supposed to be going into place. President Donald Trump has deferred the ban twice, but the law Congress passed to ban the app has not been overturned.
At publication time, the ban was postponed until mid-June, but it could be postponed again.
