TikTok Shop Fails To Attract US Sellers

John W Hayes
4 min readApr 19, 2023
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

According to media reports, TikTok’s online shopping service in the US is failing to attract sellers in significant numbers. Despite attracting hundreds of registrations from interested parties when it first launched in November 2022, it is suggested that fewer than 100 retailers are actively selling on the platform.

TikTok Shop: The Opportunity

On paper, TikTok looks like a fantastic sales opportunity. The social media platform recently celebrated that 150 million Americans (nearly half the nation’s population) are now on TikTok. TikTok also claims the app is now home to almost 5 million businesses that use the platform for marketing their services.

The platform is particularly attractive to businesses targeting younger audiences. According to Jungle Scout, more Gen Z consumers (43%) start their online shopping searches on TikTok than on Google or another search engine.

TikTok also makes it incredibly easy to sign-up for the service, promising to set sellers up for business on the platform within one day.

The fact that TikTok only allows US-registered businesses to sell in its US store, effectively blocking foreign sellers from flooding the market with cheap products as happens on eBay and Amazon, should be seen as a huge incentive to engage with the…

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John W Hayes

Marketing Strategist, Author of #BecomingTHEExpert, Content Marketing Trainer, and Cyclist. Check out my author profile: https://amzn.to/2OO5DR5