TikTok Shop Sets Record Sales on Black Friday

 TikTok Shop’s record-breaking Black Friday sales plant seeds of expectation as it increasingly challenges Amazon.

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TikTok Shop’s U.S. sales surpassed $100 million across home goods, fashion, accessories, and beauty products during Black Friday, the company announced on Dec. 3.

TikTok launched the platform in September 2023 as a new feature that allows users to make purchases without having to exit the app. This year, TikTok Shop expects to double total revenue and surpass $50 billion, according to a report from market research firm EcommerceDB.

While this number falls significantly short of Amazon’s $757 billion in projected 2024 sales, the report revealed that TikTok Shop could potentially catch up to Amazon by 2033 if both companies maintain their current annual growth rates of 50% and 4%, respectively.

“We think we have a unique positioning,” TikTok Shop’s head of U.S. operations Nico Le Bourgeois told Business Insider at a company event in October. “Customers don’t search, they naturally go on TikTok to be entertained, and then they find products that at some point they find interesting, useful, and then they end up buying it.”

Unlike competitors like Amazon, Walmart and Shopify, the platform doesn’t rely on search-based shopping, where users search for products. Instead, users shop by scrolling through content and purchasing products that appear in those videos.

Millions of merchants have joined the platform with hopes to tap into TikTok’s wide user base, which now encompasses 170 million users in the U.S., according to a TikTok Shop safety report. The report also revealed that more than 500,000 U.S. sellers joined TikTok Shop within three months of its launch, boosting more than 15 million sellers worldwide over the same period.

Over the last several months, TikTok has further made efforts to better position itself against competitors like Amazon by acquiring management talent like Le Bourgeois, who previously led Amazon’s U.S. marketplace segment as director, and Marni Levine, who previously worked as vice president of global support operations at Meta and vice president of supply operations and engagement at eBay.

The growth of TikTok Shop takes place despite the nearing threat of a U.S. ban of the app that President Joe Biden passed in April 2024. The legislation requires TikTok owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform by Jan. 19 out of concerns over national security.

It remains unclear whether President-elect Donald Trump plans to carry out the ban. While he attempted to pass a similar bill during his first term, his recent Cabinet and White House staff picks largely disagree on legislation regarding the app.

“TikTok is a national security threat,” Trump’s pick for head of CIA, John Ratcliffe, told Fox Business in 2022.

“[TikTok] is the main source of news for the majority of American youth, and it is truly the bane of our society right now,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in the same interview. “It is owned by the [Chinese Communist Party]. They are pushing algorithms that are very damaging to the intellectual curiosity and to the ideology of young Americans today.”

Trump himself appears less set on his previous efforts to ban the app in 2020.

“For all of those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump,” he said in a video posted on his social media site, Truth Social, in September 2024. “The other side is closing it up, but I’m now a big star on TikTok.”