According to the latest data released by app analysis company AppMagic, in 2023, TikTok was downloaded 1 billion times on the App Store and Google Play Store, far ahead of other competitors and becoming the most downloaded application last year. Since its launch in 2016, TikTok has been downloaded 5.17 billion times. The huge native traffic pool has provided fertile soil for the rapid growth of TikTok e-commerce. Nowadays, the overseas live streaming e-commerce led by TikTok is in the period of dividend explosion, especially after the full opening of small stores in the United States, competing in the TikTok e-commerce track has become a new trend.
In recent years, China's live streaming e-commerce industry has experienced explosive growth, rapidly developing and growing into a mature and large market. The wave of nationwide live streaming has spawned a large number of top live streaming anchors, such as "Douyin's No. 1" Xiao Yangge and Dongfang Zhenxuan's Dong Yuhang. Now, with the rise of overseas live streaming e-commerce, domestic live streaming leaders have begun to change their direction and compete on the international stage to grab this sky-high wealth. Crazy Xiao Yangge, a Tik Tok celebrity with more than 100 million fans, once said in the live broadcast room in April last year: set up a global headquarters and sell goods on TikTok to make money from foreigners. It is reported that in order to realize its global ambitions, it opened a branch in Hangzhou to integrate high-quality resources, established a global headquarters, and entered TikTok to start live e-commerce business. Less than a year later, Crazy Xiao Yangge's blueprint for global e-commerce has been put into practice: On January 15, a video from the Douyin account "TikTok Business Department (Three Sheep)" showed that Xiao Yangge's company Three Sheep Network has recently started its overseas sales layout, with Singapore as the first stop. The sales model is to empower live streaming with overseas influencers, and most of the brands sold are local Chinese brands. In response to this, the Three Sheep Company said that the account is the company's official account, that overseas sales have indeed been started, and that it has recently completed overseas live broadcasts in Singapore, and is gradually beginning to expand to more countries. In addition to Crazy Little Yang Ge, another top live streaming e-commerce company, Oriental Selection, is also accelerating its overseas expansion plans. As early as 2022, there were reports in the industry that Dongfang Zhenxuan would enter TikTok's live e-commerce platform. On January 17, 2023, Tianyancha showed that Dongfang Zhenxuan's parent company had applied to register multiple "EAST BUY" trademarks. At the same time, Sun Dongxu, the former CEO of Dongfang Zhenxuan, also mentioned that Dongfang Zhenxuan had registered the EASTBUY trademark in many places to prepare for its overseas expansion. Now that 2024 has just begun, its overseas business has finally made substantial progress. According to the Times Weekly, Dongfang Zhenxuan has recently started recruiting TikTok-related positions including content operations manager, business manager, operations manager and TikTok overseas store operations, with monthly salaries ranging from 20,000 to 40,000 yuan. At present, the domestic live e-commerce market is huge, but with the influx of thousands of brands, MCNs, etc., it is inevitably facing the challenges of intensified competition and peak growth. In contrast, the overseas e-commerce ecosystem is gradually improving, and the live streaming market is still uncertain, providing the industry with a new stage to leverage growth. It is foreseeable that with the rapid development of TikTok e-commerce and domestic brands and MCNs competing in this field one after another, the potential of the overseas live streaming e-commerce market will be further released.
In 2023, with the full opening of small stores in the United States, TikTok's e-commerce has ushered in explosive growth. According to reports, TikTok's GMV in the United States has exceeded 14 million US dollars per day, and it is expected that the daily GMV in the United States will reach 100-200 million US dollars in 2024, and the United States alone will contribute about 30 billion US dollars in sales. There are also reports that TikTok e-commerce has set a GMV target of US$50 billion for 2024, and plans to expand the scale of its e-commerce business in the United States tenfold on Amazon's territory. It is learned that the current TikTokShop in the US is mainly divided into three modes. The first is a local store, which must have a US business license and meet local delivery requirements; the second is a cross-border store, which is mainly for merchants with an annual GMV of more than US$2 million on Amazon and brands going overseas; the third is full hosting, which provides one-stop operation and hosting services for cross-border merchants. With the development of TikTok's e-commerce system, a new round of development is sweeping in. According to feedback from many parties, the industry has recently set off a wave of TikTok store registration. A seller revealed, "TikTok in the US has been really crazy recently. Some big guys bought more than 500 accounts at once, and they all sold various high-profit products. They made a lot of money." It is reported that the seller has also entered the TikTok full-hosting model. Some products were sold out as soon as they were put on the shelves, and the number of orders even exceeded that of Amazon and other platforms. The inventory was sold out directly, resulting in a shortage of goods at one point. Judging from the feedback from sellers, the advantage of TikTok stores lies in the fact that they are backed by a huge traffic pool, which gives products more exposure opportunities. In addition, under the trend of multi-channel layout in the industry, the interest e-commerce track to which it belongs has formed a clear differentiation from traditional third-party e-commerce. In addition, the platform is in its early stages of development, with strong policy support and dividends being released, thus creating new growth opportunities for overseas merchants. But on the other hand, there are also many traps hidden behind the trend. In the early stages of its development, TikTok focused on low entry barriers and low-price sales. While it gained momentum quickly, it also led to a mix of good and bad businesses, uneven quality of merchants, and rampant counterfeit and shoddy products. Compared with platforms such as Amazon, it still has a long way to go to build a business environment and cultivate customer trust. In addition, as the platform continues to grow and develop, the model of burning money for growth is not a long-term solution. To this end, TikTokShop began to reduce subsidies and increase a number of fees. It is reported that starting from April 1, 2024, the commission rate for small store sellers in the United States will increase from the original 2% to 6%; starting from July 1, the commission rate will be further increased to 8%. Compared with established giants such as Amazon, TikTokShop is still very young. Although a large number of sellers have already tried it, whether it can still shine after the current wave of dividends recedes can only be answered by TikTokShop itself.
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