The US government has repeatedly issued TikTok "bans", and the president of Toutiao has transferred to TikTok e-commerce

Under the attack of Amazon's account suspension, many Chinese sellers began to deploy multiple channels in the first half of this year, exploring more possibilities outside of Amazon. Under this circumstance, Amazon's US market share was once dominated by US sellers.

However, by the end of this year, Chinese sellers' market share on Amazon has rebounded again. Despite the increasing challenges facing Amazon's operations, it remains the e-commerce platform with the greatest development potential.

In fact, since 2022, many new cross-border platforms have emerged in the industry, including rising stars such as TikTok Shop and Temu, which have also attracted many overseas players to compete. However, cross-border business is unpredictable, and while new platforms bring new opportunities, they also contain more risks and challenges.

Currently, TikTok has more than 1.5 billion monthly active users. According to the latest report from DataAI, TikTok's in-app spending will exceed the $6 billion mark in 2022 and exceed $10 billion in 2023. However, TikTok, which is now taking off at a high speed, has repeatedly faced the risk of being banned in the United States.

As TikTok continues to expand its business in the United States, the US government has been emphasizing strengthening supervision of TikTok. Not long ago, US congressmen proposed a TikTok ban, and recently, the Biden administration once again forced ByteDance to sell TikTok's US business.

Faced with the relentless pressure from the U.S. government, TikTok chose to bet on and continuously increase its e-commerce business. After a series of layoffs and reorganizations, it launched a small store in the United States on the eve of Double Eleven.

Of course, despite ByteDance's high hopes, TikTok's overseas e-commerce is still in its early stages of development. In order to further accelerate its development, ByteDance is also deploying troops and generals.

According to a recent report by LatePost, Kevin Chen, the head of Toutiao, will be transferred to TikTok e-commerce as the head of product and data science. After the transfer, he will report to Kang Zeyu, the head of TikTok e-commerce business.

It is reported that Chen Xi joined ByteDance at the end of 2020 and previously served as the head of Douyin Volcano Edition. In early 2021, he succeeded Zhu Wenjia as the president of Toutiao.

At present, TikTok's e-commerce business has expanded to seven countries and regions including Indonesia and the United Kingdom, and is expected to further expand into markets such as Spain and Brazil in 2023.

According to reports, ByteDance plans to achieve a GMV target of 3 trillion yuan for TikTok e-commerce within five years. However, in fact, while TikTok's e-commerce business is booming, it is also facing multiple challenges such as cross-cultural conflicts, political crises, and the impact of competitors. The pressure of performance growth is heavy.

To this end, TikTok urgently needs more outstanding talents to promote the accelerated formation of its e-commerce business. In the past few months, TikTok's European and American businesses have laid off nearly 100 employees, including more than 20 senior executives. Some other senior executives have been transferred to other departments to take charge of TikTok Shop business.

At the same time, ByteDance has also continuously dispatched many domestic executives to support overseas e-commerce business. According to reports, while the founder of ByteDance is in charge of multiple businesses, he has focused on TikTok e-commerce. Kang Zeyu, head of Douyin e-commerce, Hua Wei, head of ByteDance human resources, and Han Shangyou, general manager of Douyin, have all invested in the relevant organizational construction of TikTok e-commerce.

The digital security allegations faced by TikTok in the United States remain severe. In order to maintain long-term healthy development, it urgently needs to open up e-commerce as a breakthrough.

At present, TikTok Shop has been launched in Indonesia, the United Kingdom, the United States and other regions. The live streaming sales model has also injected new vitality into the development of local e-commerce. More and more cross-border merchants are using TikToK e-commerce as a new operating channel.

However, compared with mature overseas e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, TikTok e-commerce currently lacks a complete logistics and supply chain system, and the platform mechanism is not yet perfect. Therefore, current TikTok sellers still face many development difficulties.

"As far as we know, in the United States, there are still very few categories of products that make money on TikTok stores, and the advertising data is not ideal. Although the traffic is considerable, most users come with a playful mentality, so the conversion rate is extremely poor," a TikTok seller revealed.

The biggest problem facing TikTok e-commerce at this stage is its weak monetization ability. Overseas, consumers have not yet formed a mindset for live shopping, and most viewers in the live broadcast room just watch but do not buy, so even if low-priced products are used to attract traffic and increase conversion, the effect is very average.

A seller reported that TikTok's live broadcast room conversion rate is around 3%, which is basically in the upper circle. Some live broadcast rooms have a click-through rate of more than 50%, but the conversion rate is only 2%, and the GMV is only around 7k.

Another key problem is that the platform's rules are not perfect. It is reported that TikTok's performance rules often change, and the calculation method lacks precision, which affects the performance evaluation of many sellers. In addition, the platform's review mechanism has also been criticized, and sellers are often misjudged and the links are often suspended.

Moreover, TikTok's logistics service also has many drawbacks. Not only is the delivery time not guaranteed, but also there are frequent accidents of lost items, which leads to sellers receiving negative reviews and complaints from consumers. The official customer service also lacks professionalism in after-sales service.

Some sellers believe that TikTok e-commerce is still in the initial exploration stage and needs to gradually cultivate users' consumption habits. Therefore, it is not recommended to invest heavily at this stage, and it is not too late to enter the market when the time is right.

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