Amanda Perelli/Business Insider.
TikTok's second Black Friday in the US shows it's starting to drive real holiday spending, even though it remains a small fraction of overall e-commerce activity.
On Friday, the company drove over $100 million in US sales on its e-commerce platform Shop, a company spokesperson told Business Insider. Shoppers tuned into over 30,000 live-selling sessions on the app that day, with the content creator and Canvas Beauty founder Stormi Steele earning $2 million in a single livestream, the spokesperson said. A representative for Canvas Beauty confirmed the livestream figure and said the company sold over 100,000 products and grossed more than $3 million across all sales during Black Friday.
Live shopping is a major focus at TikTok. The company has been pushing its sellers and creators to test out the format, which drives billions in sales in more established social-shopping markets like China.
Nico Le Bourgeois, TikTok Shop's head of US operations, told BI in late October that he hoped live shopping would break through this holiday season.
"We want people to discover new products," Le Bourgeois said. "To be surprised. To feel like shopping can be different. And as a part of that, if we can have many customers shop in live and realize that this is really cool, I think we will have done a good job."
The most popular Black Friday product categories were fashion, beauty, and home, the TikTok spokesperson said. Other top sellers on TikTok Shop's Black Friday were Tarte Cosmetics and lifestyle retailer Miniso, they added.
Overall, TikTok's sales were a small piece of the holiday shopping pie. Black Friday sales in the US hit $10.8 billion on Friday, a roughly 10% increase from 2023, according to Adobe Analytics.
Last year, across the full US holiday shopping season, Amazon drove around $104 billion in US holiday sales, while Walmart hit about $20 billion in US e-commerce sales during that holiday period, according to eMarketer estimates.
TikTok Shop is still a relative newcomer in the e-commerce world, having launched in the US in the fall of 2023. Established retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target, which offered millions of holiday deals throughout November, likely drove a good chunk of overall US Black Friday activity.
Still, TikTok has been gaining traction in the US in recent months, particularly among young adults. The company invested heavily in its product over the last two years. Its parent company, ByteDance, likely hopes to replicate the social-shopping success of TikTok's sister app in China, Douyin, which drives billions in annual sales.
TikTok did not release US Black Friday sales data last year. But sellers told BI that some smaller and midsize brands saw big returns during the holiday event, while some larger brands were hesitant to test out a new platform during a critical earnings period.
In 2024, TikTok appears to have drawn in a wider variety of sellers to join its holiday push, which runs between November 13 and 28. TikTok Shop featured holiday discounts from brands like electronics maker Phillips, Fenty Beauty, and Maybelline NY, for example.
Ultimately, TikTok's e-commerce momentum could be abruptly cut off if the company ends up being sold or removed from app stores in early 2024 due to a law set by Congress that comes due in January.
