TikTok Shop’s nationwide launch postponed to at least June, official denies rumors

TikTok Shop launch postponed to June, rumors denied

A TikTok spokesperson said, “The launch of TikTokShop in the United States has not been delayed. We are constantly testing and improving, and will continue to expand testing in the United States and invite more merchants to join because consumers’ interest in TikTokShop is constantly increasing.”

AMZ123 learned that TikTokShop was launched in the United States in November 2022 and was only open to a small number of invited American local sellers for testing. It was not until April of this year that TikTokShop upgraded from the Alpha version to the Beta version.

However, some facts in the Wall Street Journal report are still worth noting.

The report pointed out that the main reason for the delay in the full opening of TikTokShop is that TikTok faces the risk of being banned in the United States at any time and that American consumers have a lower acceptance of live-streaming e-commerce, which has caused merchants to be unwilling to invest too much in TikTok. The United States is TikTok’s largest market in the world, and it has been eager to find a way to monetize the huge traffic in the United States. In March of this year, TikTok stated that it had 150 million monthly active users in the United States, up from 100 million in 2020.

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Although TikTok survived the ban crisis during the Trump administration in 2020, the same crisis will reappear in 2023, and the state of Montana has passed legislation banning the use of the application on all personal devices. The Biden administration also stated that TikTok may need to sell its US business to continue operating in the United States.

In fact, not only TikTok but also many Chinese e-commerce companies that have gone to the United States have been affected by various risks such as the escalating geopolitical tensions between China and the United States. Shein and Temu have been accused in the United States.

Due to various factors, the number of American merchants joining TikTokShop is small. According to TheInformation, when TikTokShop was launched in the United States in November last year, there were hundreds of sellers who joined to sell, but as of March this year, the number of merchants actually selling in TikTok’s US store was less than 100.

This means that some merchants have chosen to exit during the operation, and the U.S. technology media “The Information” previously reported that U.S. merchants have a lower acceptance of the TikTok Shop model.

At the same time, insiders also revealed that ByteDance is reducing the team that assists Chinese merchants in selling on TikTok Shop and is committed to localizing management and staff teams to attract more high-quality local sellers.

To prevent TikTok from being banned in the United States, ByteDance has launched other applications in the United States, such as Lemon8, which is currently popular. However, as Gary Wa, a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, said, if TikTok is banned in the United States, customers will also be concerned about using other products from ByteDance.

Although the road is difficult, using TikTok to develop e-commerce in the United States is still an urgent task for ByteDance, especially in the case of the slowdown in digital advertising in the United States. E-commerce is another leg of ByteDance’s US business. In 2021, ByteDance lost more than 7 billion US dollars. Since the end of 2021, ByteDance’s efforts to improve efficiency have led to the layoffs of about 20,000 employees, but the official said that they are still recruiting.

Editor ✎ Ashley/BusinessDialogue

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