TikTok Shop is launching to users in France, Germany, and Italy today, expanding its reach further in Europe as it faces a potential ban in the US if ByteDance does not find (or agree to) an American buyer.
Jan Wilk, head of operations at TikTok Shop UK said:
“My own expectation for Europe is to launch with more speed than we did in the UK, because in the UK four years ago this model was very new, we had to do a lot of education, we had to try out a lot of things to get the right fit.”
TikTok shared that it's already got big sellers onboard in its new territories, including the supermarket chain Carrefour in France and the fast-fashion retailer AboutYou and cosmetics brand Cosnova in Germany.
TikTok Shop first began piloting live shopping features in Indonesia as far back as 2021 before expanding its e-commerce tests to Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia in early 2022. That same year, TikTok Shop launched officially in Indonesia and began beta testing in the UK. It was officially launched to the US market in September 2023.
In China, the local version of TikTok called Douyin generated $490B in GMV in 2024, versus TikTok's $30B last year.
But it's not good enough…
Business Insider reported last week that ByteDance leaders are unhappy with the state of TikTok's US e-commerce business, according to nine current and former employees. The app's shopping division failed to hit its goals in the US last year, and leadership is cracking down, singling out the US team as underperforming.
Although the company regularly reports its e-commerce wins, including crossing $100M in single-day sales on Black Friday, behind-the-scenes ByteDance is broadly unsatisfied with US e-commerce performance. Staffers say that no matter how hard they work, they can never achieve what they feel are unattainable goals set by the company.