Small Businesses Are Making Serious Sales on TikTok, Thanks to a New Feature

Small Businesses Are Making Serious Sales on TikTok, Thanks to a New Feature

If you've yet to take your business to TikTok, you may be missing out on a serious sales opportunity. 

You already know the video-sharing app, which recently broke a billion, mostly Gen-Z users is popular, but you may not know that it also recently expanded into social commerce. In late August, Shopify became the first commerce platform to partner with TikTok to launch in-app shopping. A month later,  Square announced a similar partnership. Both integrations, currently in beta testing, will allow businesses that use the platforms to seamlessly link their products in videos on TikTok, where viewers can shop them directly without having to visit a web browser. 

Businesses can request access to the features by applying via Shopify's TikTok and Square's website, respectively. Similar shopping functions exist on social networks like Facebook and Instagram, but even businesses that have used these features say that they don't quite compare to the fast customer growth they've seen from TikTok.

"We saw an immediate response," says Kyle Jiang, founder of the San Francisco-based, Gen Z-focused skincare brand Juno & Co., which started using the Shopify integration as soon as it launched. "Our sales on TikTok are 10 times what we've gained from Instagram and Facebook." 

Jessica Thompson, founder of the Dexter, Michigan-based zero waste consumer