NEW YORK — Last week, The Business of Beauty and TikTok Shop gathered magnificence business executives, buyers and market consultants in New York for a breakfast held underneath Chatham House Rule to chart the subsequent part of social commerce in magnificence.
In 2025, TikTok Shop gross sales are up 120 p.c year-over-year. Ok-Beauty manufacturers together with Medicube, TirTir, Dr. Groot, and Dr. Melaxin have discovered explicit success with TikTok-first approaches, cultivating devoted US followings and reaching 132 p.c year-over-year gross sales progress on the platform.
Behind these success tales is a structural shift in magnificence commerce. On TikTok Shop, the normal funnel from consciousness to consideration to buy has compressed right into a single second — a client discovers a product of their feed and buys it with out leaving the app. The platform’s US gross sales grew 500 p.c in 2024, and doubled once more within the first half of 2025, making it the eighth-largest magnificence retailer within the US and the UK’s fourth-largest, based on NielsenIQ.
According to The State of Fashion: Beauty report by BoF and McKinsey & Company, social commerce is a core gross sales channel for 31 p.c of magnificence executives and utilized by an additional 21 p.c of executives as a non-core channel. However, success on TikTok Shop requires greater than model presence — it calls for the correct product combine, new creator partnerships and a complete platform technique.
“TikTok Shop is different because it’s a three-sided marketplace with manufacturers, creators and users. It feels very different from the traditional brand-retailer world,” mentioned Ajay Salpekar, basic supervisor of magnificence at TikTok Shop, in his welcoming remarks. “My team and I have to bring a beginner mindset to work each day because of the pace at which the platform is evolving. We empathise with brands trying to figure out a new and different digital platform [TikTok Shop]. The ones that do well here have that same beginner’s mindset.”
BoF’s director of content material technique Alice Gividen and content material strategist Yasmine Dahlberg have been joined by business leaders from the likes of TSG Consumer Partners, Euroitalia, Caudalie, Procter & Gamble, Elevate Beauty, Lake&Skye, Medik8, Imaginary Ventures, Ohana, Gisou, Sonoma Brands Capital, Puig, and others, who shared their learnings, challenges and strategic progress areas.
Below, BoF shares anonymised insights from the dialogue.
Approach TikTok Shop as an Ecosystem Where Marketing and Commerce Intersect
“For the first time, it feels as though independent brands actually have an advantage on a platform,” mentioned a TikTok Shop consultant, of their opening feedback. “The younger generation sees social media as their first impression of a brand and they’re craving that community and connection. Brands with strong founder stories seem to resonate on [TikTok] and followers want to support them.”
“The whole debate of ‘is it commerce?’ or ‘is it marketing?’ [is limiting]. We view it as both. You can leverage it heavily for commerce if you’re not widely distributed, or use it more for marketing depending on your distribution strategy — you can play up or down either side,” they added.
Most buyers, based on a visitor conversant in the topic, are at present telling manufacturers “to focus on channel diversification.” They added: “TikTok Shop and the whole notion of creator commerce is an incremental channel that many of them don’t necessarily have the internal capabilities and skill set to actually optimise — there’s work to be done.”
Indeed, the platform’s place within the commerce panorama is indicative of broader shifts in client behaviour. “The funnel is not dead on TikTok Shop, it’s just [compressed.] It’s a marketing, discovery and e-commerce platform all in one,” defined a TikTok Shop consultant. “The majority of purchases are from customers discovering a product for the first time — which is timely, given acquisition costs today.”
They added that client behaviour on the platform displays broader shifts in content material consumption. “Customers want to be entertained. It’s a ‘show me, don’t tell me’ approach. We’re seeing search volume increase exponentially because customers prefer to be greeted with a video rather than an article. They want to hear from peers and people who look and feel like them.”
managing director at Sonoma Brands Capital; Yasmine Dahlberg, content material strategist at The Business of Fashion; and Courtney McGuinness Somer, founder and CEO, Lake and Skye. (Zach Hilty/BFA.com/Zach Hilty/BFA.com)
Start with Hero Products, Not Your Full Catalogue
“Picking that hero product as your foot in the door to TikTok Shop feels so critical,” mentioned one visitor. “It’s the most intimidating thing — everybody knows they have to do it, but where do you start?”
Another cautioned towards merely replicating current bestsellers: “Brands are inclined to take their bestseller from other channels, but if TikTok is about discovery, you’ve got to pick something that leans into the visual aspect or the content story.”
“A lot of the time, your hero product on another retailer is not your hero on TikTok,” agreed one other visitor. “It’s usually an unsung hero. I believe it’s because you’re giving creators something to talk about that brands aren’t doing themselves on other channels. That’s the number one question: how do you get the community to talk about you?”
Another visitor countered this concept, reflecting {that a} bestseller may proceed to win on the TikTok Shop platform if the story across the product evolves. “With a bestseller, there are so many different story angles within that product alone to have creators tap into”, they mentioned. “If it’s a 15-person creator campaign, brands could have each creator focus on a different proponent.”
“Start with maybe three to five products where you think you could have a strong, compelling story, “ advised a TikTok Shop representative. “Don’t promote your entire catalogue to creators in the beginning, because you won’t get enough content to make any of them pop. The entry point for customers to discover a new brand on TikTok is often through a single product with compelling creator content.”
Let Creators Lead Storytelling for Authentic Impact
“The creators who have worked with us in the past really believe in the brand and are users of it,” mentioned one model government. “In our experience, the most effective content in terms of awareness and conversion does tend to be a creator’s organic content as opposed to paid collaboration posts with our brand. Consumers can sniff out what’s original and authentic.”
Another famous the significance of creator specialisation: “Creators who specialise in certain niches become trusted voices. Their followers say, ‘If this creator likes this, I have similar taste, so it’s right for me.’ And they’re very authentic — they’ll actually tell the audience when they don’t like something.”
“TikTok Shop affiliates are really mid to lower funnel community members,” added a TikTok Shop consultant. “They’re so savvy and close to their comments — they’ll give you real-time feedback on what their community is saying.”
Yet leveraging this authenticity requires manufacturers to essentially shift their strategy to creator partnerships. “The biggest growing pain is letting go,” admitted one government. “Not entirely of who talks about your brand — there’s still brand safety to consider — but creators are experts in their own content… Creators tell you they don’t feel seen, that they’re getting eclipsed. They’d love to come to labs, get one-sheeters on key selling points and clinical data, but how they say it, that’s their thing.”
Another visitor noticed the basic shift in creator briefs. “TikTok has transformed how we think about the creator economy. It’s gone from being prescriptive — ‘talk about this note, wear this’ — to just listening. Here’s a loose brief, here’s product info, but I want to see what you come back with.”
“If brands aren’t listening on the platform, you’ll never be successful,” they added. “You’re prescribing if you’re not listening to what the community is already saying organically about your brand. The brands that try to force a different direction will burn money, versus brands that spot something people are talking about and go with it.”
Differentiate Through Value, Not Discounts
Many visitors referenced value as a key focus space when experimenting with the platform. “We’re still trying to find the right method, messaging and creators to show our product is worth the price — particularly if they’re discovering us there for the first time,” mentioned one government. “How do we convince our shoppers that we’re worth a higher price point, if they’re immediately [scrolling] to see a product that’s a third of the price?”
“It’s really about offering something differentiated so that the creator has a hook for their content, but not necessarily a straight discount,” mentioned one visitor. “Regimen bundles, discovery sets — [consider putting] those together in an exclusive kit that has some value or a trending theme, or a gift with a purchase angle.
Another platform representative agreed. “Discounting is just one way to differentiate. For premium or prestige brands, leaning into differentiated assortments or bundles with value, as opposed to straight discounts would make more sense.”
Another referenced how suggestions from their neighborhood had led a model to make enhancements on a viral skincare product. After innovating the product, they launched “with messaging that mentioned ‘you asked, we delivered’ — they usually did an unique gift-with-purchase supply with none discounting. The model generated over 14K new short-form movies and $2 million {dollars} in gross sales throughout the first few weeks of launch [on TikTok Shop] .”
Another premium brand in fragrance also avoids traditional discounting, instead focusing on TikTok-exclusive offerings and storytelling to “drive excitement and motivate people to purchase — even without smelling the fragrance first,” shared one TikTok executive. “The brand leverages [the platform’s] live selling feature to build a community, guiding viewers through things like scent-layering routines.” This dialogue can help build a connection with customers, and support in justifying more premium price points.
Invest Strategically in Platform-Specific Tactics
“It’s not a channel for the faint of heart,” cautioned one executive. “If you’re serious, you need to lean into dedicated resources — it requires what e-commerce requires and what marketing requires.”
Another admitted to learning this lesson the hard way: “We had very mixed results because we didn’t prepare properly and treat it like truly a new growth channel with a different model. We’re working to change that approach now.”
A third shared a similar experience. “We had scaled back our spend on TikTok Shop because I think we were almost too early to the space. Many consumers were reaching out to us asking if it was our real product. This is the risk of a half-hearted approach. As we reinvest, we’re thinking about how we show up.”
“If you’re ready for TikTok Shop, you need to be fully committed,” advised a TikTok Shop representative. “For marketing campaigns and advertising on the platform, we focus on what we call the ACE framework: Assortment, Content, and Empowerment. Assortment means identifying hero products that stand out; Content involves collaborating with creators aligned with your vertical; and Empowerment requires investing in advertising to drive brand awareness and conversion.”
Guests reflected on how building a successful strategy on the platform follows a clear progression. “Beginning with the product strategy — investing your resources into one or two products, then building bundles around those things — feels pretty [unique] to the platform,” said one guest. “Everything from there is building that creator community.”
A TikTok representative pointed to K-Beauty as a prime example of this committed approach in action. “K-Beauty brands have tapped into TikTok Shop’s ability to combine brand awareness marketing with e-commerce and are strategically using the platform to enter the US market,” they said.
“Championing products with innovative hero ingredients such as PDRN, or visually-compelling textures that stand out in content, has led to a viral phenomenon that has generated over 740,000 new #K-Beauty short videos in Q3 2025 alone – over 97 percent quarter over quarter.”
As the conversation drew to a close, attendees reflected on the next wave of strategic innovation, emphasising the need to bring the impact of physical brand events into digital spaces. “So many of our most iconic touchpoints happen in real life. We’re now asking: which platforms will help us recreate these moments at scale?”
“The entertainment aspect of it all is so critical for us. If discovery and [conversion] are collapsing into a single moment, we have to be excellent at storytelling at the point of [purchase], concluded one guest. “That means leaning into brand and product stories — this is where we’ll be focusing next year.”
This is a sponsored function paid for by TikTok Shop as half of a BoF partnership.