TikTok UNHAPPY

 

SINGAPORE—As TikTok pushes to expand its e-commerce business globally, the viral short-video app is turning to a group of sellers for help: Chinese merchants.

TikTok is hoping such vendors will expand its online retail offerings. However, the app’s background as a haven for catchy dances and lip syncs has confounded even experienced sellers, more accustomed to retailing on traditional shopping platforms such as Amazon.com.

Lina Pan, a 46-year-old Chinese merchant based in Chaozhou, southern China, sold soap dispensers and shampoo bottles through a store she set up on TikTok. She paid $4,300 for access to a seven-hour prerecorded class, in which the instructor promised to unveil the secrets to “earning millions” on TikTok.

The course led her to post videos dishing out household tips, such as using Coca-Cola to remove stains from toilet bowls and frying pans and nifty ways to slice up pineapples.The millions didn’t materialize.

“Selling on TikTok is just not as easy as I thought it would be,” said Pan, who shut her store after five months of trying.

In September, TikTok expanded the e-commerce service TikTok Shop to all of its 150 million users in the U.S., the app’s largest market, after testing the service with select users there for months. In August, TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, started allowing China-based sellers to open storefronts on the app in the U.S. market.

It also has been testing a new business model of selling products on behalf of Chinese vendors, a model similar to Amazon’s “Sold by Amazon” program, putting it in competition with popular shopping platforms such as Shein and Temu.

ByteDance executives bet that online shopping, driven by its powerful algorithm, will become the company’s new growth engine, aiming to quadruple global transactions on TikTok to $20 billion this year from less than $5 billion last year.

To bridge the cultural divide, TikTok has shared memos with Chinese merchants explaining customer lifestyles and habits in the U.S. and other markets, as well as offered free classes to help vendors onboard.

Outside the company, a cottage industry of third-party agencies has mushroomed in China, offering to help merchants like Pan start and succeed in selling on the app. TikTok isn’t available in China, and Chinese sellers have to use software tools that mask their IP addresses to access the platform.

Some agencies charge as much as $20,000 to join learning trips to visit factories in popular Chinese manufacturing hubs, and to attend networking sessions for the chance to meet privately with advisers.

Despite China’s rich experience as the factory floor of the world, businesses are finding that selling on TikTok isn’t as straightforward.

Learning to navigate marketing on social media, picking the right products and avoiding cultural faux pas are all part of the challenges faced by Chinese merchants. Some of the vendors also say their margins are being squeezed by TikTok’s desire to compete with low-price platforms Shein and Temu in online retail.

Yang Guang, a maker of towels and mops, hired a former saleswoman at Beijing’s Silk Street market—a shopping area known for catering to foreign tourists—to sell his products via livestreaming on TikTok. He was impressed by her English-speaking capabilities.

After months of trying, sales from the channel were weak. His saleswoman was too traditional, pitching products just like an infomercial, said the businessman from Nantong in eastern China.

“Consumers on TikTok want to be entertained,” said Yang. “A K-pop dance may be more likely to keep them in the livestreaming room.”

Shoppers in China are accustomed to turning to livestreams for e-commerce, said Liu Yiwei, who runs an agency of 14 lifestyle influencers helping Chinese vendors sell inside the country through Alibaba Group’s online marketplace Taobao and outside the country through TikTok.

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