TikTok Shop is the hottest thing happening in retail and marketing

So TikTok is a lot bigger, and more important than most of you probably realize.

To many of you it’s “that thing with the shopping cart icon.” It’s a feature of Tiktok. You see people shilling products, and swipe on by.

But it’s WAY bigger than you think. It’s a store. A big one.

Projections have TikTok Shop doing roughly $23 billion in sales this year. A 48% increase over 2025. For some context, that’s about the same as 7-11 does nationally, and double what Ulta does.

It’s the fastest growing online retailer nationally by a wide margin, for the second year in a row.

Ok you get it. It’s big and growing. So what effect is having? Well brands are starting to shift focus from their own direct to consumer (DTC) sites to Tiktok shop

Overall ecommerce that runs through brands’ own sites has stopped growing.

But it makes sense. Think about it. They’re spending a significant amount of time, energy and dollars to build a site, CRM plan, influencer network, meta ad campaign etc, when Tiktok has all those things in one place, and it’s booming

I’m not going to tell you brands are shutting down their websites. They’re not. But the energy is shifting, and it isn’t to a site redesign.

Sales from brands doing over $30 million a year grew 97% on TikTok Shop last year. Over Black Friday weekend alone TikTok says the platform cleared half a billion dollars in four days.

Retail buyers are watching.

Behave is a candy brand that launched on TikTok Shop in spring of last year and sold out in 3 days. The founder had been cold emailing Target’s candy buyer with nothing to show for it. After the sellout, she got a reply. Behave went into about 2,000 Target stores this April. She said the company had roughly 60 days of cash left the summer before.

Sacheu Beauty has the same story on a bigger scale. 800 million views on one product(!!!). TikTok Shop grew into about a third of the business. They did $85 million in 2025 and they’re now in over a thousand Ulta doors and roughly 1,600 Targets.

No one at Target is saying that this is how it works. But I’ve personally seen it at TONE when Carpe launched as a competitor in Target. They came from Tiktok shop and CRUSHED it in store. We were shocked. But it makes sense. If you’re a buyer deciding whether to hand somebody placement in 2,000 stores, you want proof. A brand that’s selling on the hottest social network with a army of affiliate’s shilling your product is a nice bet.

TikTok Shop has turned into the audition for prime time.

Ok so let’s say you’re an established brand, you can’t just take the products you already make, drop them in the shop, and expect it to work. That’s the mistake. The catalog that sells in a Target aisle was designed for a Target aisle, where somebody is already standing there holding a cart.

On TikTok nobody’s shopping. They’re scrolling. You get about a second.

So the product itself has to be the hook.

TikTok Shop’s head of food said the quiet part out loud recently. The products that work have a unique form factor or an extreme flavor. Super spicy, super sour. Something that gets a reaction on camera.

There’s a product brief there. Scroll stopping products.

She described the cycle as content trend, then fast commercialization, then longer term product development. That’s the order now. The trend comes first and the product chases it. Skittles watched popped candy trending, made a popped version, and launched it exclusively on TikTok, where the trend started. Super smart. Super focused.

Then there’s Pepsi, which just did something genuinely strange. They partnered with Glamlite on a body wash that smells like Wild Cherry Pepsi, plus a Vanilla Slushie body scrub and a couple of lip kits. Twelve dollars each. Early access on TikTok Shop. The Glamlite founder says she went through something like 3,000 scent variations to get it right.

Three thousand scent variations, for soda flavored body wash.

You can laugh at that. I kind of love it. Because nobody sat in a room and said consumers are asking for this. Somebody sat in a room and asked what would make a person stop scrolling and immediately send it to a friend.

That’s not a campaign. That’s a product decision made on marketing logic.

And that’s the shift I don’t think has sunk in yet. Product used to get developed, and then marketing showed up at the end to figure out how to sell it. Here the order flipped. The reason to film it has to be built into the thing itself. Which means the marketer needs to be in the room way earlier than they used to be

Here’s an unlock for you. I’m seeing this emerging into a real hiring trend. I remember the days of brands launching their own DTC sites. It led to CRM, growth, paid media, design, and lots of other jobs. I’m seeing this play out with Tiktok shop in a similar way, and it’s still SO EARLY.

Here’s a few roles to keep your eye on and consider:

Affiliate and creator network managers. The people who recruit and manage hundreds of small creators to sell your product. Honestly this runs almost like an MLM. You build a massive network of smaller creators, you incentize, manage, and help them grow their business with you. One brand I spoke with told me they were giving away cruises and vacations to their stop sellers.

Operations. It’s not the most glamorous but it’s real. TikTok is building actual fulfillment infrastructure and getting your products shipped in, staying in stock.

Influencer and partnership management for the bigger creators. Product launches. Ongoing big campaigns

TikTok Live, which is the one I’d point at if you only look at one. I havent spoken about this yet but Live is HUGE. Live selling needs a crew, and the crew is forming in public. Hosts are getting $25 to $100 an hour, and premium hosts pull five figures for a single event. There’s livestream moderators now, working the comments in real time. There’s live operators running the technical side, OBS, lighting, product pinning, promo timing. These are sometimes junior jobs, and anyone with some production experience could dive in.

There’s a lot more than just these. Here’s a P&G job for a “TikTok Shop Leader”. There’s also design, business operations, and a whole lot more.

I was looking to hire someone for TONE, and there' just really isnt anyone thats an expert because it hasn’t been around long enough. They just don’t really exist.

A lot of people haven’t even cracked who should even own TikTok Shop inside a company. Social team? Influencer? Growth team? It fits into a lot of buckets.

Three years from now this will be a normal department with normal hiring standards and a line of qualified people out the door.

Right now it’s just people who showed up early.

Here’s the summary. TikTok shop is hot. Brands are paying attention. Even more will be soon. Retailers are paying attention. And following all that? jobs. If you’re looking to move to what’s growing. TikTok shop is it.