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TikTok has been making great strides as a video-sharing app, but it’s looking to expand. After trying to bring an online shopping experience to the States via live streams, the company is back with another e-commerce idea. According to Semafor (via Engadget) TikTok is working on bringing an online store.
The video-sharing app was able to combine e-commerce and shopping in other markets. Creators would hold live streams, and viewers would be able to buy items that they promote.
This is an interesting idea that the company was looking to bring to the States. However, it was not able to gain much traction. The company swiftly discontinued this initiative.
Now, TikTok could bring an online store
According to the report, TikTok is readying to launch a dedicated online store for the US audience. The company already has tried e-commerce initiatives in the past, but this one will be different. Before, TikTok would just link customers to other stores where they could buy products. Those stores would handle the shipping and handling of the item.
For this new TikTok store, all of that will be handled by TikTok. There is even talk about TikTok planning on developing fulfillment centers so that it could handle the products. This would put TikTok in competition with services like Amazon and eBay.
At this point, there’s still a lot of information in the air. We’re not sure what kind of items we should expect from the store. We can expect TikTok-branded merchandise, of course. While that may be the case, we can’t rule out the company partnering with different brands to sell their items on the platform. Who knows if TikTok will partner with small businesses as well?
We’re also not sure when the company is going to launch this store. The rumor has it that it could launch as soon as next month. That’s not a long time to wait seeing as it’s already June 28th.
TikTok will be launching this store on shaky ground. The company is still at war with the American government. The US is still pushing to ban the app over national security concerns. We’ll just have to wait to see how this pans out.