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Despite the short-term shutdown of TikTok over the weekend, sales on the TikTok Shop were not missed.
TikTok’s one-hour shutdown on January 18 and 19 did not have a negative impact on the platform’s revenue over the weekend. TikTok Shop sales actually increased in the days immediately preceding the ban, as well as the day the ban was lifted.
On January 19, the day the outage was lifted, total sales on TikTok Shop were $32,064,590, according to data shared by the e-commerce data platform. Magic — a jump of more than $500,000 from its January 18 total of $31,429,366 and a nearly $5 million week-over-week increase from its January 12 total of $27,536,680. a general increase in TikTok Shop activity that began in the run-up to the potential ban.
“It was a big problem this weekend, but thankfully it was resolved quickly,” said Jake Bjorseth, head of strategy at Gen Z marketing agency Trndsttrs. “So I don’t think in that 12-hour window our revenue has been significantly affected — but I can tell you that it has definitely affected things this year and over the last 45 to 60 days.”
For TikTok creators and sellers like Daniel “StonerGumpGossard, who told Digiday that most of his sales happen during the week, didn’t see a significant disruption to business from TikTok’s temporary shutdown over the weekend. However, when users returned to TikTok on January 19, the influx led to another immediate increase in sales, followed by a return to Gossard’s pre-shutdown cannabis cookbook sales volume.
“Today [Wednesday, Jan. 22]we just packed 37 orders [from Jan. 21]up from Monday when I was about 190,” Gossard said. He described the number of 37 orders as normal, adding that sales of his cannabis cookbooks on the TikTok Shop increased by at least 50 percent in the two weeks before the ban.
TikTok’s potential ban is a special threat to brands and content creators who have built a presence on TikTok Shop, the social commerce offering launched by TikTok in 2023. On a platform with relatively limited monetization options compared to some of its competitors, TikTok Shop represents a more concrete source of revenue for both major companies. and small makers.
Since the ban was threatened in recent weeks, TikTok Shop sellers he was stirring to preparewith some taking preemptive steps to move their retail business to alternative platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Spurred on by fears of missing out once the TikTok Shop goes away for good, consumers flooded the platform with activity in the weeks leading up to January 19.
In the week of January 5, the TikTok Shop generated $168,221,927 in sales, according to data from Charm — a significant increase from 2024’s average weekly sales of $139,172,005. In the week of January 12, immediately preceding the ban, sales totaled $200,475,975, reaching a one-day high of over $43 million on January 16. In addition to the annual increase in sales during the year-end holiday period, the week before the ban represented the TikTok Shop’s highest sales figures in 12 months.
“I think it’s just distrust and people saying, ‘Screw it, we don’t want to stop using TikTok,'” said Charm CEO Alex Nisenzon. “They didn’t change their behavior and instead doubled down a bit – that’s really evident based on the data we’ve seen.”
Aside from the fear of missing out on purchases once TikTok goes dark, one of the reasons consumers have doubled down on the platform before and after the brief ban may be the relatively deep connection between creator communities and social commerce presence. On TikTok, more than any other prominent social commerce platform, it’s easy for creators to put links to their products in video descriptions, and they believe it takes less effort to convince TikTok fans to sell.
While creators are looking for alternative social commerce platforms to replace the TikTok Shop in the event of a more permanent ban, there is no clear alternative platform at this time that would benefit the most from an actual shutdown.
“Thanks to the TikTok Shop, we’ve been able to add members to our team,” said Tiffany English, creator of TikTok and co-founder of the beverage brand The Happiest Hour, which is sold on the TikTok Shop. “They were worried about our jobs, so we said, ‘We’re going to do everything we can to replace those sales and keep you.’ But can we replace half of our sales so quickly? I don’t know.”
