Other firms enter US market besides Amazon

Many international merchants looking to enter the U.S. market plan to launch on Amazon. However, channels such as branded ecommerce sites and TikTok Shop are increasingly offering alternatives.

A hair-care brand that launched in the U.S. in 2021 via Instagram, then added Shopify and TikTok Shop, is a prime example. The brand’s average basket is $59.

Entrepreneurial Success

For two years, the company gave products to small but specialized creators, purchased ads, and pushed affiliate deals. Nothing took off until a product video went viral, and sales jumped 50-fold.

The growth accelerated to over $1 million annually, and soon the brand attracted attention from major distributors. This success was born of two years of testing, with no guarantee of a payoff.

Nobody can plan a viral video, especially when TikTok Shop algorithms change constantly. The brand’s perseverance, an infrastructure set up to convert, and dozens of small creators posting regularly were key factors.

They stayed with small creators rather than celebrities, as niche creators are easier to reach and more flexible.

Creator Videos and Language Matching

Creator videos appeal to health and beauty shoppers who seek a visible result on a real person. The brand deployed a tactic of matching creators to languages, pairing Spanish-speaking creators and audiences, and Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking creators with those communities.

The U.S. is a melting pot of language communities, and TikTok’s algorithm serves each of them separately. Their recommendations feel like advice from a friend or a specialist, or, in this case, hair-care experts and estheticians.

A business can tap many of them simultaneously to see what resonates. It helps that beauty-product shoppers seek a visible result on a real person, right now. There is a reason beauty and personal care is TikTok Shop’s largest category.

Dual Purposes of TikTok

TikTok serves dual purposes: a direct sales channel and a demand generator for external stores, online and offline. Live shopping may spur on-platform sales, but other content may drive shoppers to branded sites or physical shops.

The halo effect is real. There have been instances where 500,000 TikTok views coincide with 5,000 additional branded searches on Amazon. People see a product in their feed and then type the name into a search bar.

The channels feed each other more than most merchants assume. None of this means you should skip Amazon, especially for consumable goods that shoppers discover by typing a need in the search bar.

The best channel for U.S. launches depends on whether consumers discover the product or search for it. A product that shows a visible result on camera at an easy price belongs on TikTok, while expertise-driven items belong on Amazon.

Even better, the two can complement each other. For a $59 hair-care product, the answer was TikTok. After two years of unglamorous testing, it was an overnight success.