TikTok’s Chinese original, Douyin, launched an independent shopping app on Thursday called Douyin Box, taking on established ecommerce giants like Alibaba.
The Chinese short-video sensation, which has amassed more than 600 million daily active users, is entering a new business dominated by Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo. Its ecommerce product, Douyin Box, will focus on selling fashion products, targeting China’s youth.
2021 marks a year of expansion into ecommerce for ByteDance, the world’s most valuable startup and the parent company of TikTok and Douyin. Just last month, ByteDance rolled out an ecommerce app targeting European consumers called Fanno. It seems likely at some point that TikTok will follow suit in the U.S. market, pushing out a shopping app to take on challengers such as Facebook and Amazon.