Bulletins

Shopify merchants can now sell on TikTok

Shopify merchants can now sell on TikTok
Image: Shopify / TikTok

TikTok might be beset by legal woes, but it's not slowing down: Today, Shopify and TikTok announced a push into social commerce with a partnership that will allow Shopify merchants to easily sell on TikTok.

TikTok will now show up as a "channel" in Shopify, alongside platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Walmart, allowing merchants to create and deploy shoppable TikTok ads directly from Shopify. "Merchants select which product they would like to feature, and video ads are automatically generated that drive to their Shopify stores for checkout," Shopify said in its announcement.

The move is a big win for TikTok, which has spent the past year testing various social commerce capabilities. And it brings the app a step closer to Douyin, its Chinese sibling, which has a partnership with Alibaba.

Shopify is an interesting choice of partner. When Walmart was announced as an investor in the proposed TikTok deal, it said it would bring "its omni-channel retail capabilities" to the app. Though that deal has still not been cleared, if it is then Walmart will evidently not be the only commerce platform to integrate with TikTok. One way to understand this might be as an anti-Amazon alliance.

Shakeel Hashim

Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a former growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.

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Bulletins