How the time flies — today TikTok Shop celebrates two years since its formal U.S. launch, and for many brands and creators it’s already hard to imagine a time before this supercharged commerce vehicle existed.
“TikTok Shop has really set a new standard for what social commerce can mean by providing the entire ecosystem — creators, brands and consumers — with this incredible experience of consuming the same content but now having the ability to sell/buy products within that existing content consumption flow,” said Alex Nisenzon CEO of ecommerce intelligence platform Charm.io in an interview with Retail TouchPoints.
“TikTok has already established dominance as a social commerce giant — our data shows they’ve crossed $70 billion in global GMV [gross merchandise value] since launching in Southeast Asia in Q4 2022, and I expect we’ll see them continue to conquer this arena,” Nisenzon added.
TikTok’s U.S. Influence Moves Beyond Culture to Commerce
Setting aside the ongoing threat of a U.S. ban, the numbers seem to support Nisenzon’s prediction: In the U.S. alone, the number of shops on TikTok Shop has increased 5,000% from July 2023 (when Shop soft-launched in the U.S. with 4,450 shops) to July 2025 (231,334), according to Charm.io’s data, which is based on publicly available information fed through machine learning models.
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Of course, having a shop doesn’t mean you’ll make a sale, but the number of TikTok shops that actually sold products in those same time frames also increased 3,212% with 2,732 shops making sales in July 2023 and 90,495 bringing in the green in July 2025.
All told, Charm.io’s datasets show that U.S. GMV on TikTok Shop has grown from $15.1 million in July of 2023 to $1.1 billion in July 2025, and separate analysis from WorldEF News put global GMV for the platform in just the first half of 2025 at a whopping $26 billion.
Those are staggering numbers that TikTok has, not surprisingly, been pretty vocal about itself: “Over the past year, our community of sellers has expanded into more than 750 categories, bringing shoppers an incredible selection of over 70 million products,” said the company in a June announcement touting its commercial influence. “So far in 2025, our growing community of shoppers, sellers and creators has driven impressive momentum across the TikTok Shop platform. In the U.S., TikTok Shop sales have increased 120% compared to the same period last year” with womenswear, beauty and personal care, health, sports and outdoors and electronics reported as the top-selling categories.
TikTok’s cultural impact has long been undeniable, and over the past two years the platform has more than proven its ability to make a commercial impact as well. And these sales aren’t just coming from kids. Users 45 and older are outpacing the growth of younger demographics on TikTok, according to Emarketer, with 39% of U.S. adults saying they use TikTok multiple times a week.
Retail TouchPoints dug deeper into the data with Charm.io’s Nisenzon to understand what’s driving TikTok Shop’s explosive growth and look at where it might be headed.
TikTok Shop has Proven the Power of the Creator
The ultimate power of TikTok is its creator content, and that is also what has made the platform stand out from its peers when it comes to social commerce.
“What makes TikTok Shop different is how natively embedded the commerce experience is,” explained Nisenzon. “[TikTok has] successfully managed to build an incredible social platform, first and foremost, and then layered in the shopping component in a way that is incredibly organic. This not only encourages consumers to purchase without feeling like they are really ‘shopping’ but also drives brands to want to be on the platform as a way to reach consumers in a seemingly ‘new’ format.
“This organic feeling and dynamic have created a new cohort of creators — not real ‘influencers’ but everyday individuals — who feel both comfortable and excited by the opportunity to monetize their community with affiliate sales for brands,” he added.
In fact, over the course of the last two years the number of creators making sales on TikTok Shop has skyrocketed from 11,800 in September 2023 to 184,000, a 1400% increase, according to Charm.io data.
Even Amid Inflation and Tariffs, Prices are Declining on TikTok Shop
While the broader economy grapples with ongoing inflation and tariff-induced price increases, Charm.io found that TikTok Shop prices are moving in the opposite direction. Average unit prices on the platform have dropped 10% since Shop’s debut two years ago, from $21.45 in September 2023 to $19.11 in July 2025.
Several factors are driving this, including an increase in the number of lower-cost products being sold on TikTok Shop, according to Nisenzon, but that’s not the only element propelling these price drops. Increased competition within TikTok Shop is also prompting brands to reduce prices and “unlike other retail platforms, TikTok Shop has been proven as a top-of-funnel awareness driver,” Nisenzon said. “That has a halo effect of sales on a brand’s other channels, so many brands choose to discount on TikTok Shop to just break even since they use it as a marketing tool.”
The result is that TikTok Shop’s low prices fuel massive impulse buying, creating a flywheel effect that is helping to drive those impressive GMV numbers and offering a low-barrier entry point for consumers to trial new brands.
Livestreaming Isn’t Taking Off, but That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing
Despite significant investment from the still Chinese-owned platform, livestreaming has never accounted for even 30% of revenue on TikTok Shop; in fact, as of July 2025 livestreaming accounted for just 18%.
Revenue generated from pre-recorded creator videos on the other hand has risen over the years, accounting for 66% of total sales in that same time period, proving that even TikTok is not immune to American’s livestreaming resistance. While livestream shopping dominates in Asian markets, U.S. consumers still prefer creator recommendations that they can view on demand in feed-style videos.
“The limited adoption [of livestreaming] simply highlights the cultural differences in Western markets,” said Nisenzon. “It’s possible that over time we’ll see the U.S. and other countries start to shift in the direction [of Asia], but for now livestreaming success seems to be limited to more specific types of goods — think, collectibles where there are limited edition ‘drops’ or celebrity influencer events.
“The other important nuance here is that a big driver of TikTok Shop’s success has been the authenticity of the content and creators,” added Nisenzon. “Unlike other social media platforms, you don’t see TikTok content dominated by these massive influencers. Instead, TikTok is made up of what I consider many ‘micro-communities,’ and the content that creators put out is fun and authentic to their specific audience. It becomes very natural for those creators to offer specific products that they believe would resonate with their audience. Promoting those products in a video format like their other content comes across in an organic way, while livestreaming would seem very forced in most cases.”
TikTok Ban Would be a Blow to Creators, Small Businesses
Of course, all of this will come to a crashing halt if TikTok is banned, a threat that has loomed for more than a year now, although Nisenzon said he doesn’t believe that will happen.
To recap — in June, President Trump delayed for a third time the federal order requiring TikTok to sell to a U.S. entity or be banned. The new deadline for the ban to take effect is coming up fast — Sept. 17 — but after so many delays (the law was originally supposed to take effect in January) and rumors of high-profile deals in the works, these deadlines have lost some of their sting. Indeed, even the urgency surrounding the security risk posed by China controlling such an important U.S. communications hub seemed to have faded — the world and its leaders have bigger fish to fry right now, and as evidenced by the numbers shared here, the experience is not one brands or users want to give up.
In fact, Nisenzon said that if a ban was instituted “the consequences would be severely negative to both creators — tens of thousands of which have restructured their lives to depend on the affiliate revenue as a source of income for themselves and their families — and the small businesses, many of which leverage TikTok Shop as their only sales channel for promoting and commercializing their products.” His concerns echo that of many others who have pushed back on the ban since it was first announced.
And even with TikTok Shop’s staggering growth over the past two years, Nisenzon said he thinks “we are only seeing the beginning of TikTok Shop’s force in the global ecommerce market. Just this year, TikTok launched Shop in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Japan — [TikTok Shop] will continue to enter new markets, and more established brands will join in (with) existing ones as the platform matures.”
