TikTok added new language to its product policies earlier this month for its recently launched e-commerce platform TikTok Shop, boxing out merchants who sell homemade food items like candy.
The company prohibits “all homemade food products, including but not limited to freeze dried candies, chamoy gummies, crystal candies, or home-baked foods, and more,” as written in its policy post dated September 13. The company has been taking down products that violated the policy, per an enforcement notification one seller received on Thursday that was viewed by Insider.
A TikTok spokesperson said the company isn’t changing its policy but is instead adding more specific language prohibiting the sale of homemade food products. It said it added clarifying language earlier this month.
The policy is having an immediate impact on small business owners who have come to rely on TikTok Shop as a tool to drive sales of products they make at home.
“A lot of small businesses, they went from hundreds of sales a day to zero sales overnight,” said Chrystian Linares, a Florida-based TikTok Shop merchant who sells freeze-dried Skittles on the app.
Linares, who previously worked as a truck driver logging around 500 miles a day between Orlando and Tallahassee, started selling candy on TikTok Shop about six weeks ago when he discovered he could make money by dehydrating and reselling Skittles purchased off of wholesale sites like BJ’s.
Linares garnered over 1,400 sales through TikTok Shop in the last month, per documentation viewed by Insider. In the last few days, he began receiving takedown notifications from TikTok stating that his shop had violated its policies.
The rule likely means game over for Linares’ candy upstart, called Alinby.
“For me, it means we’re going out of business,” he said. “I’m in between whether I should start cutting my losses and then use the money that’s been made so far into other endeavors, or keep doing what I’m doing, just start focusing more locally rather than online. But it won’t be the same.”
Freeze-dried candies have become a massive category and a big business on TikTok Shop. Hashtags like #freezedried and #freezedriedtreats have been viewed more than a billion times across TikTok videos. Influencers regularly film videos of themselves chomping on freeze-dried products as they attempt to earn a commission on sales through the app’s affiliate program. Users have already purchased thousands of freeze-dried products through TikTok Shop, per sales tallies visible to users in the app.
Nathan Wilkerson, who sells freeze-dried candies under the brand Tip Top Treats, had all of the items suspended from his TikTok Shop in the last few days. He said he plans to appeal the decision.
‘TikTok Shop can really giveth and they can really taketh away’
This isn’t the first time Wilkerson’s store has been dinged by TikTok Shop. After buyers posted negative reviews of freeze-dried Jolly Ranchers and Nerds products he sold that arrived crushed due to a shipping issue, the company reduced his daily order allowance.
Wilkerson removed the products from his storefront, but the sting of the bad reviews persisted.
“TikTok Shop can really giveth and they can really taketh away,” Wilkerson said.
Still, the app has been transformational for the 25-year-old entrepreneur.
“I have always had this dream of starting my own business,” Wilkerson, who is based in Portland, Oregon, said. “I thought I was going to have to grind it for years. But with the introduction to TikTok Shop, man, my life has changed.”
TikTok Shop first launched in the US to a limited set of users and merchants in November. It rolled the product out to the rest of its US users last week. The company has tried to boost activity on its e-commerce platform by offering shipping deals and other subsidies to sellers and paying cash bonuses to influencers who join its affiliate program. E-commerce has been a massive source of revenue for its parent company ByteDance, which operates a similar short-video app in China called Douyin.
The company is trying to sell many different types of products on TikTok Shop, including pre-owned luxury goods such as handbags and collectibles like sneakers. According to its policies, all “second-hand, used, and open-box products are prohibited on TikTok Shop” unless approved for sale as part of its “invite-only preowned luxury handbag and collectibles categories.”
Outside of homemade products, other prohibited foods include perishable items, repurposed retail candies, and baby formula.
September 18, 2023, 5:45 p.m. EST: This story has been updated with clarifying language.
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