Earlier this summer, TikTok entered into a frenzy over pickle sweatshirts.
Suddenly, the app was awash with videos of users wearing gray crewnecks decked with jars from pickle brands like McClure’s, B&G Kosher Dill, Grillo’s, and Claussen.
“I’m not a pickle lover but I AM a lover of the shirt,” one user commented on a video.
Many of the posts, which collectively have driven tens of millions of views, included links for viewers to buy the garment on TikTok Shop, the app’s new e-commerce marketplace. Influencers earn a commission on sales when their videos lead to a purchase, giving them an incentive to hawk the brined-cucumber garb.
As with any popular item that takes off, a slew of sellers have rushed to cash in on the pickle spree.
For $16, a user can buy a “Picklesweatshirt Century Clothing Winter Casual Women’s Loose Sweatshirt” from a seller called Frank Bloomer. And Wild Herd Designs has sold more than 1,000 “Viral Pickle Jars” t-shirts and sweatshirts on TikTok at a starting price of $19.99.
“We sell so many of these a day that we stay up all night and day just trying to get them cranked out for everybody,” said Ashley Martinez, who runs Wild Herd Designs with her husband out of their home in West Texas.
The pickle-wardrobe mania is emblematic of what sets TikTok Shop apart from e-commerce competitors like Shopify and Amazon. Just like TikTok’s non-shopping content, TikTok Shop is built around viral videos, be it a surge in viewer interest in pickle-jar sweatshirts or a mad rush to buy freeze-dried Skittles.
It can be both a blessing and a curse for sellers.
A viral video tagged with a product can give Shop sellers 15 minutes of fame and a bump in revenue, but not necessarily sustainable income. And a sudden rush of orders can send merchants scrambling to meet TikTok’s strict three-day shipping window in the US.
While a three-business-day processing time may be standard for enterprise sellers, many of the early adopters of TikTok Shop are small-business owners or side-hustlers who process goods out of their homes. The burden of meeting strict shipping requirements, particularly when sales volume spikes, is heavy. And a surge in revenue after a viral video, while thrilling, can’t be counted on as a way to pay bills down the road.
“When [your] TikTok shop is doing very well, it could be an anomaly,” said Michael Herling, a Shop merchant who sells hats under the brand Herling Handcrafted. “Or it could be a blip and the next week you might not be.”
“It’s a scary venture to jump down,” he added. “I’m not sure I’m so comfortable with that, but for what it’s been, the extra money for the house has been nice.”
Packing and shipping orders on time after a viral video can prove daunting
The pace of sales that come with TikTok virality can put a strain on sellers who suddenly receive a surge of orders.
TikTok sets a maximum three-day window for US merchants to ship items, and consistent failure to meet that timeline may result in an imposed limit on order volume or “violation points” from TikTok that could eventually lead to expulsion from Shop.
“A three-business-day turnaround could be rather aggressive and draining on somebody to try and fulfill all that by themselves,” Herling said. “Thank God my wife can help when she gets home from work. And then the kids help sometimes, which is cool.”
For Jessica Slone, founder of Bad Addiction Boutique, keeping up with order volume and meeting TikTok’s requirements became unmanageable after thousands of users — more than 42,000 to-date — shelled out to purchase her company’s $44 “Pickle Jar Sweatshirt.”
Slone and her husband first enlisted their kids and her in-laws to help with order packing. But eventually, after repeated nights working until three in the morning, she decided to outsource the task to a local print and fulfillment team.
“TikTok has very strict policies and rules on their orders, so we had to bring in someone else,” she said. “It was literally physically impossible for just my husband and I and our small family to keep up with that requirement,” she said of the three-day-shipping rule.
TikTok’s incentivizing of quick fulfillment mirrors policies set by other e-commerce marketplaces looking to create a consistent buying experience across their platforms. For example, Etsy designates a shop owner as a “Star Seller” when they meet certain metrics that include reliable order processing and shipping. And Amazon sellers who consistently offer quick delivery can have their products marked with the Prime shipping badge.
However, neither Etsy nor Amazon host a platform with content that regularly goes viral the way that TikTok videos do.
Lindzi Shanks, the cofounder of the gourmet marshmallow seller XO Marshmallow, said she’d spoken with TikTok about setting custom Shop-order limits to help her company in instances when sales surge after a popular video.
“We got close to a thousand orders in one day, which again is wonderful, but when you can only produce a certain amount in a single day, those orders back up,” she said.
On Shopify, if the company receives a sudden influx of orders, it can opt for a slightly longer processing time without penalty, Shanks said. TikTok doesn’t currently offer that option.
“They’re running with some policies that may not be the greatest for small businesses, but I will say every time we come to them with feedback, they’re so open to the feedback and they’re so curious and they’re listening,” she said of TikTok.
A TikTok spokesperson said the company sets its fulfillment policies to allow for timely fulfillment and delivery of orders, with the goal of giving a positive experience for customers as they discover and purchase goods on TikTok Shop.
The company offers a variety of tools and integrations to help merchants manage orders and fulfillment, including its TikTok Shop API, its Shop app store, and its Fulfilled by TikTok services. TikTok also regularly offers webinars and Q&A sessions with the TikTok team, they said.
Virality can make orders skyrocket, creating stocking challenges
Viral moments on TikTok Shop can make it hard to predict which product will start selling like crazy next — and for sellers to make sure they have enough in stock to meet the demand.
Laura Ritchey, the CEO of e-commerce logistics company Radial, said that larger brands can use tools like AI to analyze their prices and past sales to make predictions about the future. But independent sellers might have a harder time doing that if they don’t have those resources.
TikTok takes some steps to calm down buying activity for new sellers. It assigns a 30- or 60-day probationary period, depending on region, for new merchants, limiting their daily order volume. Sellers graduate from the probationary period by meeting performance, order completion, and duration criteria, at which point sales surges can crop up at a moment’s notice.
For Julia Cote, a college student who sells jewelry on TikTok Shop and other platforms like Etsy, a viral video in August promoting her “Katie Necklace” led to a flurry of orders that sent her scrambling.
“Luckily, when the video first blew up, I was still at home. I hadn’t moved into college yet,” she said. “I was working crazy hours, like 13, 14 hours a day to try to get everything because I make them and package them myself. And obviously I had never dealt with this influx of orders at once before, so I was very slow when I first started.”
The frenetic pace of TikTok Shop sales in the US may be driven in part by all the incentives the company is offering to boost e-commerce activity. TikTok is doling out shipping deals and other subsidies to sellers and paying cash bonuses to influencers who join its affiliate program, making its prices highly competitive. As the company cuts back on coupons and other promotions to improve margins, its pace of sales may also come back down to earth.
TikTok Shop’s journey in the UK serves as a harbinger for where the US is heading next
TikTok has used the UK as a testing ground for Shop for two years, and its trajectory there could offer clues for where the US is heading next.
The program had a rocky start in the UK, and large-scale adoption only really ramped up in recent months, sources told Insider.
As with the US, UK merchants told Insider they’d had access to direct support from TikTok employees when issues arose, though some wondered how long it would last.
“There’s no way they can create a sustainable business that’s going to grow over the next five years while giving this much hands-on help to this many merchants,” said Ben Muir, head of marketing at TikTok Shop partner agency Unsociable.
For UK sellers, chasing virality still seems to be the defining characteristic of the TikTok Shop experience. Consistent posting is no guarantee of consistent business, said Hira Tariq, who’s been running a TikTok Shop for her candy business It’s Like Candy for over a year.
“Sometimes I will post a video and I’ll get loads of orders from it, and there’ll be times when it’s a really dry spell,” she said. “It has been up and down.”
TikTok has introduced features in the UK that make it easier for sellers to manage a sudden surge in sales. It mandates a four-day shipping window in the country, as opposed to three days in the US. Shipping orders through “Fulfilled by TikTok,” the company’s logistics solution that offers warehousing and shipping, has been helpful to some UK sellers in case their products go unexpectedly viral.
The company recently released a similar fulfillment offering in the US, which could help sellers better manage unpredictability in order volume.
And despite the downsides, for many US merchants who are suddenly making thousands of dollars in sales from TikTok Shop, late nights scrambling to pack orders are well worth it.
“It’s been absolutely life-changing for us and for our business,” Bad Addiction Boutique’s Slone said. “TikTok Shop is kind of this roller coaster, and right now it’s on this amazing uphill journey. And we’re going to ride that roller coaster until pretty much the wheels fall off.”
Read the full article here