‘I made £100,000 of TikTok sales in one day’: The business of live shopping

TikTok Shop says its UK sales grew by more than 30% year-on-year in June, with live shopping the fastest-growing format.

It says it now has more than 6,000 livestreams taking place every day.

At an event in the centuries old Covent Garden market, it hosted 20 small businesses with stalls who were also selling live to customers all over the UK.

With nothing more than a smartphone, a lighting kit and a fridge full of fresh meat, halal butcher Manny Malik from Wolverhampton had around two hundred people tuning into his session.

“Last week we did a TikTok live for three hours and we sold £8,000 worth of meat,” he says.

It would normally take him three to four days to sell this amount in his family shop, Malik Butchers.

They’re now opening a second store in Stoke. TikTok, he says, is helping to drive his expansion.

But there are fees.

TikTok Shop UK keeps up to 9p from every £1 sold on the platform, as its standard commission.

As a comparison, eBay’s marketplace business sellers typically pay between 6.9p and 14.9p depending on the category. Businesses selling on the dedicated live selling format, eBay Live, pay a combined fee of up to 8.42p including payment processing.

“It’s a lot,” says Manny.

“For us in the meat game, there aren’t huge margins. However, it’s opened up a new platform. We didn’t have these sales prior to TikTok. We’re not losing money, we’ve got enough profitability in there,” he adds.