PARIS — Continental Europe is a next frontier for TikTok Shop, creating huge potential for beauty and personal care brands.
The platform melding content and shopping, and touting itself as “discovery ecommerce,” officially launched in France, Germany and Italy on March 31, after having entered Spain in late 2024.
Although it’s too early to say how TikTok Shop’s new European outposts will fare, TikTok Shop in the U.S. and U.K. can serve as good case studies.
TikTok Shop swiftly became a significant shopping force in the U.S., where it launched in September 2023. In 2024, the platform generated $1 billion in beauty sales and was the country’s eighth-largest e-commerce health and beauty retailer, according to a recent NielsenIQ study. With 200 percent year-over-year sales growth, TikTok Shop was the fastest-growing e-commerce in the U.S. during the holiday season last year, Statista research shows.
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Meanwhile, TikTok’s presence hangs in the balance in the U.S., since TikTok’s parent company ByteDance faces a ban there unless it finds an American buyer by mid-June.
For TikTok Shops in both the U.S. and U.K., beauty and personal care is the top-selling product category.
On TikTok Shop U.K., the segment rang up $91.1 million in the first quarter of this year. Within that, the makeup and skin care subcategories made the most sales, according to Charm.io. That intelligence platform said on TikTok Shop U.K., the top 10 shops in beauty and personal care during the period were PL Makeup Academy, Made by Mitchell, BPerfect Cosmetics, Whites Beaconsfield, Nature Spell, HNB Cosmetics, L’Oréal Paris, The Beauty Crop, Lookfantastic and Glow for It.
Nivea, a Beiersdorf-owned brand, is a partner of TikTok Shop Germany and launched also on TikTok Shop Italy.
“E-commerce is already the fastest-growing sales channel for Beiersdorf, and with TikTok Shop, we are now taking this development even further, harnessing the potential of social commerce in Germany,” said Christian Haensch, general manager Germany and Switzerland at Beiersdorf. “With TikTok Shop, we can now reach younger audiences even better by combining commerce and entertainment.”
Beiersdorf has been active on TikTok Shop in China, where the platform is called Douyin, since 2020 and 2023 in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Indonesia. Last year, the German company entered TikTok Shop in the U.S., U.K. and Spain.
“With the TikTok Shop launch, we are opening up a new, highly relevant sales channel directly at the interface between inspiration and purchasing decisions,” said a Beiersdorf spokesperson. “TikTok Shop offers us the perfect platform to bring products to life, describe them in an approachable way and make them immediately available. [It’s] a strong signal for the future of our e-commerce and at the same time an important step toward making our brand approachable and becoming part of the creative everyday moments of our community.”
For its part, Cosnova is launching the Essence brand on TikTok Shop in Europe to reach its core audience, Gen Z.
“TikTok offers a unique opportunity to combine entertainment, community engagement and commerce in one seamless, mobile-first shopping experience,” said Sebastian Romanus, director of digital brand experience at Cosnova. “Cosnova aims to strengthen Essence’s presence in the digital beauty space by building out a new, highly engaging sales and communication touchpoint. TikTok Shop is meant to complement our existing retail or e-commerce channels, by offering exclusive product bundles tailored to community preferences.”
Cosnova already has experience on TikTok Shop in the U.S. and Malaysia.
“These markets provided valuable insights into user behavior, content formats that convert and the types of product bundles that resonate most with the TikTok audience,” said Romanus. “The successful integration of community feedback and content-driven commerce in those countries confirmed the platform’s potential as a long-term growth driver. As a result, Cosnova is entering the European market with a clear focus on curated offerings, responsible communication and sustained community engagement.”