Get large quickly was Jeff Bezos’ slogan when he founded Amazon, and it appears that ByteDance is using the same philosophy to make its wildly successful social media platform, TikTok, close behind Amazon.
In the recent weeks, TikTok has posted a number of job advertisements that, as Axios reported, represent TikTok’s first significant entry into US e-commerce—unpredictably, by creating fulfilment facilities like to those operated by Amazon.
To help TikTok build “international warehousing, customs clearings, and supply chain systems that support domestic e-commerce efforts in the US and cross-border e-commerce efforts,” Axios reported, job listings for “Fulfillment By TikTok Shop” are looking to hire key positions like logistics solutions managers or operations research engineers.
It appears that TikTok is putting together a US-based crew that can handle returns processing, shipping, and warehousing.
Following a study of the job postings discovered by Axios, Ars can attest that TikTok is hiring in significant US locations where it already has offices, including Seattle and Los Angeles. According to a survey of LinkedIn profiles by The Puget Sound Business Journal earlier this year, TikTok’s entry into Seattle lured staff from both Amazon and Meta, which had its own success foraying into e-commerce through Facebook and Instagram. (Meta declined to comment on its e-commerce activities for Ars right away.)
According to LinkedIn profiles, about 170 employees are employed by TikTok or ByteDance in the Seattle area, according to the Business Journal. The majority of those came from Microsoft, Amazon, or Google.
Outside of the US, TikTok already runs TikTok Shop, and according to TechCrunch, TikTok is now developing a shopping function that will be supported by Shopify. Now, it looks TikTok has more ambitious goals, perhaps going beyond its modest goals of helping influencers make sales and truly becoming a major player in online retail.
According to rumours, TikTok may open up a whole new revenue stream and establish itself as the go-to online shopping destination for its large and diverse youthful audience by opening its own fulfilment centres in the US. However, TikTok isn’t yet prepared to discuss any of that.
The same message that TikTok supplied to other media outlets was sent to Ars by a spokeswoman, who insisted that ByteDance is focusing on its current e-commerce activities rather than any US growth.
In Southeast Asia and the UK, where TikTok Shop is presently available, “We’re focused on offering a valuable purchasing experience, which includes giving merchants a selection of product features and delivery options,” a TikTok spokesman told Ars.
The US TikTok Shop will launch before the holidays.
The Financial Times reported earlier this month that the UK TikTok Shop was having trouble taking off, despite TikTok’s official statement to the contrary.
It’s possible that the US market will accept TikTok shopping more readily because, according to the Financial Times, TikTok wants to introduce a US shopping function before the current Christmas season.
Or perhaps social media sites aren’t really good places to purchase anywhere. With TikTok’s purchasing tool, influencers may link to products while livestreaming, something Meta attempted to accomplish with Facebook but was unsuccessful at, leading to the shutdown of a related feature earlier this month. If Meta failed, it’s still not obvious if TikTok will.
Although TikTok’s US fulfilment centres may be ByteDance’s most recent plan to join the US e-commerce market, the company is only now starting to make progress on this initiative. However, Amazon’s success story demonstrates how quickly a business can expand into an empire once it connects to a sizable online client base.
Four years after its launch, Amazon evolved from focusing mostly on selling books in the US to controlling the world of e-commerce.
