TikTok's social commerce marketplace, TikTok Shop, is launching a second-hand luxury goods category in the UK, with strong competition from the likes of The RealReal, Vestiere Collective, Depop, Poshmark and Mercari. This service has already been present on TikTok Shop US for more than 6 months.
The new category will allow customers in the UK to buy second-hand luxury clothing, designer handbags and other accessories without leaving the TikTok app. At launch, only five of his British brands are available: Sellier, Luxe Collective, Sign of the Times, HardlyEverWornIt and Break Archive.
Since launching TikTok Shop in 2022, the platform has sold approximately more than $1 billion in products. But despite its success, some argue that TikTok Shop is ruining the short-form video sharing app, saying it is flooding the market with fake and low-quality products. Counterfeit goods are the biggest risk when buying used luxury goods online, and even the biggest e-commerce giants (Amazon, eBay, etc.) are facing authenticity issues.
Like all resale marketplaces, TikTok Shop has an anti-counterfeit policy that guarantees a full refund if a seller is proven to have sold counterfeit products. Bloomberg recently reported that the company is in talks with luxury goods company LVMH to help crack down on counterfeit goods.
All second-hand brands on TikTok Shop US require a certificate from a third-party certification authority. TikTok has partnered with authentication services Entrupy and Real Authentication to ensure designer handbags on the platform are authentic.
Meanwhile, a TikTok spokesperson told TechCrunch that all five British brands have their own internal verification processes. The company has not said when it will start accepting other used brands.
The launch of TikTok Shop's used luxury goods category is a strategic move to tap into the growing used luxury goods market. The used luxury goods market is booming as a multi-billion dollar business, with an estimated $49.3 billion (45 billion euros) worth of second-hand designer items sold worldwide by 2023. Masu.
Furthermore, this expansion coincides with the growing trend of people embracing the fashion they love, opening new avenues for British second-hand brands to reach a wider customer base. The popularity of secondhand fashion on TikTok is clear, with over 144,000 TikTok posts using the hashtag #secondhandfashion and approximately 1.2 billion views.
Today's announcement comes on the heels of the US House of Representatives passing a bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the US, which also has support in the Senate. It seems so. A ban would be a severe blow to U.S. merchants who sell on apps. The short-form video sharing app generated $14.7 billion in revenue for small businesses in 2023, according to the company.