TikTok is gearing up to compete with Amazon's Prime Day event in July, as the social network announced on Thursday that its TikTok Shop will host a “Deals For You Days” sales event in the US starting July 9.
The announcement comes just days after Amazon announced that its annual Prime Day sale will take place on July 16th and 17th.
Prime Day's success has prompted other retailers, big and small, to use the day to run competing sales, and now TikTok is one of them.
According to TikTok, the sale event will offer great deals on fashion and beauty products, backyard entertainment essentials, home decor, summer reading bestsellers and more. Similar to Amazon's Prime Day sale, the TikTok Shop will offer special prices on select products. The sale event will include special prices on products from L'Oreal Paris, Maybelline New York, NYX Professional Makeup, Our Place, Too Faced and Zwilling USA.
During the sale event, brands and merchants will have the opportunity to participate in content challenges with short videos and live shopping events, where they can interact with their followers and share their favorite products and bestsellers, with real-time discounts on popular items available during the live events.
TikTok is betting big on e-commerce, aiming to grow its U.S. business for TikTok Shop tenfold to $17.5 billion this year. With this upcoming sales event, TikTok is looking to take on one of the biggest sales events in the U.S. While this particular event seems to be targeting Amazon, it's worth noting that TikTok Shop is also looking to take on Chinese companies Temu and Shein, both of which have become popular in the U.S.
Bloomberg reported last year that TikTok is expected to achieve roughly $20 billion in gross merchandise sales globally in 2023, with the majority of its sales coming from Southeast Asia. TikTok is now focused on bringing that success to the United States.
TikTok's ambitions for an e-commerce product aren't surprising, as social commerce sales are expected to grow in the coming years: eMarketer predicts that social commerce sales will more than double from $67 billion in 2023 to $144.5 billion by 2027.