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TikTok Shop began to change the U.S. beauty shopping landscape as soon as it launched in late 2023. As brands began to experiment with the platform, they tried new strategies — like giving TikTok shoppers first access to new products and hosting 24-hour live-shopping events.
In 2024, over 8 million hours of live shopping sessions were hosted on the platform. Now, live shopping is a part of standard marketing strategies. Fragrance brand Phlur, for example, hosts two regular Lives a week — a regular Live is distinct from what TikTok calls a “Mega Live,” which is typically longer and may be hosted by a creator.
Live shopping has given rise to a new type of creator — one who functions similarly to hosts on QVC and specializes in live selling, sometimes for hours on end.
And while some believe TikTok Shop is only successful for brands with products that provide immediately visible transformations, like makeup, categories across beauty are flourishing. For example, fragrance brand Phlur began leaning into live shopping at the start of the year. “We always like to be at the cutting edge of everything, especially digitally focused. We’d already seen success on TikTok Shop, and knowing that live selling was the evolution of the platform, it was something we wanted to test into,” said CMO Erica Dunivan.
At its core, TikTok Shop is about discovery commerce, said Ajay Salpekar, gm of beauty at TikTok Shop. “The majority of the business is certainly short video, but an increasing amount is live.”
And it’s lucrative.
In September, the British cosmetics brand P.Louise broke a sales record when it pre-launched its holiday collection via a TikTok livestream, selling $2.7 million in just 14 hours. The average order was $80. When POV Beauty hit TikTok Shop in July, it achieved $12,000 in sales in 12 minutes, confirming TikTok shoppers’ appetite for the recommendations of founder Mikayla Nogueira, who recently surpassed 17 million followers on the app.
For Lives, there are two primary formats brands can take: a “seller Live,” hosted by a brand representative, or a “creator Live,” hosted by a creator — typically one who specializes in this format, Salpekar said. “Most brands take a parallel path [by hosting both creator and seller Lives]. Why wouldn’t you? You want to, as a brand, have your own storytelling channel that your audience can tune into. But we know that Gen Z, in particular, tends to trust creators they can relate to. So, if there are creators who are really great at live [selling], brands can [utilize their strengths],” Salpekar said.
Somewhat surprisingly, fragrance is beauty’s fastest-growing segment on the app. After all, “selling fragrance is about storytelling,” Salpekar said. And skin-care brands are seeing success, too.
“Buying fragrance online is a relatively new phenomenon, right? [Historically] blind buying fragrance has been difficult, but live shopping has opened up a different way for people to interact directly with brands and ask questions,” Dunivan said, adding that customers often ask for tips on layering fragrances and for details on a fragrance’s notes. “It almost replicates a high-touch retail environment,” she said.
GoPure, best known for its body care, has seen success by giving creators four weeks to test its products, like its Tighten & Lift Neck Cream and Tighten & Smooth Belly Cream. “Skin-care results take time, … but we’re strategic. We’ve built out a program on TikTok with over 50,000 affiliates. We’re able to send them products before they launch. They use them for four weeks, and they see significant results within four weeks. [Then] they’re able to go live when we launch, or [just] within four weeks of getting the product, with their incredible before-and-afters. And that is where the success has come from: legit before-and-afters, said Bethany Crellin, GoPure’s svp of marketing. Creators are incentivized by the possibility of earning commission on sales.
The brand has clocked 483 hours of TikTok Live in 2025 this year. When it launched its Sculpt & Tone Arm Cream on the heels of its hero neck cream’s success, it surpassed $100,000 in sales during an eight-hour Live. It has seen 64 million impressions on its Lives this year and has reached $1 million in revenue through them.
Katherine Longest, Naturium’s avp of digital, confirmed that it helps to have impactful visuals when selling skin care on TikTok Live. “We have a lot of beautiful body products. With a body oil, you can instantly see the results when it’s applied, and there’s a lot of fun content that can be done in a bathroom [like with an] everything shower — and that’s the key to it. However, I’m not sure a cleanser is ever going to be killing it on TikTok Shop,” she said.
Naturium is newer to Lives, but is seeing success. Thus far, it has primarily partnered with creators including Kelly Kruger Brooks (236,000 TikTok followers) and Ariane Mann (231,000 TikTok followers) on live content. This content is generating extremely high engagement, with a Live dubbed “Age Backwards Inside Out,” which was hosted by Kruger Brooks on behalf of the brand, drawing 25 million impressions, over 100,000 comments and 12.7 million unique viewers. Another titled “Ariane’s Birthday Super Live!” hosted by Mann, garnered 796,000 impressions, 356,000 unique viewers and 8,000 comments.
Speaking to the skillset of these creators who host Lives on behalf of brands, Longest said: “The TikTok Shop creator is not someone who’s great at curating a beautiful feed on your Instagram. … They are modern-day QVC [hosts], and the ones who do well do really, really well.” Their approach, she said, is totally different, too. For example, one of these creators may open TikTok in the morning and see that a particular lipgloss is performing really well or that the brand has a certain deal running — she will drive to Target to pick it up herself, rather than contact the brand and wait for a sample. These creators are paid commissions on the products they sell — the norm, according to off-the-record sources, is 10-15%, but some negotiate rates as high as 25-35%.
One of the biggest challenges for brands is navigating how to have a presence on TikTok Shop without jeopardizing their retail relationships. “You can’t ignore it. TikTok is in the top 10 beauty retailers in the country,” Longest said, referencing a Nielsen IQ report in which TikTok Shop ranked eighth. Longest acknowledged that finding the right balance is “delicate,” but said, “You can’t not participate.”
Salpekar said TikTok Shop complements retail. When asked how he’d advise brands on navigating any tension with brand partners, he said, “About four in five TikTok users say they’ve discovered a net new brand through TikTok Shop. Four in five TikTok users also say they’ve discovered a new product from brands they already knew. And so brands leverage TikTok Shop as part of their overall marketing and strategy, because they know it drives discovery. And brands benefit from the halo effect of discovery in-store, online and on [their DTC channels] … The fact that brands can partner with creators to drive discovery commerce benefits them in-store and drives foot traffic to the store. That’s a very well-known phenomenon, and we encourage that.”
Week in review
Collabs of the week
Margaux x Alex Mill
In step with its 10th anniversary, the NYC-based footwear brand Margaux has introduced a capsule collection with clothing brand Alex Mill comprised of a slip-on backless flat, a kitten-heeled boot and a kitten-heeled mule, rendered in chocolate suede, black velvet and blue satin.
“At the very beginning of the design process, it was all about play. We sat down at a table with Som [Somsack Sikhounmuong, Alex Mill creative director] and the team, and there were shoes everywhere. We pulled every sample we could think of, and Som wanted to hear about every shoe and every detail. We were just playing, looking, asking questions. That process comes across with the final collection. It has a cohesion to it, but it’s also just fun. Even the tissue paper we ended up making for the collaboration — it’s all of Som’s doodles of shoes — captures that,” said Alexa Buckley Roussel, Margaux co-founder.
“There are two colors that we got particularly excited about. One was the chocolate suede, which is a signature for Margaux, and we think of it as a new neutral. It’s so wearable. And it creates this amazing color pairing with the blue satin of the Romy mule. We all fell in love with that dusty blue. We talked a lot about how it might not be the most practical color in the world, but incorporating that into what’s otherwise a very neutral collection adds some fun, and to Alexa’s point, a real sense of play,” said co-founder Sarah Pierson.
K18 x Future Society
For the first time, K18 has introduced a scented version of the product that made it famous — its Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. To create the product, it partnered with the fragrance brand Future Society, which is also grounded in biotech.
“We’re working with thought leaders and creators across biotech, beauty and fragrance to bridge innovation with artistry, and we’re bringing the collaboration to life through immersive gifting and sensorial activations, including a co-branded creator mailer and creator partnerships,” said Suveen Sahib, K18 co-founder and CEO.
Launch of the week: Rhode’s Peptide Eye Prep Depuffing Eye Patches
Hailey Bieber has been teasing her latest launch since at least April, when she first posted selfies wearing Rhode-branded eye patches. Today, Rhode shoppers can actually buy the product, dubbed the Peptide Eye Prep Depuffing Eye Patches. A box of six will run you $25, and you can choose between two designs, while a box of 12 featuring both designs is $47. The masks contain caffeine to help reduce puffiness, a brightening tetrapeptide to improve the appearance of dark undereye circles, and glycerin to hydrate. The eye patches launched on Rhode’s e-commerce site on Thursday and will hit Sephora on Sephora on October 14.
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