tiktok Shop: A New Frontier for Korean Brands

Fueled by rapid expansion in the US and Southeast Asia, TikTok Shop is becoming a pivotal e-commerce platform for Korean beauty (K-Beauty) and Korean food (K-Food) brands. This surge highlights a strategic shift as these brands increasingly leverage short-form video content to drive sales and capture a younger demographic.

Dominating the Digital Shelf: Key Players and strategies

Several korean companies are already making critically important strides on TikTok Shop.Samyang Foods, known for its wildly popular Buldak볶음면 (Buldak Ramen), plans to launch an official brand shop in Malaysia during the first half of this year. This move is both a response to the product’s existing popularity among younger consumers and a preemptive strike against the proliferation of counterfeit products.Nongshim, another major player in the instant noodle market, also announced its entry into the Malaysian TikTok Shop on March 17th. Both companies are aggressively pursuing marketing strategies to solidify their presence in the Southeast Asian market.

Beyond food, K-Beauty brands are also experiencing considerable success. Cosmal X, a subsidiary of AMOREPACIFIC since 2023, has emerged as a top-selling K-Beauty brand on TikTok Shop, leveraging low-irritant skincare products and effective tiktok marketing strategies. Their sales figures reflect this success, jumping from ₩123.3 billion in 2021 to ₩204.4 billion in 2022 after initiating TikTok collaborations, and further soaring to ₩389.4 billion in 2024 with a net profit of ₩84.4 billion. Anua, known for its cleansing oil, is another standout performer. Videos featuring Anua products have garnered over 340 million views on TikTok,resulting in the sale of 133,000 skincare sets thru TikTok Shop alone.

Even established brands like APIL are seeing significant gains. with two brand shops on TikTok, APIL is finding success with its “Booster Pro” beauty device, notably in the US market. Industry analysts estimate that approximately 20% of APIL’s US sales now originate from TikTok Shop. Other popular K-Beauty brands on the platform include ‘number,’ ‘Beauty of Joseon,’ ‘Laneige,’ ‘Skin1004,’ and ‘ROM&nd’.

The Rise of “Fun Commerce”: Engaging the 1020 Generation

TikTok Shop distinguishes itself from customary e-commerce platforms by integrating entertainment with shopping, a concept known as “fun commerce.” This approach resonates strongly with the 1020 generation, who are avid users of short-form video content. A recent survey by Landing International, a global K-Beauty distributor, revealed that 29.6% of respondents discover new K-Beauty products on TikTok, second only to Instagram (33.73%). This highlights TikTok’s growing influence as a finding platform for beauty products.

TikTok Shop distinguishes itself from traditional e-commerce platforms by integrating entertainment with shopping, a concept known as “fun commerce.”

TikTok Shop’s Explosive Growth: A Statistical overview

The surge in transactions on TikTok Shop has made it an increasingly attractive marketing channel. Bloomberg projects that global transactions on the platform will reach $50 billion this year, surpassing Coupang’s trading volume of ₩55 trillion last year. US transactions alone are expected to reach $17.5 billion. Since its launch in 2021,tiktok Shop has experienced exponential growth,reaching $1 billion in 2022,$4.4 billion in 2023,and $20 billion last year.

In terms of product categories, beauty products accounted for the largest share of transactions last year at 22.5%, followed by food at 6.85%. Currently, TikTok Shop operates in 15 countries, including the United States, Mexico, and seven Asian nations.

This rapid growth underscores the platform’s potential to reshape the e-commerce landscape,particularly for brands targeting younger,digitally-native consumers. As TikTok continues to evolve, its impact on the K-Beauty and K-Food industries is likely to become even more pronounced.