TikTok U.S. Closed-loop E-commerce: How To Grasp A New Window Period

The development process of TikTok e-commerce is full of ups and downs and changes, and everyone involved has a profound experience. For example, the Indonesian e-commerce business will be closed at 5 pm on October 4. This is undoubtedly a huge challenge for many TikTok Shop sellers in Indonesia.

However, TikTok e-commerce is also constantly emerging with new window periods (the window period refers to a period of time during the development process of a business with the lowest entry barriers and lowest costs).

From 2020 to now, we have observed the development of the TikTok e-commerce industry and found that there have been windows for natural traffic, windows for advertising, windows for closed-loop live broadcasts in the UK, and windows for semi-closed loops in the US. As recently as May -The window period for full hosting in July, as well as the window period for the upcoming closed-loop stores in the United States.

During these window periods, as long as you can seize any of them, it is possible to support a team or company from 0 to 1, or even from 1 to 10, thereby completing the original accumulation of entrepreneurship.

Let’s briefly analyze why TikTok US closed-loop e-commerce is a new window period.

In the field of cross-border e-commerce, almost every practitioner has varying degrees of yearning for the North American market, because this market has several unique advantages:

1. Complete and huge market: Compared with the fragmented situation of many countries in the European market, the United States is a very complete economy and is also one of the largest consumer markets in the world.

2. Have sufficient spending power: In the United States, there is a huge middle class and high-income people. According to data disclosed in 2021, the per capita disposable income in the United States is about US$50,000.

3. Complete infrastructure: No matter from the perspective of logistics and transportation, or the dimension of payment and collection, the United States has a very complete infrastructure, thus eliminating the obstacles in the infrastructure dimension of cross-border e-commerce.

4. Legal and intellectual property protection: If you want to develop your brand deeply, the United States has a relatively complete legal and intellectual property protection system that can help protect the rights and interests of brand merchants.

Many TikTok seller teams (such as my own team) have tried to operate TikTok e-commerce business in the United States through TikTok to attract independent stations in 2020, when TikTok has no plans to open the US e-commerce business.

In the past three years or so, both cross-border sellers and the TikTok platform have been working hard to promote the implementation of closed-loop e-commerce business in North America.

And now, this plan has finally come true.

In the wild growth period of the past two months, we have witnessed TikTok’s closed-loop e-commerce in the United States surge at a growth rate of 50-100% every week.

Despite this, whether it is live streaming e-commerce or short video e-commerce in the United States, there is still huge room for growth in terms of GPM, market size, and proportion of e-commerce content.

Therefore, at this current time point, it is the window period during which most cross-border e-commerce entrepreneurs can enter TikTok’s U.S. e-commerce at a low threshold, and I expect this window period to last from October to December this year. After 2024, the entry threshold and difficulty will increase significantly.