A file photo of a livestreamer selling handbags at a TikTok Livestreaming E-commerce Base on October 12, 2021 in Wuhan, China.
Visual China Group | Getty Images
Sporting a sparkly dress and a Santa hat atop her distinctly pink hair, Sarah Potempa stood in front of her smartphone at her hair-care company’s warehouse in Waukegan, Illinois. It was time to go to work.
Potempa is a celebrity hairstylist who goes live on TikTok multiple times a week. During “the packing show,” as she calls it, Potempa livestreams herself as she packs up orders of her viral Beachwaver curling iron for six to eight hours at a time.
The stream on Nov. 20 had a party atmosphere, with Potempa taking breaks to dance to “In Da Club” by 50 Cent in between shipping out orders. To the more than 1,000 TikTok users who typically tune in for Potempa’s shows, this is entertainment and shopping all at once.
Beachwaver is part of a growing influx of retailers that are flocking to TikTok Shop, the video app’s shopping service. TikTok Shop launched in September 2023 as a way for users to purchase products without leaving the app, and since then, the China-owned app has emerged as a viable alternative for retailers looking to diversify their e-commerce business from Amazon.
Via a dedicated Shop tab, retailers big and small promote products of all kinds, ranging from eyeshadow palettes, phone chargers, detox teas, treadmills and more. On TikTok, retailers typically offer generous coupons and free delivery within a few days. Shoppable posts, which look like normal videos but are ads for products sold in TikTok Shop, frequently appear in TikTok’s main video feed, known as the “For You” page. Those posts allow users to purchase products without exiting their For You feed.
On Potempa’s show, shoppers race to place an order to get a 50% discount on Beachwaver products and free add-ons to their order like face washes or lipsticks, along with the chance to have their username read aloud by Potempa while she packs their order on screen.
“When TikTok Shop was new and people hadn’t used it yet, they would ask, ‘Is this on Amazon yet?'” Potempa said in an interview. “I would get those questions like, ‘Can I buy it somewhere else?’ Now that it’s been around for a year or so, we’ve done 1.2 million orders.”
ByteDance-owned TikTok has already cemented itself as an advertising powerhouse, and with TikTok Shop, the company has been trying to carve out another revenue stream through e-commerce. The company has attracted the likes of Nike, PacSun and Crocs, among others. Those retailers want to tap into the more than 170 million Americans on TikTok who shop on impulse as they scroll through videos.
They aren’t the only ones.
Amazon sellers are also being persuaded to try out the service with promises of low fees and steep discounts on products footed by TikTok. Besides sellers, the company has also hired talent away from Amazon, filling key roles for TikTok Shop in areas like marketing, creator relationships, brand safety, category managers and operations.
In the 15 months since its launch, TikTok Shop has emerged as a “massive e-commerce machine,” according to ecommerceDB, a market research firm. EcommerceDB predicts TikTok Shop will more than double its gross merchandise volume, or the dollar value of items sold on its marketplace, to $50 billion this year. That’s a fraction of Amazon’s 2024 expected GMV of $757 billion, but nonetheless, TikTok Shop is making strides.
“Every time you scroll, every other scroll is a Shop post, so they’re making a lot of investment to encourage that in-app conversion,” said Caila Schwartz, Salesforce’s director of consumer insights and strategy for retail and consumer goods.
Amazon spokesperson Mira Dix told CNBC in a statement that sellers are engaging with its store “more than ever before” and seeing greater success. Dix said the company’s services for sellers are optional, such as fulfillment, which costs “an average of 70% less” than comparable two-day shipping alternatives.
“Our selling partners are incredibly important to Amazon, and we work hard to innovate on their behalf and support the growth and success of these businesses across all of their sales channels,” Dix said.
Beachwaver CEO Sarah Potempa hosts livestreams on TikTok Shop multiple times a week.
Looming deadline
TikTok’s e-commerce push comes at a precarious moment for the company.
In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If TikTok fails to cut ties with its parent company, app stores and internet hosting services would be prohibited from offering the app, amounting to a nationwide ban in the U.S. TikTok has sued to block the measure.
President-elect Donald Trump could rescue TikTok from a potential U.S. ban. After trying to implement a TikTok ban during his first administration, Trump reversed his stance, acknowledging in a March interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the app. Trump changed his position around the time that he met with billionaire Jeff Yass, who is a major investor in ByteDance.
As the January deadline grows nearer, TikTok has largely been operating its business as usual.
Executives from TikTok Shop pitched its marketplace as a holiday shopping destination during an October event in Manhattan with business owners and social media influencers. Users have shopped hundreds of millions of units on its e-commerce platform since launching September 2023, said Nico Le Bourgeois, TikTok Shop’s head of U.S. operations. Le Bourgeois, who joined TikTok in August 2023, previously spent nearly nine years at Amazon in a variety of divisions including its third-party marketplace.
TikTok Shop isn’t trying to sell “everything to everybody,” Le Bourgeois told CNBC in October. TikTok Shop is a marketplace for product discovery that surfaces “new, cool, interesting” items from big and small brands, he added.
“You see it, you like it, you buy it. It’s not a search,” he said. “It’s a very different way of shopping.”
Le Bourgeois declined to comment on the looming TikTok ban, but a company spokesperson at the event said TikTok Shop isn’t slowing down.
“The sellers here, creators, they’re building their livelihoods on TikTok,” the spokesperson said. “We’re going to continue to show up for that. There’s a huge opportunity for us.”
‘Enjoying it while it’s hot’
More Americans are expected to turn to TikTok and other China-linked apps for gift buying this holiday shopping season.
Roughly 63% of Western consumers plan to purchase from Chinese shopping apps during the season, according to Salesforce. That includes TikTok, Alibaba’s AliExpress, Shein, Temu and fast-fashion company Cider.
On Saturday, TikTok said its U.S. Black Friday sales topped more than $100 million, with home goods, fashion and beauty products among the most popular categories. Canvas Beauty, a top seller of hair-care and beauty products on TikTok Shop, hit $1 million in sales within two hours of going live on the app, the company said.
Retailers and sellers, some of which count TikTok for the lion’s share of their online sales, told CNBC that they’re sticking with the platform despite the possibility that it could disappear.
Although it’s impossible to ignore the conversation around a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. as a brand that heavily relies on the platform, Yay’s Snacks co-founder and COO Rachel Cheng said she’s not convinced that TikTok will go away under the Trump administration because it doesn’t seem to be the president-elect’s main focus.
Yay’s Snacks, which makes crispy Cambodian beef jerky, was one of the earliest companies to join TikTok Shop when it launched. Yay’s founder and CEO Marlin Chan, a former YouTuber, frequently posts humorous TikTok videos promoting his snacks, which are based on his grandmother’s original recipe. Among the videos is a series that parodies the show “Undercover Boss.” Those videos helped Yay’s amass tens of thousands of TikTok followers, who keep buying the jerky, Cheng said.
At one point, TikTok sales comprised nearly 90% of Yay’s total revenue, with monthly sales from the app peaking at $75,000 last November, Cheng said. Yay’s is prepared to divert to Amazon and its own website if TikTok is banned, but as long as TikTok is “still here, we’re going to do what we can to stay on top,” Cheng said.
“If we were sitting here worrying about what’s next, we would’ve never gotten on TikTok Shop,” Cheng said. “We’re enjoying it while it’s hot.”
Craig Sjodin/ Disney ABC Television Group/ Getty Images
Competing with Amazon
Scrub Daddy, known for its smiley face-shaped sponges, went viral on TikTok during the Covid pandemic and counts more than 4 million followers. Its top video, a demonstration of its Damp Duster sponge, has 30 million views while its bestselling product on TikTok Shop has been purchased nearly 76,000 times, according to the app. That figure doesn’t account for items that have been returned after purchase.
After kicking off in 2012 with an appearance on “Shark Tank,” Scrub Daddy CEO Aaron Krause said he lost faith in traditional marketing efforts.
“We did a TV ad, we did some outdoor ads on billboards, we did a little bit of radio,” Krause said. “All I found was that I was throwing money into the air.”
The company pivoted toward social media marketing, primarily on Instagram, which turned out to be a “pot of gold,” Krause said. Scrub Daddy set up an account on TikTok in 2020 and worked with influencers to promote its products, including Vanesa Amaro, a popular account for housecleaning content with more than 5.7 million followers. After Amaro recommended the sponges to her viewers, Scrub Daddy sold 30,000 units in one weekend, Krause said.
TikTok’s “algorithm just allows you to hit millions and millions of views with one hysterically crazy video,” he said.
In recent months, TikTok has encouraged retailers and sellers to host hourslong livestreams multiple times per week as a way to connect with shoppers. Many brands have invested in building out their own studios to record the shows or have hired talent to host them.
Scrub Daddy snatched up longtime QVC host Dan Hughes after he was laid off from the home shopping company in 2023. Others, like Beachwaver, have turned their CEOs into on-screen talent.
TikTok Shop was a big topic of conversation at a conference for Amazon sellers in New York in October. A session on “how to scale your brand” with TikTok Shop drew a packed room of sellers who listened to e-commerce strategist Rafay MH talk up the potential for brands to haul in $8 million to $10 million in sales from TikTok in less than a year.
“Amazon comes with a ton of competition,” MH said. “TikTok is the opportunity for free eyeballs and sales.”
Many Amazon sellers have embraced TikTok after they were initially slow to join the platform, said Michelle Barnum Smith, who provides consulting services to online businesses.
“I was the bedraggled gold miner standing on the street corners of New York, saying ‘There’s gold in those hills,’ and people were like, ‘Yeah, sure,'” Barnum Smith said “But as soon as they started seeing their competition on there, or their buddy on there, they were like, ‘I’ve got to get on there.'”
There’s now “extreme FOMO,” or fear of missing out, among Amazon sellers to join TikTok even if it no longer exists in the U.S. next year, Barnum Smith said.
“Whatever the future looks like for TikTok Shop, they’re happy to take that money now and get while the getting’s good,” Barnum Smith said.
Correction: Vanesa Amaro is a TikTok influencer. An earlier version misspelled her name.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.
The SpaceX Starship sits on a launch pad at Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 12, 2024, ahead of the Starship Flight 5 test. The test will involve the return of Starship’s Super Heavy Booster to the launch site.
Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images
Over the weekend, Elon Musk got his new company town along the Texas Gulf Coast. Controlling the city are three SpaceX employees, who all ran unopposed.
As NBC News reported, the election determining incorporation of the city of Starbase concluded on Saturday night, with 212 votes in favor and only six against. Just 143 votes were needed for the measure to pass.
Starbase was victorious in becoming a type C city, which in Texas applies to a previously unincorporated city, town or village of between 201 and 4,999 inhabitants. The city includes the SpaceX launch facility and company-owned land covering a 1.6 square-mile area.
The mayor is 36-year-old Bobby Peden, who has spent more than 12 years working for SpaceX and is currently vice president for Texas test and launch operations. Prior to joining the rocket maker in 2013, Peden was a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas at Austin, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Starbase has two commissioners, both from the SpaceX employee ranks.
One is Jenna Petrzelka, 39, who was an operations engineering manager at SpaceX until July, and now identifies as a philanthropist, according to her application to be on the ballot. She’s married to Joe Petrzelka, a vice president of Starship engineering and almost 14-year veteran at SpaceX.
The other commissioner is Jordan Buss, 40, a senior director of environmental health and safety for SpaceX who joined the company in 2023.
Musk, who has assumed a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration responsible for slashing the size of the federal government, began acquiring land for SpaceX in Boca Chica, Texas, about a decade ago. The first integrated Starship vehicle launched from the site, known as Starbase, in April 2023, and exploded in mid-flight.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service soon disclosed details about the aftermath of the explosion, including that a “3.5-acre fire started south of the pad site on Boca Chica State Park land,” following the test flight.
State and federal regulators have fined SpaceX for violations of the Clean Water Act, and said the company had repeatedly polluted waters in the Boca Chica area. Environmental advocates and indigenous groups have also sued both the Federal Aviation Administration and SpaceX over the company’s flight tests and launch activity in the area.
Those groups said in legal filings that SpaceX caused harm to local habitat and endangered species due to vehicle traffic, noise, heat, explosions and fragmentation caused by the company’s construction, rocket testing and launch practices.
A SpaceX spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a post on X on Saturday, the account for StarbaseTX wrote, “Becoming a city will help us continue building the best community possible for the men and women building the future of humanity’s place in space.”
Shares of Hims & Hers Health fell in extended trading on Monday after the company reported first-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations but offered weaker-than-expected guidance.
Here’s how the company did based on average analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 20 cents vs. 12 cents
Revenue: $586 million vs. $538 million
Revenue at the telehealth company increased 111% in the first quarter from $278.2 million during the same period last year, according to a release. Hims & Hers reported a net income of $49.5 million, or 20 cents per share, compared to $11.1 million, or 5 cents per share, during the same period a year earlier.
For its second quarter, Hims & Hers said it expected to report revenue between $530 million and $550 million, short of the $564.6 million expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount. The company said its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, for the quarter will be between the range of $65 million and $75 million, while StreetAccount analysts were expecting $70.4 million.
Hims & Hers’ stock has had a turbulent start to the year, notching several double-digit moves over the past few months. On April 29, shares rocketed up 20% after Novo Nordisk said it would offer its weight loss drug Wegovy through telehealth providers such as Hims & Hers.
The company said Monday that more collaborations are coming.
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“Over time, we expect wider collaboration across the industry, inclusive of pharmaceutical players, innovative leaders in diagnostic and preventative testing, and world class providers,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said in the release. “We believe this will strengthen our ecosystem and position us to curate a best-in-class offering that can reach tens of millions of people.”
Hims & Hers reported adjusted EBITDA of $91.1 million for its first quarter, up from $32.3 million last year and above the $61.3 million expected by StreetAccount.
Earlier on Monday, Hims & Hers announced Nader Kabbani will join the company as its chief operations officer. Kabbani spent nearly 20 years at Amazon, where he oversaw the launch of Amazon Pharmacy, the company’s acquisition of PillPack and its global Covid-19 Vaccination Task Force.
Hims & Hers will hold its quarterly call with investors at 5:00 p.m. ET.
Hinge Health on Monday updated its prospectus to include the results from its first quarter, which showed accelerating revenue growth over its fourth quarter.
The digital physical therapy startup filed to go public in March, but it has not shared a price range yet. Hinge said that revenue in its first quarter climbed 50% to $123.8 million, up from $82.7 million during the same period last year. Hinge reported $117.3 million in revenue during its fourth quarter, up 44% from the same period in 2023.
Hinge said its net income for the period was $17.1 million after taxes, up from a net loss of $26.5 million after taxes during the same period last year.
The company is attempting to go public at a time of extreme economic uncertainty and market volatility, spurred largely by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff policy. Several companies, including online lender Klarna and ticket marketplace StubHub, have delayed their long-awaited IPOs.
Hinge’s updated prospectus signals to investors that the company is planning to forge ahead.
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While the company’s revenue jumped 50%, the cost of goods sold fell slightly. That allowed Hinge to lift its gross margin to 81% from 70% a year earlier and record an operating income of $13.1 million after losing $31. 4 million in the same period a year earlier.
Hinge uses software to help patients treat acute musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain and carry out post-surgery rehabilitation remotely. Large employers cover the costs so their employees can access Hinge’s app-based virtual physical therapy, as well as its wearable electrical nerve stimulation device called Enso.
Daniel Perez, Hinge’s CEO, and Gabriel Mecklenburg, the company’s executive chairman, co-founded the company in 2014 after experiencing personal struggles with physical rehabilitation.
Correction:A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Q1 2025 was the company’s first profitable quarter. Hinge was profitable previously.