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Conversion · 3 min read23 May 2026

TikTok Shop Just Said US Small Business Sales Climbed 66% in 2025. Two-Thirds of Shoppers Now Open the App to Find Something New.

TikTok Shop reported US small business sales (under $15M revenue) grew 66% in 2025 with 215,000+ active small sellers, up 25% YoY. GlobalData survey of 6,000 consumers found 67% use TikTok Shop to discover new brands, ahead of Amazon at 57%. Platform exceeded $14B in 2025 sales.

Discovery has moved. The default search box for a new product is no longer Amazon. It is a vertical video feed.

3 min read

TikTok Shop dropped a new number on Modern Retail this week. US small businesses on the platform, defined as sellers under $15 million in annual revenue, grew sales 66% in 2025. There are now more than 215,000 active small sellers on TikTok Shop in the US, up 25% year on year.

The more interesting number is on the demand side. A GlobalData survey of 6,000 US consumers, commissioned by TikTok, found that 67% of shoppers go to TikTok Shop when they want to discover new brands. Amazon came in at 57%. Seventy-two per cent of brands consumers discovered on the platform in the last 12 months had under $15 million in revenue.

The TikTok Shop machine sold an estimated $14 billion in the US in 2025, larger than Wayfair, Etsy or eBay.

Why it matters

TikTok Shop is not yet open in Australia. Local sellers cannot list. That is the obvious caveat. But the consumer behaviour the data describes is already here. Australian consumers under 35 are spending more time on TikTok than on Instagram or YouTube, and a meaningful share of them are buying products they first saw on the platform, then completing the purchase on the brand's own site or via a marketplace.

The lesson for AU marketers is not about TikTok Shop the storefront. It is about discovery. The product you sell is being discovered in a vertical video, often by a creator, often before any of your owned channels see the consumer. If you are still allocating your content budget to one Instagram Reel per fortnight while the discovery is happening daily on TikTok, you are funding the wrong surface.

67% vs 57%

TikTok Shop beat Amazon as the first place US consumers go to discover new products and brands

What to do about it

Audit your TikTok organic content velocity. If you are posting fewer than three times per week, you are not in the discovery pool. The algorithm rewards consistent native creators, not occasional brand drops.
Build a creator brief specifically for discovery, not promo. The brands winning on TikTok have creators using the product in normal life, not pitching it.
Use your existing GA4 source/medium reports to count assisted conversions from TikTok. The last-click number understates the channel by an order of magnitude in most accounts.
Stand up a TikTok Shopping ads test in Australia even without TikTok Shop checkout. Drive traffic to a fast mobile product page and measure conversion against your other paid social channels.
Get a brief into Mediaweek or your retailer comms team about TikTok Shop's Australian launch trajectory. The platform is hiring locally. You want to be a launch partner not a fast follower.

What it means for the next 12 months

The pattern looks like every previous commerce platform shift. The early movers were small. The category got noisy. The big brands arrived late and overpaid for share. TikTok Shop in the US is at the middle of that curve. Australia is at the start. The advantage is real but small, and it expires the moment the storefront opens locally and the playbook becomes common knowledge.

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Filip Ivanković
The Debrief / From Filip Ivanković
One every morning. Six months in, you'll see the patterns most don't.
Strategy, benchmarks, and what's actually moving in Australian marketing. Four-minute read. The reps compound.
Filip Ivanković·Founder, New RebellionLinkedIn