Is TikTok Shop the new frontier of fashion retail? The 4.0 shopping era

After the news of SSENSE's bankruptcy, the debate around the existence (and resistance) of e-commerce platforms has reignited. It has now been two years since the first signs of the crisis of major retailers, when New York’s department store par excellence, Barneys, announced its closure. From that moment, a long domino effect hit most multi-brand retailers, both online and offline: Yoox was acquired by MyTheresa, Farfetch is barely surviving, LuisaViaRoma is close to shutting down, and Saks Fifth Avenue is now heavily in debt. In such a scenario, it might seem almost absurd to imagine that, among all, TikTok Shop could take over the space left vacant by some of the largest luxury retailers, capturing a clientele left without clear points of reference. Yet the Chinese social platform has already started to make headlines: launched in Europe at the beginning of 2025, it was initially perceived more as a competitor of Temu than as an alternative to SSENSE.

How does TikTok Shop work?

But it only took a few months to overturn that narrative, since in May Zalando attributed part of its quarterly growth precisely to the social platform and its integrated e-commerce. As reported by Business of Fashion, in the United States, TikTok Shop has already shown it can evolve from a simple showcase for low-cost products to a strategic sales channel for established brands such as Pacsun and Crocs. Beauty and fashion brands have started to record significant shares of their e-commerce directly on the app, proving that the strength of the platform lies not only in virality but also in its ability to turn immediate discovery into purchase.

In just one year, the marketplace has managed to compete with giants like Sephora, Ulta, and even Amazon, becoming for some brands the second biggest sales driver after traditional channels. What is striking is the speed of this transformation. From a space once perceived as a “digital flea market”, TikTok Shop is gradually taking on the shape of a more solid commercial infrastructure, with dedicated fulfillment centers, customer retention programs, and anti-counterfeit policies designed to contain the dupe phenomenon.

The challenges ahead

The main limitation, however, is the lack of authority. While the platform has established itself as an effective channel for beauty and accessible fashion products, it still lacks the credibility needed to attract luxury. A user may easily purchase a mascara for a few euros, but is far less likely to entrust the purchase of a five-thousand-euro bag to a marketplace born as an extension of a social network. In luxury, the value does not end with the product: it is also about the shopping experience, which relies on trust, rituals, and the perception of exclusivity.

Major digital retailers had attempted to transpose these elements into an online context, creating carefully designed websites, tailored customer service, and entire ecosystems that reinforced brand image. TikTok Shop, on the other hand, still speaks a language of virality and trends, closer to the logic of immediate discovery than to the construction of a narrative consistent with a maison’s heritage. For a brand with a high-end positioning, choosing to sell on TikTok Shop could compromise part of its symbolic capital, eroding that distance that makes luxury desirable. For now, TikTok Shop can fill the gap left by generalist retailers and generate large volumes in the mid-market segment, but it does not yet seem ready to become a reference point for the high end. On the other hand, since the onset of the severe crisis in the Chinese market, more and more brands have turned to RedNote, opening dedicated sales channels on the Chinese super app. Could the next fashion frontier really be just a scroll away?