TikTok Shop, TikTok’s social commerce platform, is expanding into the secondhand luxury sector in the United Kingdom, placing it in direct rivalry with The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, Depop, Poshmark, and Mercari, among others. The item has been available at TikTok Shop U.S. for more than six months.
The new category enables shoppers in the United Kingdom to buy pre-owned high-end apparel, designer handbags, and other items without leaving the TikTok app. At launch, only five UK labels are available: Sellier, Luxe Collective, Sign of the Times, HardlyEverWornit, and Break Archive.
Since its start in 2022, TikTok Shop has sold around $1 billion or more of merchandise. Despite its popularity, others allege TikTok Shop is harming the short-form video-sharing app by filling the market with fakes and low-quality items. Counterfeits are the most serious danger when purchasing pre-owned luxury products online, with even the top e-commerce companies (Amazon, eBay, and others) experiencing authenticity concerns.
Like many resale marketplaces, TikTok Shop has an anti-counterfeit policy that offers a full refund to sellers who sell counterfeit goods. According to Bloomberg, the company is in talks with luxury goods major LVMH to help combat counterfeiting.
All secondhand brands on TikTok Shop in the U.S. must have certifications from third-party authenticators. TikTok has collaborated with authentication providers Entrupy and Real Authentication to ensure that the designer handbags on the site are genuine.
Meanwhile, a TikTok spokeswoman informed Eltrys that each of the five UK firms has its own internal verification method. They did not indicate when they would start accepting other used brands.
The launch of TikTok Shop’s secondhand luxury category is a smart move to capitalize on the growing demand for preowned luxury products. The secondhand luxury market is a robust multibillion-dollar industry, with an anticipated $49.3 billion (€45 billion) in used designer products sold globally in 2023.
Furthermore, this development is consistent with the growing trend of consumers appreciating preloved fashion, and it creates new opportunities for secondhand companies in the United Kingdom to access a larger client base. The popularity of secondhand fashion on TikTok is clear, with over 144,000 uploads with the hashtag #secondhandfashion totaling almost 1.2 billion views.
Today’s news comes after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or risk a ban in the United States, which looks to be gathering traction in the Senate. A prohibition would deal a significant blow to American merchants selling on the app. According to the firm, the short video-sharing app produced $14.7 billion for small and medium-sized enterprises in 2023.
