TikTok finds e-commerce success in Southeast Asia as political scrutiny and workplace woes weigh in the West

Short video hit TikTok has just finished a series of online shopping events in Southeast Asia, as it pivots to the region amid increased regulatory scrutiny in the West as geopolitical tensions rise between Beijing and Washington.

The ByteDance-owned platform has just wrapped up an “8.8 Sale” campaign in Singapore, concluding last week to mark the country’s Nation Day. The effort “has set a strong foundation for future campaigns in Singapore”, a TikTok representative said in a statement.

The week-long promotion of TikTok Shop, a marketplace built into the TikTok app that facilitates transactions while users watch short video and live streams, took place between Aug 4 and 10. It saw daily gross merchandise volume (GMV) triple compared to average daily levels a week before, the representative said, without disclosing the exact figures.

The relative success of its e-commerce push in Asia, which is largely a replica of its business model in China of embedding e-commerce into live streaming and short video, is in stark contrast with a similar experiment in the UK, where a clash of working cultures and different market conditions have led to an exodus of local employees.

In Singapore, the live streaming and a host of special deals appears to have worked for TikTok. Mobot, Singapore’s largest bike and scooter brand, hosted live shopping every day during the campaign, notching up sales of SG$135,000 (US$97,500), according to Bobby Lai, the company’s brand manager. “The numbers really came as a surprise”, said Lai.

A similar campaign was also run in Malaysia, with merchants gaining greater exposure via TikTok’s large user base in the country. The “Sama Sama! Hot Deal!” event, which took place between July 25 and Aug 5, saw daily GMV surge by 85 per cent over the week before, according to an announcement by TikTok Shop on its official WeChat account. The GMV for Chinese merchants who sold to Malaysian TikTok users during the campaign grew by 95 per cent, it added.