Selling where the customer already is: TikTok Shop, marketplaces and the build-or-rent decision

2026-06-15

TikTok Shop isn’t just something your social team is testing anymore. In the UK, it’s now a real sales channel with its own economics, and it should be managed that way.

• Ecommerce
• Social Commerce
• TikTok
• Strategy

For most of the past decade, running an online store was straightforward. You attracted visitors to your site, converted them into customers, and kept their data. Marketing brought people in, your site made the sale, and you owned the relationship. That approach still works, but it is no longer the full story. More and more, customers are buying on platforms you do not control.

The shape of the shift

Britain stands out in this shift. TikTok Shop launched in the UK in 2021, making it the first Western market to test social commerce on a large scale. Five years later, it is no longer just a trial. Analysts estimate TikTok Shop’s global sales at about 33 billion dollars in 2024, with most expecting it to nearly double in 2025. While TikTok does not share official numbers, all reliable sources show the same trend: rapid growth.

TikTok is not the only player. eMarketer predicts that US social commerce sales will top 100 billion dollars for the first time in 2026. In the UK, the BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor for May 2026 reported a 10.6% year-on-year increase in online non-food sales, while in-store sales declined. The mix of sales channels is changing quickly, with much of the growth happening on marketplaces and social platforms instead of brand-owned websites.

Why this is a trading decision, not a marketing one

When a new external storefront comes up, many teams naturally assign it to social or performance marketing, since those teams already manage platform relationships. I get why that happens, but I believe it is not the best approach.

Selling on TikTok Shop or a marketplace is really a trading activity. It covers assortment, pricing, promotions, stock allocation, fulfilment, returns, and margins after platform fees. These are the same skills you use to run your main store, just on a different platform. If you treat these channels as marketing campaigns, you will focus on reach and engagement. If you treat them as trading, you will focus on contribution margin, which is the key measure of whether the channel is worth it.

Build, rent, or both

If you ignore the distractions, the decision is really about three options:

Building means you own your storefront, control the full experience, keep the margin and customer data, but also take on the cost and effort of attracting customers.

Renting means selling on platforms like TikTok Shop, Amazon, or Meta. You accept lower margins, follow platform rules, and give up some control, but you gain access to demand you could not create by yourself.

Choosing both means using a mix: your own channels for margin, data, and brand, and rented channels for reach and discovery. You need a clear understanding of how each channel performs.

For most brands, using both is the best choice. The real mistake is not being on these platforms, but joining them without a clear reason, target margin, or goal.

The second-purchase problem

The toughest part of renting reach is what comes after the first sale. On your own site, a first purchase starts a relationship. You get the customer’s email, order history, and permission to reach out again. On many external platforms, the platform keeps much of that information, so the customer belongs to them as much as to you.

That is why retention should be part of your channel decision from the start. If a channel brings in sales but does not let you own the second purchase, its true value is less than it appears. Sometimes that is still acceptable, a first sale at a low margin that you would not have made otherwise is still a win. But you should be aware of this trade-off, instead of finding out later when you try to build a loyalty program without the data you need.

Where it should sit in your structure

In a well-run ecommerce team, external channels are not managed separately. They are part of trading and commercial, handled by the same people who manage assortment, pricing, and stock, and report to the ecommerce leader along with the main store. One person should be able to look at both owned and rented channels and answer a simple question: where did our margin come from this week, and what did each channel cost us?

This is what the integrator role looks like in practice. Instead of having one specialist for TikTok and another for the website, working separately and competing for stock, you have one commercial owner who manages the mix and makes the trading decisions.

Three practical steps to do this quarter

First, include every external channel in your profit and loss statement. Focus on contribution margin after fees, fulfilment, and returns. Not just gross sales. If you cannot see this, make it your top priority to fix.

Second, choose your channel mix intentionally. Decide which channels are for reach, which are for margin, and how much demand you are comfortable having on platforms you do not control.

Third, assign an owner. One person should be responsible for the mix, working within trading, and have the authority to manage stock and pricing across all channels.

None of this needs a major overhaul. It just means treating external storefronts as real sales channels, with real economics, that should be part of the same commercial discussion as your main store.