TikTok's Biggest Ever Black Friday

This year marked TikTok Shop’s biggest-ever Black Friday sale, with discounts of up to 60% on hundreds of thousands of products. What stands out is that it wasn’t just a showcase for small or up-and-coming sellers, it featured some of the biggest, well-known brands such as Phillips, Twinings, L’Oreal Paris – even M&S is selling its Beauty and Home Products on TikTok Shop now, having launched earlier this month!

TikTok has carved out a real niche, having successfully blended discovery commerce with mainstream retail. Users scroll, watch short video content or live streams, and make purchases, all within the app. It’s a shopping experience that leans heavily on impulse, discovery and convenience, making it easier than ever for shoppers to find something they like and just hit “buy.” It’s clear that big brands can no longer ignore TikTok Shop and this year’s Black Friday deals suggest they’re finally waking up to this.

For brands, it’s a chance to tap into behaviours that feel more natural and less transactional than typical e-commerce browsing. The mix of big-name credibility and small-business variety gives customers a wide range of options without needing to hop across platforms. For buyers used to marketplaces or traditional online stores, it offers a more engaging, social-infused way to shop, and for brands, a path to build direct connection, urgency and a sense of cultural relevance.

This shift signals that social-commerce platforms are maturing. TikTok Shop is becoming serious retail real estate, not a side-project or fringe channel. For those brands still yet to launch, it means evaluating whether to experiment or invest. Do you stay Amazon-centric, or do you diversify into channels where brand discovery, impulse-buying and younger consumer segments might be more reachable? Either way, this trend deserves close attention. Social-commerce is no longer the future of e-commerce, it’s the present.