How 3 brands are using TikTok Shop to expand abroad

As these brands venture into new territories, such as the U.K., Europe and Japan, they say that the key to a global approach to TikTok Shop involves tailored marketing campaigns, creator partnerships, and a commitment to experimenting with new tools and services within the TikTok ecosystem.

Building on holiday momentum

After selling out during the 2025 holiday season on TikTok Shop, gaming console Nex Playground is launching on the platform in the U.K. and Ireland. 

The brand launched in the U.K. and Ireland through Amazon U.K., Argo and Smyths Toys. It will also be available on TikTok Shop later this month.

Stephen Saiz, vp of publishing at Nex Playground, said that because TikTok Shop helped fuel the company’s explosive growth in the last year, it was important to incorporate the channel into its overseas expansion strategy.

Nex Playground sells a controller-free motion gaming console. Its value proposition centers around the idea that it is a gaming console that the whole family can use, a format reminiscent of the Wii Sports games millennials grew up with.

Last Black Friday weekend, Nex Playground’s gaming console sold out almost instantly. Saiz said a 360-degree omnichannel approach was key to the brand’s success on TikTok Shop, which involved integrating marketing campaigns and live shopping sessions. The company collaborates heavily with family-focused creators who produce authentic content on how they use the console at home. 

Saiz said the company has taken away a few lessons from the viral period last year, which it will apply to its international expansion. The biggest learning involves getting products to TikTok creator partners more efficiently. Nex Playground began utilizing TikTok Shop’s Refundable Sample program in the U.S., which involves affiliate creators paying for the product upfront. “If they produce two or three pieces of content, we’ll reimburse them, which is a win-win for us,” he said.

“We are also bringing in creators who are more traditional game streamers, because that’s a big area of growth for TikTok and we want to lean into it,” Saiz said. 

For the past year, Nex Playground has also relied on Fulfilled by TikTok, which Saiz said allowed the company to work with creators who can help showcase the console’s gaming experience in a personal setting. In the U.K., the company is also sticking with the Fulfilled by TikTok logistics infrastructure to maintain efficiency and avoid delayed orders. 

Saiz said that in the U.K., TikTok Shop has a more established electronics market than in the U.S., which he believes will help the company introduce its $299 console to more people without resorting to heavy discounting.

“TikTok Shop is perceived a little differently in the U.K., and it’s a bit more established from an e-commerce perspective, which means it has a higher shopping cart value,” Saiz said.

Since the company is starting by launching in English-speaking countries, Saiz said the focus of this expansion is to localize operations rather than the marketing language. For example, Nex Playground is staffing teams in those markets for customer support and fulfillment operations. “This is not just for time zone purposes, but it’s also about them jumping in to support the operation so it really feels like a unified team,” Saiz said.

Building a custom TikTok Shop operation 

Meanwhile, luxury resale platform Fashionphile has taken a more bespoke approach to international TikTok Shop operations. Because it sells single-SKU products, Fashionphile does not work with TikTok Shop influencer affiliates to sell its products and instead hosts its own live-selling sessions via TikTok Live. 

Ben Gallagher, Fashionphile’s head of U.K., told Modern Retail that the company has tested the TikTok Live channel in the U.K. and is now adopting it across other markets. Gallagher previously founded and ran the U.K.-based luxury resale marketplace Luxe Collective, which Fashionphile acquired last October. 

Since January, Gallagher has led Fashionphile’s TikTok Shop launches in Japan and integrated the existing U.K. infrastructure with the U.S. TikTok Shop store.

Gallagher said the U.K. customers on TikTok are already much more accustomed to purchasing high-end items through TikTok Shop. This is much different than in the U.S., where top categories include lower-priced beauty and food items.

Now, Fashionphile is hoping to bring its luxury live-selling success to other markets this year.  

“The reason Fashionphile is doing TikTok Shop is that it was such a success for us,” he said. At the time of the merger, Luxe Collective already had 1.6 million followers on TikTok. “Currently, TikTok Shop is a little over 25% of our U.K. business,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher said that the nature of Fashionphile’s resale model means it has had to adapt its TikTok Shop strategy. For example, the company hosts its own TikTok Live sessions to showcase handbags and other luxury items. These livestreams are hosted at Fashionphile studios in the U.S., the U.K. and Japan, where the company’s in-house hosts model the items and answer viewers’ questions about them in real time. During the livestream, viewers can purchase the shown item and check out via TikTok Shop.

Fashionphile also does not use Fulfilled by TikTok due to its wide range of SKUs. Instead, the company ships orders directly to customers from wherever that item is located across its various warehouses.

Gallagher said that Fashionphile’s close partnership with TikTok has also enabled it to tailor its selling and fulfillment strategy. 

For instance, TikTok has placed a setting on Fashionphile’s account that allows the company to ship within 12 days. “That gives us time to ship from Japan to our customers in the U.K.,” he said. “Because we’re single SKUs, cancellations can happen sometimes if an item sells on the website within minutes of the livestream,” Gallagher said.

To offset those concessions, TikTok monitors and measures Fashionphile’s metrics, such as how quickly a business account answers customer care messages and how often it cancels orders, he said. “They [TikTok] are really good at making sure that if you’re a good store, you get pushed out to more people,” he said.

A ‘TikTok Shop-first’ approach to international launches 

Global K-beauty company MBX is also looking to replicate its American TikTok Shop success in other markets. The company operates brands like Nooni, Kaja, I’m Meme and I Dew Care, with Nooni recently having a breakout year on TikTok Shop. 

The Nooni Lip Oil surpassed 200 million cumulative TikTok views going into Amazon Prime Day. In turn, Nooni recently reached “Tier 5,” TikTok Shop’s highest seller tier, while Kaja has reached Tier 4. 

Building on that momentum, this month the company is launching the brand in Japan via TikTok Shop. “Japan is one of our key TikTok Shop markets, but it’s part of a much broader global expansion strategy,” said Hyungseok Dino Ha, CEO of MBX. 

Ha said the company’s approach to international expansion is centered around a “TikTok-first model.” With that, MBX first uses TikTok Shop to build awareness and verify demand before expanding into Amazon, physical retail and other wholesale channels in new markets. “It is a model we’ve successfully proven in the U.S. and are now replicating in additional markets,” Ha said.

As for specific capabilities, MBX has found TikTok Shop’s Global Commission tool, known as Earn Abroad, to be particularly useful. The program allows eligible brands to automatically match with international creators who can promote the brand’s globally available products. Earn Abroad also auto-tags shoppable content and handles cross-border payouts on behalf of the affiliate creators. Earn Abroad is currently available in the U.K., Germany, Spain, France and Italy, among other countries.

From a brand perspective, Ha said, this localized affiliate program helps reduce some of the traditional barriers to entering new markets. “Rather than building everything from scratch market by market, we can use proven content assets to generate awareness and demand more quickly,” Ha said.

The company also found that TikTok Shop makes it easier to identify content formats that resonate with consumers and scale them efficiently. “For example, with Nooni Lip Oil, we discovered that simple creator-led videos filmed inside a car consistently generate strong views and engagement,” Ha said. Once that pattern was identified, the brand was able to replicate the format across multiple creators to scale reach.

“Beyond the U.S. and Japan, we are gradually expanding our TikTok Shop footprint into additional international markets as part of our broader global growth strategy,” said Ha.

No matter what marketing or logistics approach brands take with their cross-border TikTok Shop expansion, Saiz said it’s important to commit to the investment. 

“Dipping your toe in the water and dabbling here and there is not going to work particularly well within the TikTok shop environment,” he said. “You really have to embrace the creator economy and allow them the freedom to cultivate your growth.”