TikTok Shop Strategy: How Brands Are Turning Social Engagement into Revenue

TikTok Shop is no longer a nice-to-have. It's the UK's fourth-largest beauty retailer, growing 60% year on year, with 6,000 active live shopping sessions every single day in the UK alone. The brands winning there aren't those with the biggest budgets. They're the ones who understand the platform.

At YMS LDN 2026, Alex Brown, CCO & Co-Founder, and Lucy Warren, Senior Account Manager and TikTok Shop Expert, at Campfire, sat down with Alice Nardeosingh, Head of Digital Marketing at Coty UK, for an honest conversation about how Rimmel built one of TikTok Shop's most talked-about beauty launches, what it takes to set the channel up properly, and where most brands go wrong.

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TikTok Shop Is a Brand Engine, Not Just a Sales Channel

The biggest misconception brands bring to TikTok Shop is treating it like another e-commerce platform. It isn't.

"TikTok Shop isn't just a sales platform, it's a really big brand engine. It's driving conversation, it's driving culture." Alice Nardeosingh, Head of Digital Marketing, Coty

Rimmel's decision to lean into TikTok Shop came from watching brands like e.l.f. and Made by Mitchell grow rapidly on the platform. As the UK's number one mass cosmetics brand, sitting on the sidelines wasn't an option. But the real shift in thinking came once they were on it. Internally, there were concerns about TikTok Shop cannibalising high street sales at Boots and Superdrug. The opposite happened. Halo sales across both retailers increased, and the platform proved itself as a discovery engine that feeds the wider retail ecosystem.

That tracks with what Pion research into Gen Z shopping habits consistently shows: young people shop and search everywhere. TikTok Shop is just the front door.

"You wouldn't expect to put your product into Sainsbury's and have it fly off the shelves immediately. It's the exact same with TikTok Shop." Lucy Warren, Senior Account Manager and TikTok Shop Expert, Campfire

The Pion100 backs this up. Fashion and beauty are the top two sectors where 16 to 24-year-olds most love to spend, and 72% describe themselves as careful budgeters who shop strategically. Getting in front of them at the discovery stage, through a platform they already trust, is where brand value is built.

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Authenticity and Affordability: The Rimmel Playbook

Rimmel's standout TikTok Shop moment was the Serving Cappuccino bundle, a campaign that started not with a brief, but with a trend. Lucy and the team noticed organic uptake of Rimmel's lip liner and followed the demand.

"It's about relinquishing brand guidelines to an extent, but also letting TikTok and social trends dictate which way your brand should be moving." Alice Nardeosingh, Head of Digital Marketing, Coty

The results were significant. Over 4,000 units of the Serving Cappuccino bundle sold within the first six months. The campaign exceeded its views KPI by 148%, delivered eight times the earned media value target, and hit 88% positive sentiment against a benchmark of 65%. Brand relevance reached 1.5 times the category average within beauty.

None of that happened by accident. It required a shift in how Rimmel approached creator relationships. Traditional influencer campaigns meant a small number of carefully briefed creators and tightly controlled messaging. TikTok Shop meant handing the reins to thousands of affiliates and trusting them to create content native to the platform.

"You're really handing over the reins to creators and saying, please create content that's really authentic to you and the platform." Alice Nardeosingh, Head of Digital Marketing, Coty

Measurement shifted too. Where traditional campaigns tracked reach and engagement, TikTok Shop is measured on sales and gross merchandise value. The best-performing creators weren't always the most followed. Lower to mid-tier creators, those with authentic connections to their audiences, consistently outperformed bigger names.

As Pion's creator marketing research shows, 46% of Gen Z trust creators with smaller, more engaged audiences over those with massive followings.

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What It Actually Takes to Win on TikTok Shop

The honest takeaway from this session was that TikTok Shop is 20% content and 80% operations. Most brands don't find that out until they're already on the platform.

"If you aren't fulfilling orders on time or your customer service isn't within 24 hours, TikTok Shop will suppress your algorithm and your sales." Lucy Warren, Senior Account Manager and TikTok Shop Expert, Campfire

The foundations have to be in place before the creative work begins, and that means involving finance, supply, and operations from day one.

"Budget isn't everything. You need to have that alignment to move forward." Alice Nardeosingh, Head of Digital Marketing, Coty

For brands considering the leap, the panel's advice was clear. Don't launch without business-wide buy-in. Don't treat it as a quick sales activation.

Nurture affiliates like they're part of the brand, because the ones that win do exactly that. And be ready to move fast.

"You've got to fail fast, and you've got to be able to pivot and be super agile." Alice Nardeosingh, Head of Digital Marketing, Coty

TikTok Shop rewards brands that learn quickly, follow the culture, and trust their creators. Those that try to control everything, or treat it like a traditional channel, are the ones that struggle.

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The Brands That Win Are Already On It

TikTok Shop isn't the future of social commerce. It's the present. For brands with young audiences it's quickly becoming non-negotiable, and the gap between those who've built real expertise on the platform and those who haven't is only going to widen.

{{ctaNeon}}