Chinese livestreamers set their sights on TikTok sales to shoppers in the US and Europe

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Chinese livestreamers have set their sights on selling to TikTok shoppers in the U.S. and Europe

HONG KONG — Chinese livestreamers have set their sights on TikTok shoppers in the U.S. and Europe, hawking everything from bags and apparel to crystals with their eyes on a potentially lucrative market, despite uncertainties over the platform's future in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In China, where livestreaming ecommerce is forecast to reach 4.9 trillion yuan ($676 billion) by the year's end, popular hosts like “Lipstick King” Austin Li rack up tens of millions of dollars in sales during a single livestream. Many brands, including L'Oreal, Nike and Louis Vuitton, have begun using livestreaming to reach more shoppers.

But the highly-competitive livestreaming market in China has led some hosts to look to Western markets to carve out niches for themselves.

Oreo Deng, a former English tutor, sells jewelry to U.S. customers by livestreaming on TikTok, delivering her sales pitches in English for about four to six hours a day.

“I wanted to try livestreaming on TikTok because it aligned with my experiences as an English tutor and my past jobs working in cross-border e-commerce,” Deng said.

Since 2019, western e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Facebook have experimented with livestreaming e-commerce after seeing the success of Chinese platforms like Alibaba's Tmall and Taobao, and Douyin, TikTok's Chinese counterpart in China.

TikTok started testing its live shopping feature last year. Registered merchants from the U.S., Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore, among other countries, can now sell via livestreams online.

But livestreaming e-commerce has yet to take off in the U.S. The livestreaming e-commerce market in the U.S. — the