How three brands are using TikTok Shop this holiday season

This holiday season, some big brands will rely on livestreams and new product drops to drum up excitement for holiday sales on TikTok Shop, as the platform expands the scale of live shopping and commerce online.

TikTok Shop has been in a period of transition as it doubles down on courting established brands like Best Buy and Sephora. The platform has added tools like Live Auctions and shoppable links to make it easier for merchants to create live shopping experiences. Live shopping sales on TikTok Shop “more than doubled” in the first half of 2026 compared with 2025, according to the company.

Users can expect to see new products from beauty and cosmetics brand e.l.f. this holiday season, while Gap and its sister brands Banana Republic and Old Navy plan to lean into creator-led discounts to lure holiday shoppers on TikTok Shop. Plus, gaming and entertainment brand Nex will test live gaming within the native live shopping experience on TikTok Shop.

As TikTok Shop evolves from being a brand discovery engine to a hub for live shopping, brands are joining the conversation. Three brand executives who spoke to Retail Brew agreed that selling via TikTok Shop can create a “halo effect,” lifting sales on other channels and building brand love, even among users who don’t necessarily shop on TikTok Shop.

Shopping sprint: “I think what TikTok has created is a playbook that other platforms are going to adopt,” Kelly Shah-McDonnell, VP of global connected commerce at e.l.f. Beauty, told Retail Brew. “For us, it’s not so much just about TikTok Shop, it’s about what it represents [for] a new age of community selling.”

Recently, TikTok Shop announced its three-week Black Friday-Cyber Monday promotional calendar. Since TikTok Shop launched in 2023, TikTok Shop has become one way for brands to generate demand and discover new customers.

Closing the gap: Gap, which started selling on TikTok Shop last year, will bring all its top categories to life on TikTok Shop. “TikTok Shop obviously has been a really great commercial channel for us in selling,” Cory Weaver, head of creator marketing for Gap, told Retail Brew, “but on top of that, it’s been a really great channel for developing relevance, driving brand love, and seeing our brands come to life through the lenses of all the creators.”

With TikTok Shop, retailers have an opportunity to sell more than just what people are already looking for, Carl Hewitt, CEO and co-founder at UK-based digital marketing Hewitt Matthews Group, told Retail Brew in an email. “Someone can literally discover a product they didn’t even know they wanted, watch a creator demonstrate it, build trust in it and buy it, all within the same platform and within seconds if they want to.”

Brand building: Brands like Gap and e.l.f. also see the opportunity as they invest in creator-led content, live demos, and exclusive product launches, Hewitt said, “The theme behind all of it being that they’re both doing more than just trying to sell products,” he said. “They’re trying to build the brand at the same time.”

TikTok Shop has also become a place for experiments. Nex, for instance, says it will bring live gaming to the shopping experience with its cube-shaped gaming console Playground for the first time this year. The company will have game streamers on TikTok in addition to shopping creators to promote and tag Nex products directly inside the TikTok livestreams.

“We’re going to start to experiment on the live gaming side that also links directly to TikTok Shop,” Stephen Saiz, VP, publishing and e-commerce at Nex, told Retail Brew. “We think it’s going to expand the type of creators that we typically would work with.”

Nex is also planning to launch a new music rhythm game from K-pop artists BTS in the holiday window.

Ultimately, Hewitt recommended that brands focus on not just selling more products on TikTok Shop, but getting more people to discover their brand. “As platforms make it easier to discover and buy products in one place, they take more control and ownership over the customer relationship.”