TikTok Shop is booming globally. So why is Australia still waiting?

Last week TikTok gathered brands, agencies and marketers in Sydney for its flagship industry event, TikTok Spotlight. The platform unveiled new advertising formats, shared brand success stories and showcased how Australian businesses are turning cultural relevance into real growth.

But there was one topic quietly hovering over the conversation: TikTok Shop.

The social commerce platform has exploded globally, turning product discovery into instant purchase and transforming creators into a new kind of retail channel. In markets across Southeast Asia, the US and the UK, TikTok is not just a social platform - it’s increasingly acting as a storefront.

Australia, however, is a weird outlier.

Despite TikTok’s enormous local user base and a growing ecosystem of creators, sellers and brands, TikTok Shop still hasn’t launched here. According to the platform’s local leadership, there are no immediate plans to introduce the service in Australia - or at least not “imminently”.

“While I am not aware of any plans to launch TikTok Shop in Australia, it's already an opportunity for Australian businesses to reach new audiences internationally,” Amy Bradshaw, GM global business solutions, ANZ at TikTok, said.

That puts the country in a strange position. Australian brands are already selling products through TikTok Shop - just not to Australians. According to Bradshaw, almost 20 brands are using TikTok Shop to scale their business beyond local borders.

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At last week’s event, TikTok showcased several homegrown companies that have tapped the platform’s cross-border commerce capabilities. Viral personal care brand HiSmile has used TikTok Shop to generate more than US$2.67 million in gross merchandise value this year alone across the US and UK markets, with reported sales uplifts of more than 1,000%.

Supplement brand EHP Labs has also leaned into the platform’s commerce ecosystem, generating more than US$350,000 in incremental sales during the 2025 Cyber Weekend through TikTok Shop campaigns. 

In other words, Australian brands are already benefiting from TikTok’s retail engine - just in overseas markets.

Globally, the numbers behind TikTok Shop are hard to ignore.

In the UK, TikTok reported record sales during Black Friday last year, with 27 items sold every second through the platform. Live shopping sessions surged and Cyber Week sales exceeded the previous year’s record by 50%.

Across Southeast Asia, TikTok Shop has become deeply embedded in the region’s e-commerce ecosystem, particularly in markets like Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia where creator-led product discovery and livestream shopping are now mainstream retail behaviour.

That success has reinforced TikTok’s broader ambition: to evolve from an entertainment platform into a full-funnel commerce ecosystem.

So is TikTok quietly prepping for an Australian launch? At Spotlight, the social network unveiled two new premium ad formats aimed squarely at accelerating that shift.

Prime Time allows brands to deliver up to three sequential video ads to the same user within a 15-minute window, creating a narrative-style brand moment designed to deepen engagement. Logo Takeover, meanwhile, allows brands to dominate the app’s launch moment with co-branded creative before transitioning into TikTok’s high-impact TopView format.

Both formats signal TikTok’s growing push into performance-driven brand moments, the kind that sit closer to commerce than pure awareness.

“Australian success stories like HiSmile and EHP Labs show what’s possible when brands fully embrace TikTok Shop overseas,” Bradshaw said.

“The platform is helping businesses scale globally and unlock incremental sales during key retail moments.”

The messaging is clear: TikTok increasingly wants marketers to see it as more than a social platform. The question is whether Australian consumers will eventually get the same experience.

Launching TikTok Shop requires more than flipping a switch. The platform needs local logistics infrastructure, fulfilment partnerships, payment integrations and a network of sellers prepared to operate within a social commerce model.

Those ingredients are already in place in markets like the UK and across Southeast Asia, where TikTok has spent several years building its commerce ecosystem. Australia may simply be further down the roadmap.

But events like TikTok Spotlight suggest the groundwork is quietly being laid. The platform is showcasing local success stories, expanding its performance advertising tools and encouraging brands to think of TikTok as a direct sales channel rather than just a discovery engine.

In the meantime, Australia remains in an unusual position. A country full of brands successfully selling on TikTok Shop - in markets everywhere except their own.