Over the past year, TikTok Shop reached $33.1 billion in gross merchandise value, firmly cementing its place as one of the fastest-growing e-commerce platforms in the world. Social commerce no longer looks like an experiment for Gen Z, as people of all ages are now buying in. Experts expect that TikTok Shop sales could nearly double by 2027, reaching $50 billion annually.
We interviewed Yernur Nurmukhambet, e-commerce entrepreneur and founder of Piera, a company that specialises in launching and scaling online brands across TikTok Shop, Amazon, and Shopify, to talk about what to sell on TikTok Shop, how to approach promotion, and why social commerce isn’t just about quick wins but long-term brand growth.
Yernur began building his TikTok Shop presence in late 2024, evolving his model from dropshipping to direct sourcing from China and branded products. In a short period, he scaled his operation to 500–600 orders per day and roughly $12,000 in daily revenue, developing a systematic approach to product launches and content as the primary sales driver.
Beyond building his own brands and managing supply chains, he also consults sellers and teams on TikTok Shop go-to-market strategy, content creation, creator partnerships, and building operational processes within the creator-driven commerce ecosystem.
Using Yernur’s experience as a guide, this piece breaks down the most common mistakes new TikTok Shop sellers make and offers practical advice on which products have real potential for consistent sales and long-term profitability on the platform.
Products that perform best on TikTok Shop are those built around repeat consumption, what’s known as consumer packaged goods, or CPGs. Because people buy these regularly, sellers benefit from consistent demand, repeat orders, and a more predictable business model.
“This category includes beauty and skincare, home goods, household cleaning products, pet supplies, snacks and beverages, and everyday items with short use cycles, from face patches and masks to laundry pods and vitamins,” Yernur explains.
That said, unusual products, the kind people buy out of curiosity or emotion rather than rational need, can still perform exceptionally well on the platform. One example from Yernur’s own experience: Angel Hair, a pink chocolate filled with cotton candy, which brought in around $10,000 in revenue within the first two weeks of launch.
Like Dubai chocolate before it, Angel Hair went viral on TikTok because users couldn’t stop filming its unusual texture, the crunch, and the dramatic filling. The product turned from a local trend into a full-blown social commerce phenomenon. Yernur and his team launched their own production of the chocolate, allowing them to move fast on the trend and scale sales quickly.
Selling on TikTok Shop works very differently from selling on traditional marketplaces. On a conventional platform, shoppers evaluate product listings, photos, specs, price, and reviews. On TikTok Shop, an entire ecosystem of associations gets built around the product, covering visual identity, use-case scenarios, emotions, lifestyle, and the context in which the viewer encounters it.
“A relatable lifestyle is the biggest sales driver on TikTok Shop,” Yernur says. “A user sees someone who looks like them, living at a similar pace, wearing familiar brands, existing in a visual and social context they recognise. When that person tries a new chocolate or uses a particular shampoo, the viewer starts associating that product with their own life and buys it.”
But reaching the right audience isn’t enough on its own. The product needs to be something you can build an interesting story around. Plain white socks, for instance, are genuinely hard to sell on TikTok Shop. They’re a commodity that shoppers compare on price, which quickly pulls sellers into a race to the bottom. “Custom socks are a different story. There’s already a narrative, an emotion, a visual hook. It’s much easier for a creator to work that into a video and get a reaction,” Yernur explains.
Before launching any product, Yernur and his team conduct deep market research: which brands are driving strong results, which content formats convert best, which offers and hooks resonate with the audience, and how competitors are structuring their creator strategy. Those insights are then adapted to fit their own product, brand positioning, target audience, and tone of voice.
Skipping the analysis and simply copying products and promotions that worked for other sellers is the number one mistake beginners make on TikTok Shop. On the surface, the logic seems sound: if a product is already selling well, replicate the model and get similar results. In practice, Yernur says, this approach frequently leads to wasted budget.
“TikTok Shop moves much faster than traditional e-commerce. By the time most sellers notice a trend, the niche may already be oversaturated, the audience fatigued by identical content, and the cost of promotion significantly higher,” he explains.
One of the clearest illustrations from his own experience was his first major sale: a jewelry box project that brought in over $100,000 in a single month. The launch was timed around Valentine’s Day, built on the insight that the primary buyer in that category is men shopping for gifts for women.
The key to that success, Yernur says, was timing. His team entered the niche when the trend was just beginning to build momentum, before the audience was flooded with similar offers and competition for attention was still relatively low. Had they launched a few weeks later, the market would likely have already been saturated with look-alike products and creatives.
The second mistake new sellers make is relying on luck instead of building a system. “TikTok Shop is not a platform where you can post a product once and expect consistent sales. Volume of content, constant hypothesis testing, and ongoing work with creators all matter enormously,” Yernur says.
He backs this up with concrete numbers: at the brand launch stage, you often need not 30 or 50 samples but significantly more, say 300 to 400 units sent out to creators, to generate enough video volume, presentation variety, and reviews to meaningfully increase the chances of organic virality. Many sellers don’t account for this. They send out a small batch, don’t see quick results, and conclude that TikTok Shop simply doesn’t work.
The third mistake Yernur flags is turning on paid ads too early. “This is one of the most common errors, and I always bring it up in consultations. When a seller starts pushing paid traffic into a video too soon, they can disrupt its organic growth and never actually understand what the video was capable of on its own,” he explains.
As a mentor, he has conducted over a hundred consultations, working with complete beginners building TikTok Shop projects from the ground up (product selection, content strategy, creator outreach, understanding the platform’s business model) and with established entrepreneurs who already had businesses on Amazon, Shopify, their own websites, in retail, or in manufacturing.
Many of them, he says, were afraid of missing sales and tried to accelerate results by running ads immediately after publishing content. On TikTok Shop, that approach tends to backfire: the algorithm needs time to test the video with audiences on its own. The smarter play is to let the video sell organically first, and only layer in paid promotion once organic reach starts to plateau.
Over the coming years, consumable products will continue to strengthen their position on TikTok Shop. The reason is straightforward: consumables address recurring, fundamental needs, which translates into more stable demand and repeat purchases. “Even within this category, though, audiences keep looking for something new, visually interesting, and emotionally engaging, so a product has to be not just useful, but content-friendly,” Yernur concludes.
In his view, TikTok Shop is on its way to becoming a full-fledged consumer brand ecosystem, one where the winners will be those who know how to build genuine emotional connections with their audience and adapt to constantly shifting user behavior. Success will depend less and less on stumbling onto a trending product, and more and more on a deep understanding of content, audience, and the mechanics of social commerce. His own plans reflect that: he intends to build Piera into a full-fledged consumer brand ecosystem within TikTok Shop, focused on long-term product lines and expansion into new markets and distribution formats.
