TikTok Shop is expanding its range of second-hand luxury fashion to Britain

TikTok Shop, TikTok’s social commerce marketplace, is launching a second-hand luxury category in Britain, putting it in closer competition with the likes of The RealReal, Vestiaire Collective, Depop, Poshmark and Mercari. The offer has existed in TikTok Shop US for more than six months.

The new category will allow customers in the UK to buy second-hand high-end clothing, designer handbags and other accessories, all without leaving the TikTok app. Only five UK brands will be available at launch, including Sellier, Luxury Collective, Sign of the times, Almost never wornAnd Break archive.

Since the launch of TikTok Shop in 2022, the platform has been sold about $1 billion or more value of products. However, despite its success, some claim that TikTok Shop is ruining the short video sharing app, claiming that counterfeit and poor quality products are flooding the market. Counterfeits pose the biggest risk when buying second-hand luxury goods online, with even the biggest e-commerce giants (AmazoneBay and others) suffer from authenticity issues.

Like all resale marketplaces, TikTok Shop has a anti-counterfeiting policy which guarantees a full refund if a seller is proven to have sold a counterfeit product. Bloomberg recently reported that the company is in talks with luxury goods company LVMH to help combat counterfeiting.

All secondhand brands on TikTok Shop US must have certificates from third-party authenticators. TikTok collaborated with authentication services Entrupy And Real authentication to ensure that designer handbags on the platform are genuine.

Meanwhile, a TikTok spokesperson told JS that the five British brands all have their own internal authentication process. They declined to say when it would start accepting other second-hand brands.

The launch of TikTok Shop’s pre-owned luxury category is a strategic move to tap into the growing market for pre-owned luxury items. The second-hand luxury goods market is a booming multi-billion dollar business, with an estimated $49.3 billion (€45 billion) worth of second-hand designer goods sold worldwide by 2023.

Furthermore, this expansion fits in with the increasing trend of people embracing second-hand fashion, and opens new avenues for second-hand brands in Britain to reach a wider customer base. The popularity of second-hand fashion on TikTok is evident: more than 144,000 TikTok posts use the hashtag #secondhandfashionwhich has generated approximately 1.2 billion views.

Today’s announcement comes after the US House of Representatives passed a bill requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the US, a bill that appears to be gaining support in the Senate. A ban would be a serious blow to US merchants who sell through the app. According to the company, the short video sharing app will generate $14.7 billion for small to medium businesses by 2023.