Everything You Need To Know About Buying Beauty Products on TikTok Shop

I got the deal of a lifetime the other day. Never in my life did I think I’d own a bottle of Maison Francis Kurkdjian Paris Baccarat Rouge 540. But then the preship email confirmation came in, and here I am, practically owning it.

One 2.4 oz. bottle of the eau de parfum retails for $325. It can typically be found in the vanities and personal auras of those wealthy enough to afford such an indulgence, e.g. Olivia Rodrigo and Kacey Musgraves. It smells like diamonds soaked in amber, jasmine, and fat.

But I didn’t get the eau de parfum. I got the extrait de parfum, which smells like diamonds that have been brined in the eau de parfum for 100 years. According to the brand, this concentrated version “intensifies” the EDP. At la Maison, it costs $465. On TikTok Shop, I got it for $54 and change. All I had to do was turn a blind eye to the store it came from, which is called Restaurant Fried Chicken Group LLC.

Have you been to the TikTok Shop? Affiliate links—unique URLs that allow e-tailers to track path-to-purchase and distribute commissions based on total sales—have long studded the profiles of influencers big and small on the short-video platform, but last year brought the slow yet seismic rollout of TikTok’s all-in-one social shopping complex.

The Shop officially launched in September, though some TikTok users were granted access to its features for longer, including a shop button that appears beneath a video and links within the app to a simple checkout interface. So far it has been wildly successful at vending beauty and personal-care products with delirious speed; after one month in official business, this category comprised 85% of all of TikTok Shop’s sales.

The different warrens of the Shop are based on ancient mercurial tactics all deployed in harmony, like a shopping orchestra. The For You page, like YouTube, sets out to genuinely entertain, and it often does, until you find yourself knee deep in a pool of affiliate links. The Live sections are like QVC, featuring an endless scroll of living, breathing sellers engaged in living, breathing, and selling. The TikTok Shop page itself looks more like Wish or Temu, its sparse design advertising only a product’s name, price, discount, and, in some cases, how many have sold. One afternoon I came across a detangling hairbrush that had sold almost 100,000 units, for gross sales of over $1.5 million.