When cosmetics and skincare firm E.l.f. Magnificence debuted its new haircare line in June, it turned to the world’s fastest-growing on-line retailer for assist. Every week earlier than the road landed at Goal—E.l.f.’s official retail associate—it launched on TikTok Store, by way of a four-hour livestream cohosted by magnificence influencer Yonna Jay and beauty chemist Erica Douglas (aka Sister Scientist). The livestream netted a whole bunch of hundreds of views and sufficient gross sales that E.l.f. Hair turned the model’s largest day-one class launch in historical past.
TikTok Store opened three years in the past, ushering in a brand new period for e-commerce. U.S. shoppers spent $15.8 billion on TikTok Store in 2025 and one other $11.8 billion within the first half of 2026, in keeping with consumer intelligence firm Emarketer, shopping for every part from neck cream to cordless vacuums. TikTok has already claimed 2% of the U.S. on-line retail market (greater than each Goal and Costco), in keeping with Consumer Edge, a shopper insights agency.
Customers are more and more procuring whereas watching TikTok livestreams (aka Lives), the place creators and types tout and promote merchandise, QVC-style. TikTok says almost a 3rd of all U.S. adults have watched its stay procuring content material, and conversion charges for these streams hover round 10%, according to social media consultancy Social/Tale—larger than e-commerce websites (2% to three%) and even in-feed TikTok movies (1% to 4%). In an indication of the instances, QVC and HSN have began livestreaming on TikTok 24/7.
E.l.f. was the primary huge magnificence model to join TikTok, in 2019, and was early to start out promoting items there, too. Now, with 3 million followers, the model has made TikTok Dwell a centerpiece of its retail technique. Every month E.l.f. broadcasts roughly 15 livestreams, which run from two to 6 hours.
Kelly Shah-McDonnell, E.l.f.’s vice chairman of world related commerce, says the model’s TikTok gross sales doubled 12 months over 12 months within the first half of 2026, they usually’re on observe to proceed rising. “We see Lives as an ‘edutainment’ engine for E.l.f., the place we are able to educate viewers on the merchandise, promote in actual time, and spark conversations in our neighborhood,” she says.
However that doesn’t imply each model succeeds on the platform. TikTok Store is notoriously filled with low-quality, drop-shipped goods—and, more and more, AI-generated influencers. As greater and extra established manufacturers look to hitch TikTok Store, standing out on the platform has by no means been tougher. Right here’s E.l.f.’s successful technique.
Decide your companions and prep them for achievement
QVC might have pioneered procuring as leisure, however TikTok has perfected it. Although it has a devoted Store tab in its app, TikTok additionally serves stay procuring content material to customers proper of their common feeds, serving to to floor merchandise primarily based on these customers’ pursuits. On the identical time, it leverages customers’ impulse-control points by making it straightforward to take a look at inside the app itself. (This stands in distinction to Instagram, the place lower than a 3rd of customers use in-app checkout options.)
However manufacturers nonetheless should catch individuals’s consideration. That begins with the size of a Dwell broadcast. Probably the most profitable ones final a very long time, says Ajay Salpekar, TikTok’s normal supervisor for magnificence, meals, and beverage. E.l.f.’s can stretch as much as six hours, giving followers of the model ample time to hitch every time they’re free.
Discovering the suitable content material creators to host these marathon broadcasts is important. E.l.f., which works solely with human influencers, invitations its Dwell companions to movie in its places of work in Oakland, California, and pays them a flat charge together with a fee per product offered.
E.l.f. decides prematurely what merchandise, giveaways, and promotions it plans to supply throughout a Dwell. E.l.f.’s Shah-McDonald says the model additionally works with hosts to verify they’re deeply educated and educated about every product to allow them to reply viewer questions confidently. Through the Dwell itself, E.l.f. is in fixed contact with the hosts, messaging them and utilizing on-site producers to handle the method and troubleshoot any points.
One such collaborator is Lexi Rosenstein, a magnificence influencer with greater than 150,000 followers on TikTok and a expertise for stay broadcasts. After she began showcasing E.l.f. merchandise in vlogs about her every day life, the model took discover and started working along with her. Most just lately, they collaborated on some posts that includes limited-edition pickle lip balms.
Rosenstein, an animated and talkative performer, doesn’t permit for lifeless air throughout her broadcasts. She summons particulars about merchandise and offers whereas responding to viewers’ feedback and questions in actual time.
“I consider myself as a modern-day Macy’s gross sales counter lady,” she says. “Individuals go, ‘Hey, I’ve the sort of pores and skin, what ought to I take advantage of?’ Or possibly they need to know what colours are proper for them. It’s your job to assist them discover what’s finest for them, and to entertain.”
Get into individuals’s feeds with sensible tutorials
On social media platforms like Instagram, customers are likely to comply with particular creators. On TikTok, they have interaction with interest-based content material served to them by way of the platform’s endlessly swipeable FYP (For You Web page) feed.
“TikTok is a platform that may present you nice virality,” says LTK cofounder and President Amber Venz Field, whose firm connects content material creators with manufacturers and customers. Which means manufacturers don’t should spend as a lot time occupied with their TikTok profile.
“It’s not one thing they should curate,” Venz Field says. However they do want to consider what sort of content material lands naturally in individuals’s feeds—instructional broadcasts, most notably.
This was E.l.f.’s technique when it debuted its haircare line. All through that first week, the model’s new @elfhaircare account broadcast 5 shoppable livestreams, averaging two to 4 hours, with the primary one guest-hosted by Jay and Douglas and likewise broadcast on their pages.
The duo, who chatted in entrance of a periwinkle wall with cabinets filled with merchandise, centered on exhibiting how the brand new line works on totally different hair sorts. Douglas drew on her chemistry background to unpack how the road’s shampoo varieties suds and to interrupt down the science behind its hydration advantages.
The pair additionally touted limited-time offers, displayed on the backside of the stream, that customers may make the most of with only one click on if their cost data was already saved to their TikTok account. A discover promoting what number of viewers have been wanting on the deal gave customers a way of urgency and shortage.
Jay’s stream reached 250,000 views, whereas Douglas’s stream attracted 40,000 views. Even so, E.l.f. reviews that Douglas’s web page offered twice as many merchandise as the typical TikTok Dwell, because of her give attention to schooling.
TikTok’s Salpekar says the show-and-tell strategy has additionally helped perfume purchases grow on the platform, regardless that viewers can’t scent the merchandise.
“Lots of perfume purchases are about the way you layer scents collectively, how a perfume makes you’re feeling, what compliments somebody bought once they wore it, and what eventualities they might put on it in. All of that may be communicated in a TikTok Dwell,” Salpekar explains.
Create a way of urgency
Teasing a limited-edition product is a long-standing retail technique. On TikTok, it really works remarkably effectively. As soon as a TikTok livestream ends, it disappears, which implies manufacturers can make the most of its ephemeral nature to create a way of urgency. The time stress additionally encourages impulse shopping for: TikTok customers typically have already got their bank card particulars saved on the platform and may make a purchase order with out leaving the app.
E.l.f. incessantly creates limited-edition merchandise for its TikTok Lives, because it did with a glittery model of the model’s fashionable SPF stick for a broadcast by Rosenstein on July 24. Rosenstein used the livestream to exhibit how the product appeared on her face and collarbone, whereas reminding viewers that after it offered out, there was no probability it could come again.
“If you recognize, you recognize: The earlier two launches offered out in like 24 hours,” she mentioned. Simply as she predicted, the Glitz Version SPF stick offered out a few hours after her broadcast ended.
Manufacturers have additionally seen success by providing reductions as a reward for viewer participation. Final 12 months, E.l.f. drove curiosity in its Pout Clout lip plumping pen by dropping the value to $2 at numerous intervals all through a six-hour stream. (Reductions appear to carry out significantly effectively on TikTok: On E.l.f.’s Might earnings name, CEO Tarang Amin mentioned {that a} value discount on the corporate’s Halo Glow Pores and skin Tint lifted gross sales 36% throughout all retailers—and by triple digits on TikTok Store.) The corporate additionally sprinkles in giveaways to some commenters throughout its Lives, encouraging individuals to tune in.
Issues don’t at all times go as deliberate. For a broadcast final fall, the corporate deliberate to tout a large tube of its Energy Grip Primer that held 50 instances extra product than the common model. When it offered out within the first jiffy, executives needed to give you one thing else to tout on the fly. Shah-McDonnell says they ended up making a buy-one, get-one free deal for the regular-size primer.
TikTok has made it even simpler to create a way of urgency with a brand new Auctions characteristic that lets customers bid on merchandise throughout Lives. They enter their cost particulars prematurely and are robotically debited for an merchandise in the event that they win. E.l.f. hasn’t used the characteristic but, however Shah-McDonnell says it’s within the playing cards.
Begin a dialog
Since hosts can learn and reply to viewers’ feedback in actual time, TikTok Lives are an effective way to foster dialog between a model and its largest followers. E.l.f. incessantly makes use of its broadcasts to ask viewers what product bundles and provides they’d wish to see.
In a single latest broadcast, its warehouse staff popped into the stream to ask viewers what lip merchandise they wished bundled. The warehouse staff then created distinctive bundles tailor-made to particular commenters—and packed them to be shipped in the course of the stream.
The suggestions a model receives from a TikTok livestream can inform different components of the enterprise, too. E.l.f.’s haircare launch on TikTok Dwell knowledgeable the model’s bodily retail technique. After launching its haircare line on TikTok, E.l.f. handed alongside viewer suggestions and gross sales knowledge to Goal, which used the data to form its merchandising technique.
Along with partnering with content material creators, E.l.f. additionally options executives—together with CEO Amin—on its Lives, giving viewers a way of entry and intimacy. However there was an additional benefit to Amin’s December 2023 look: When 12,000 viewers demanded E.l.f. carry out bronzing drops, Amin realized it was time to fast-track its growth. E.l.f. launched the product 4 months later.
Rinse and repeat
Based on TikTok’s Salpekar, repeat customers account for 75% of purchases made by way of TikTok Lives. To maintain them coming again, probably the most profitable manufacturers broadcast on an everyday cadence (two to a few instances every week) and tease their broadcast prematurely on their handles. E.l.f. additionally offers individuals the choice to subscribe to reminder alerts for upcoming Lives.
Experimenting is essential, and getting Lives proper pays long-term dividends. “Within the TikTok ecosystem, brief movies are typically nice for discovery as a result of these movies scale so effectively,” Salpekar says. “Dwell is especially good at driving repeat conduct, and that is why manufacturers ought to care about it.”
