TikTok Shop reached $10 billion in US gross merchandise value faster than any marketplace in history — including Amazon, which took 12 years to hit the same milestone. TikTok did it in 18 months. The question for Shopify merchants is no longer whether to pay attention. It’s how to use both platforms without letting one undermine the other.
An e-commerce expert with hands-on experience selling on both Shopify and TikTok Shop explains how the online retail landscape is shifting in 2026 — and why these platforms complement rather than compete with each other.
As we move through early 2026, TikTok Shop continues to post impressive growth numbers. The platform, originally conceived as a social selling tool, is now attracting not just indie brands but major retailers: in the US, beauty company Sally Beauty has opened a TikTok Shop storefront, while in Europe the platform has been joined by About You — a major German online fashion retailer — along with cosmetics manufacturer Cosnova and even the Carrefour hypermarket chain.
Could TikTok Shop become the new Shopify and rewrite the rules of online retail? That question is coming up more and more in e-commerce circles. To find out, we spoke with e-commerce expert Yernur Nurmukhambet. He has launched and scaled businesses on both Shopify and Amazon, building resilient models centered on first-party customer data and strong margins. His TikTok Shop launch proved to be a turning point: within just one month of going live, monthly sales on the platform crossed $100,000.
Drawing on Yernur’s experience, we compared TikTok Shop and Shopify — two models that are shaping the face of modern e-commerce today — and found that each plays a distinct and irreplaceable role.
Today’s e-commerce ecosystem spans the entire customer journey: from a shopper’s first encounter with a brand all the way through to repeat purchases and lasting loyalty. Where e-commerce once revolved largely around utilitarian goods — household staples and everyday necessities — shoppers today are looking for products that deliver emotional value: the pleasure of using something, a sense of ritual, self-care, or a broader lifestyle experience.
It’s precisely this blend of practical utility and emotional engagement that underpins Yernur Nurmukhambet’s approach to online retail. He says this philosophy is especially important when deciding which platforms to sell on. “TikTok Shop is about emotion and impulse. Shopify is about considered, rational decisions,” he explains.
TikTok Shop is a platform where commerce is woven directly into the content experience. People don’t come here with the intention of buying — the way they might on Shopify — they come to be entertained: to watch videos, follow influencers, laugh at memes. As a result, products tend to sell through an emotional response to content. An authentic, well-placed video turns a product into part of the viewer’s experience, and the purchase that follows is almost impulsive — driven by engagement and impression rather than deliberate intent.
In Yernur’s experience, the right creative approach can generate demand almost immediately. “When we launched a new accessories line, for instance, we tested short videos with different visual treatments — and within a few days we already knew which creatives were converting. That kind of feedback loop lets you scale sales quickly, without spending weeks building out a website or putting together a full ad campaign,” he says.
Where TikTok Shop functions as an attention-capture machine that drives fast, impulse-driven sales, Shopify gives shoppers the space to get to know a product properly. A customer can take their time comparing options, reading descriptions and reviews, studying photos and videos — all before making a purchase decision.
“On Shopify we can build customer relationships entirely on our own terms: personalizing offers, running loyalty programs, driving repeat purchases without any middleman,” says Yernur. In his business, Shopify serves as the brand’s home base — the place where every stage of the customer journey is fully owned, from product presentation and merchandising to post-purchase communication. His core product is a line of portable aromatherapy devices with botanical extracts, positioned in the wellness space. Products were automatically synced to Instagram and TikTok through Shopify’s built-in functionality, so users could discover them directly in their social feeds and click through to purchase in the store.
Everything you need to get a TikTok Shop off the ground is registering a store, setting up your listings, creating content, and promoting your products within the platform itself, Yernur explains. That’s a far lower barrier to entry than Shopify, where you have to build out a complete e-commerce infrastructure — a website, a sales funnel, product pages, a checkout flow, and traffic sources. The site alone doesn’t create demand; you have to bring in an audience through social media, paid ads, influencers, email, or SEO.
On TikTok Shop, the demand-generation problem is solved by design: the platform is built from the ground up to promote products through organic content, recommendation algorithms, and native creator collaboration tools. That means a seller with a clear product and a smart content strategy can reach their first sales very quickly.
That’s exactly what happened when Yernur ordered a batch of jewelry gift boxes in December 2024. Within a month of launching on TikTok Shop, sales from those boxes had crossed $100,000. “I went all in on short-form product demo videos, brought dozens of creators into the affiliate program, and kept testing different content formats — all of which let me scale order volume rapidly, without having to personally manage every customer interaction,” he recalls.
Even though TikTok Shop gets you to your first sales faster, Yernur Nurmukhambet believes Shopify still holds the stronger hand when it comes to building a long-term brand, retaining customers, and driving repeat purchases. The reason is straightforward: Shopify is a channel where you own everything — the site, the product page experience, the checkout, the customer communication. You collect first-party buyer data, build lasting relationships through email campaigns, loyalty programs, and personalized offers, and you control the retention and repurchase loop entirely. That creates far more room for sustainable growth and strategic scaling than a complete dependence on a third-party platform where the marketplace sets the rules and controls the algorithm — which, in Yernur’s experience, is exactly how TikTok Shop operates.
“The ideal model, in my view, is not to pit these two systems against each other, but to use TikTok Shop as a fast channel for launching and testing demand, and Shopify as the platform for scaling your brand and keeping customers,” Yernur explains.
In the TikTok Shop training programs he runs, he gives entrepreneurs the tools to treat TikTok Shop as a growth accelerator and turn early results into a scalable strategy across other platforms. The goal isn’t just sales in the moment — it’s a full growth system where every new TikTok Shop campaign reinforces long-term objectives on Shopify, laying the foundation for a strong, recognizable brand.
