Tik Tok, the viral short video platform under the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has launched its independent fast-fashion e-commerce portal Dmonstudio, specialising in womenswear and fashion accessories, as seen on the official website introduction.
From the logo design (in bold capital letters) to website layout and target consumer segment, all are highly comparable to SHEIN, China’s most mysterious billion-dollar company. This move is regarded as one to take on SHEIN, who is leading the cross-border e-commerce market, according to the Chinese media outlet Egain News on 7 February.
Despite the website only being launched recently, the initial registration of the domain (dmonstudio.com) dates back to 2021, and it has been run internally since then as an insider at Tik Tok was cited by the media. This has once again shown the caution and growing ambition of Tik Tok in exploiting the landscape of social e-commerce, given the potential of this industry is seen both in China and across the world, something evidenced by SHEIN.
However, the website owner seems uninclined to reveal its links to either Tik Tok or its parent company ByteDance, as no public information about the relationship is available on the website. It is understood that the project is also under the so-called S-level category within ByteDance, and is under the direct oversight of Kang Zeyu, the head of ByteDance e-commerce, who was once also in charge of the export-oriented cross-border e-commerce project codenamed Magellan XYZ in 2021.
Although ByteDance always seems low-key about its actions in cross-border e-commerce, especially in the initial stages, it can be seen that the company has been doubling down its efforts in laying out cross-border e-commerce since the beginning of 2021.
The fruits of these efforts include Tik Tok Shop, which is open to overseas users since last year, and the shopping app Fanno dedicated to the European market that was introduced last year days before the Black Friday shopping event when Tik Tok also hosted its first-ever online shopping event.
With its existing user base and continued efforts in building up its cross-border e-commerce ecosystem, ByteDance is able to further expand its business scopes and create more avenues of revenue. In the meantime, as the platform’s content diversified, these newly launched units would give another pull to drive the user growth and therefore the revenue streams.
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