How TikTok could rescue retail by bringing Gen Z back to the high street
Big Read
Rocketing online sales might be expected to be another nail in the coffin of the UK's high street. Instead TikTok sellers are opening their own physical shops
Sumayah Saadi, 23, at her new shop selling abayahs in Manchester (Photo: i)
“When I did my first line on TikTok I made £500 in 30 minutes.”
Fashion entrepreneur Sumayah Saadi started using the social media platform to sell her clothes last summer and has seen demand continue to rocket ever since.
The 23-year-old has shifted millions of pounds worth of abayas – the robe-like dress worn by Muslim women, a hugely popular item in the fast-growing “modest” fashion industry – in barely a year.
Her story should be another nail in a coffin for the high street.
Why would young start-ups like Ms Saadi’s even need to think about shops and all their inherent costs, from staff wages to rent and energy, when they can sell so many clothes without them?
“When we do a TikTok Live, the only wage is the cost of one girl [modelling the clothes],” she notes.
Her brand Sumayah gleaned £2m of sales last year through the TikTok Shop feature.
The Chinese-owned social media platform takes a 5 per cent commission, but with low overheads and relentless demand she has been quickly able to turn a profit online.
But her business is also one of a growing number that suggests that social media retail could actually breathe new life into brick and mortar shops.
Ms Saadi has used her spectacular online success to open a physical store in Levenshulme, south Manchester.
Her decision didn’t come down to a simplistic calculation of costs versus income – if it did high street would be a non-starter.
For Ms Saadi the real benefits are things that might not immediately show up on the balance sheet, but are no less important.
‘TikTok has completely transformed our business’
TikTok is believed to have at least one billion users around the world (Photo: Matt Slocum/AP)
The hospitality sector was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of social media marketing, and for some it is now essential.
Ben Hibbard, head of marketing at Caribbean restaurant chain Turtle Bay, told a conference organised by BigHospitality magazine last year: “Over the last two years, TikTok has completely transformed our business.”
A particular hit for Turtle Bay has been the promotion of its “bottomless brunch” offer, which now accounts for a third of sales.
It has proven to be particularly popular with TikTok’s 18 to 24-year-old audience competing to see how many drinks they can get in during the time limit.
“In terms of awareness gains in that audience it has been absolutely phenomenal,” Mr Hibbard added.
“None of that would have beeen possible without these channels.”
“We did two posts on TikTok to promote the opening of the store and we had a queue from 11am till 7pm,” she says.
“We did well, we made about £28,000 that opening day. But then, we’ve had to pay wages, there was a cost to getting the store set up, I would have made more selling on TikTok.
But, she says, with a real shop “you get repeat customers who keep coming back every day, you get that rapport you wouldn’t get online”.
Alex Schlagman, founding partner of the Save The High Street campaign, says it is one example of a wider trend.
“The future is the merger of online and offline,” he told i. “Retailers need to have both the physical and the digital working together.”
“It’s about changing the narrative,” he added. “There has been a mindset around the death of the high street that ‘the internet kills shops’, it’s the wrong attitude, it has to be ‘the internet innovates the high street’.”
That’s exactly what happened with SoSweet, a family-run sweet shop that opened in Westward Ho!, Devon in 2014.
It really started taking off for owner Tony Robinson in 2020 after his son George, 23, joined the business and opened a TikTok account that sees staff share light-hearted videos to promote stock, like 3kg bags of Mini Eggs.
Now, with almost a million followers and 14 million likes, SoSweet has expanded quickly on the physical high street to open eight more brick and mortar shops across the South West.
George told i how the brand’s TikTok audience ballooned almost overnight when he fulfilled a customer’s request to film her order of sweets being packed and sent off and shared it on TikTok.
“I thought ‘bit of a funny request but we’ll give it a go’ and that blew up overnight,” said George.
“We came in the next day to an increase in orders and also comments from other users saying ‘here’s my order number, can you please pack my order and tag me’.”
George quickly spotted an opportunity and offered all customers a chance to have their orders being shared on TikTok.
Before long, there were so many requests he couldn’t keep up and SoSweet’s TikTok account went from around 20,000 followers at the start of 2020 to more than 700,000 by the summer.
“It gave our product and our business a different level of exposure, we then saw a massive increase in order volumes and average order value and revenue,” he said.
Decline on the UK high street
Analysis by Deloitte suggests that around 30,000 stores closed in the UK during 2022.
Consumer spending was hit by the cost of living crisis, while businesses also had to contend with supply chain problems following the pandemic and soaring energy costs as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
High profile casualties included the furniture company made.com, shirtmakers TM Lewin and apparel retailer Cath Kidston.
But the trend goes back at least as far as the global financial crash in 2008, if not further.
Since 2010 nearly 1,400 retailers have entered administration struggling with the impact of the internet and other “headwinds”.
As a result, since 2016 more shops have been closing than opening and the pace of closures is accelerating, according to Deloitte.
It’s not just smaller, independent sellers using their online presence to improve their high street performance, mainstream brands are also getting in on the act.
After its well-documented difficulties, Marks and Spencer appears to have emerged from the pandemic in much better health, posting a 14.9 per cent increase in store sales in 2022-23.
And the chain’s marketing boss, Sharry Cramond, has credited M&S’s TikTok activity as proving particularly successful in engaging a Generation Z audience.
An account for an M&S branch in Romford, east London has gained more than 94,000 followers thanks to videos of staff having fun or recommending products.
“People believe those who look and sound similar to them. Our colleagues live in the same communities as our customers and know many of them by name,” Ms Cramond said in an interview with Raconteur magazine earlier this month.
“When they’re talking about the latest new product or deal on TikTok or Facebook, that message is translated in a much more compelling way.”
For those who started out online there are also important practical benefits from opening on the high street.
A big issue for the fast fashion industry is high levels of customer returns, for example. If they go back to the fulfilment centre, they would most likely end up in landfill.
But Ms Saadi’s shop gives her storage space and an opportunity to resell returns instead.
The difficulty of units falling empty on Britain’s high streets isn’t a problem likely to be solved in the near future.
But having a variety of offerings, including TikTok Shop businesses, could be part of the answer.
Pointing out a new coffee shop that opened shortly before her own in Levenshulme, Ms Saadi says: “People like these places because they’re local, they’re family run, rather than going to Costa Coffee.
“That’s why [the high street] is good for smaller businesses, family businesses. That’s what the high street will look like.”
