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Beyond the feed
TikTok is not just influencing what consumers want and how products look – it is fundamentally changing where and how beauty products are sold. With TikTok Shop growing into one of the most significant sales channels for health and beauty in the UK, traditional retail models are under serious pressure to evolve.
TikTok has collapsed the funnel between content and commerce. Product discovery, recommendation, and purchase now happen within a single platform, often within a matter of minutes. This shift has opened the door for new retail strategies, particularly among direct-to-consumer and agile independent brands.
How TikTok resurrects classic beauty bestsellers
TikTok has a unique power to resurrect decades-old products. Clinique’s Black Honey lipstick is a prime example, returning to bestseller status after being championed by creators. The brand quickly responded with spin-offs such as glosses and eyeshadow palettes.
Similarly, Dior’s Rosy Glow Blush achieved viral fame and sold out in multiple UK retailers, prompting the launch of refreshed marketing and expanded product variants. Charlotte Tilbury’s Contour Wand saw the same trend, with high demand leading to new shade ranges and complementary items like the Pinkgasm blush wand.
These examples highlight a key shift: brands are no longer solely dictating product timelines... Consumers, via TikTok, are.
Dupe culture forcing bigger brands to move faster
TikTok’s thriving dupe culture has brought affordability into sharp focus. Budget-friendly alternatives like e.l.f. Halo Glow (seen as a dupe of Charlotte Tilbury’s Flawless Filter) soared in search rankings at Boots. In response, Charlotte Tilbury launched a mini version, showing how even prestige brands must react quickly to retain market share.
The message is clear: affordable products with good design and social traction are serious contenders, and brands need to be alert to changing value perceptions.
The Platform as a product lab: TikTok's feedback advantage
TikTok now serves as a continuous audit tool for health and beauty brands. User feedback on product texture, shade range or ingredient effectiveness is immediate, public, and often actionable. This environment encourages a culture of continuous improvement.
For example, a UK indie brand turned a viral user-generated mixing hack into a newly formulated priming oil within weeks and L’Oréal’s UK CMO has publicly acknowledging that the platform is now central to how they monitor consumer sentiment and innovation opportunities.
Boots: Bridging online trends with in-store displays
Among major UK retailers, Boots has embraced TikTok's influence most visibly. The retailer restructured its website to reflect trending product searches, introduced dedicated landing pages for TikTok-driven traffic, and implemented ‘As Seen on TikTok’ signage in stores to link the digital with the physical shopping experience.
When skin-barrier brand Byoma went viral, Boots reported an 800% increase in searches for the brand. Similarly, its launch of Bubble Skincare led to a product selling every minute by year-end, all thanks to TikTok traction.
TikTok Shop: The UK's new health and beauty counter
TikTok Shop is redefining how beauty brands enter the market. Tarte Cosmetics became the platform's number one beauty seller in the UK by late 2023, accounting for 8% of all beauty sales. Their strategy? TikTok-native content, early access bundles and social-first packaging.
Benefit Cosmetics also saw sell-out success with a TikTok Shop exclusive mascara, underlining the value of launching directly within the platform’s ecosystem. Meanwhile, Amazon UK has responded by hosting Amazon Live events with TikTok creators, capturing 84% of TikTok-driven skincare purchases.
D2C and indie brands: Building on TikTok from day one
Direct-to-consumer and indie beauty brands are naturally suited to TikTok’s rapid content cycle. Brands like Beauty Pie and Pink Honey UK have scaled rapidly using real-time feedback, viral content and creator partnerships to shape product decisions.
Their success lies in their ability to listen, react, and launch quickly – often using TikTok comments and creator collaborations to guide R&D. In this new beauty retail model, responsiveness beats legacy.
What this means for your health and beauty retail strategy
TikTok is now an essential component of the UK health and beauty retail landscape. It is more than a platform; it is a sales engine, customer service tool, and innovation lab. Beauty brands that recognise TikTok as a commerce channel, not just a marketing tool, will be best placed to succeed in this new era.
Whether scaling through TikTok Shop, reacting to dupe culture or collaborating with creators, brands must begin to think beyond the feed and how the platform will define them in the future.
Looking for ways to grow your beauty brand in 2025? Book a free consultation with our health and beauty specialist, Becky Pogue, today.