Journal Prompts for Reading BOF

SUMMARY

The article discusses how social media has grown exponentially in the fashion industry. TikTok Shop sales have doubled in less than a year and seem to have no end in sight. More recently, livestreams have made selling even more efficient. Social media has always been prevalent when relating to the fashion industry, but it has grown so much since the early 2000s. With the introduction of the TikTok Shop, it has made things easier to promote from both retailers as well as consumers. Social media brings a new way to promote products, and it's purely based on consumer reports, which people tend to relate to more.

STATEMENT OF CHALLENGES AND PROBLEMS

One issue that seems to be occurring is with customer service, as TikTok is a third-party platform and lacks a reliable way to integrate companies' policies. A good way to resolve this issue is to offer better customization features for brands, allowing their customer service to communicate directly with customers rather than relying on third-party consultants. Another prevalent issue is the commitment required to promote your product efficiently. TikTok is a vast platform with hundreds of thousands of items, and it takes considerable effort for a company to make its products stand out on the TikTok Shop. A possible solution could be an improved version of their ACE program, made to help brands find market trends.

PRESENT

I thought it was interesting how counterfeits are such an issue and was interested on how they are taking action against it. It was also interesting how TikTok has become a place for established brands such as Pacsun. I like how they are trying to rebrand off of their "Temu" look into something more professional. It was cool to see how small merchants have over a third of TikTok shops' revenue. With a big company like TikTok, it's nice to see there is some involvement in small businesses.