TikTok Shop in Italy: how to start selling

TikTok Shop lets you sell directly inside TikTok: the shopper watches a video, taps the product and buys without leaving the app. It has been live in Italy since spring 2025 and many brands are wondering whether and how to get in. Here’s how it works, what you need to open a shop, how to organise logistics and what to do in the first three months.

How TikTok Shop works

On Amazon the shopper arrives with a need and searches. On TikTok the shopper scrolls through videos and discovers products they weren’t looking for. It’s discovery commerce, and that changes the whole way you work.

Sales come from four places:

• Shoppable videos: brand or creator videos with the product linked. This is the main source of sales for most shops.
• LIVEs: livestreams where products are presented and sold in real time, often with offers that only last for the LIVE.
• Showcase: the products section on the brand’s profile and the shop page, where people who are already interested land.
• Affiliates: creators who promote your products in their videos and LIVEs in return for commission on sales.

Then there’s the Shop tab inside the app, where users can search and browse products as in a marketplace. It carries less weight than content, but it grows with your sales history and reviews.

The practical consequence is that on TikTok Shop the product alone isn’t enough. You need content, lots of it and continuously, because every video has a short life and the algorithm rewards accounts that post regularly. A brand that sells well on TikTok usually has dozens of active creators every month, each with their own way of presenting the product. So before you even think about documents, ask yourself who will produce that content and with what budget for samples and commission.

What you need to open a shop

You register through TikTok Shop Seller Center. Requirements change often and depend on where the company is established, so check them when you sign up. In general you need:

1. a registered company, with a company register extract or equivalent document;
2. tax details and a VAT number;
3. the legal representative’s ID document;
4. a business bank account to receive payouts;
5. a warehouse address and a returns address;
6. a TikTok account to link to the shop as the brand’s official account.

To have a local Italian shop, TikTok generally requires a company registered in Italy. Companies established in other countries follow different routes. Tax matters, such as VAT and invoicing to consumers, should be set up with your adviser before you start.

Before approval it’s also worth checking categories: some are subject to authorisation or restrictions (supplements, cosmetics and food, for example) and need extra product documents.

Logistics and customer service

On TikTok Shop logistics is a serious matter. A video that takes off can generate hundreds of orders in a few hours, and the platform closely tracks dispatch times, cancellations and returns. Poor performance leads to penalties and lower visibility.

Customer service needs organising too: messages have to be handled quickly and response time feeds into the shop’s metrics. Anyone who opens a shop without deciding who answers customers at the weekend usually finds out during their first campaign.

The first 90 days

Here’s a realistic plan for the first three months, which we use as the starting point in our TikTok Shop management projects.

Days 1 to 30: foundations

• Pick a few suitable products: easy to show in a video, with a visible benefit, at an impulse-buy price.
• Prepare product pages with clear images and simple copy.
• Post the brand’s first videos to test formats and messages.
• Switch on the affiliate programme and send the first samples to creators.

Days 31 to 60: volume

• Increase the number of active creators: on TikTok the amount of content matters a lot.
• Spot the videos that sell and ask creators for variations on the same approach.
• Try your first LIVEs, even short ones, to gauge the audience’s response.
• Start boosting your best content with TikTok Ads campaigns.

Days 61 to 90: scale

• Focus budget and samples on products and creators that have proven they sell.
• Join the platform’s promotional campaigns, if margins allow.
• Review logistics and customer service in light of real volumes.
• Work out the margin per order including platform fees, affiliate commission, samples and advertising.

Example calculation, with hypothetical numbers: a product at 30 euros, platform fee and creator commission together worth 25%, product and shipping cost of 12 euros. That leaves 10.50 euros before advertising and samples. If you spend more than that on advertising per order, you’re buying loss-making revenue.

Typical mistakes

• Treating TikTok like a catalogue: uploading every product and waiting. Without content the shop doesn’t sell.
• Videos that look too much like ads: glossy commercials recut to vertical perform worse than simple, authentic videos.
• Choosing creators on followers alone: what counts is relevance to the product and the ability to sell, not audience size.
• Underestimating samples: without the product in hand, creators can’t make credible content. Budget for them.
• Prices out of line with other channels, which causes friction with retailers and marketplaces.
• Improvised logistics: delays and cancellations in the first weeks weigh on the shop’s reputation for a long time.

Where to start

Before opening the shop, pick three products that people get within five seconds of video and ask yourself whether the margin can absorb platform fees, affiliate commission and advertising. Then check the current requirements for your company and categories in Seller Center, and decide who will handle shipping and messages. With those three answers in hand, opening the shop is the easy part.

Frequently asked questions