Marketplace
Mamù Cookware: from zero to €30K/month on TikTok Shop
No account, no shop, no audience: how a 100+ creator affiliate program built a TikTok Shop channel from scratch in 6 months.
Read the case study →TikTok Shop guide
How to sell on TikTok Shop in Europe: how it works, what it costs, and what actually drives sales.
Published
TikTok Shop now runs across the main EU markets, and seller fees went up in January 2026. Most guides stop at "what it is" and "how to sign up". This one also covers what happens after: what every order really costs you, and why, when you start from zero, sales come from creators rather than from your own profile. With the numbers from a channel I built from nothing to €30K a month.
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What a European TikTok Shop market looks like after year one
Italy is a good reference point: TikTok Shop launched there on 31 March 2025, and NielsenIQ's e-commerce panel measured its first year (reported by Milano Finanza, 27 April 2026):
21,000
sellers in Italy in the first year
18.8%
of Italian online shoppers bought on TikTok Shop
€24.5
average basket, above €30 in Germany
41%
of purchase value comes from over-40s
Fashion (21%), beauty (14%) and home (13%) lead the categories. The figure that matters most for sellers, though, is this one: 38% of revenue comes from videos that link to the shop, and 20% from LIVE streams. On TikTok Shop you sell with content, not with a product page. Everything else in this guide follows from that.
A small basket and low purchase frequency (2.7 transactions a year in Italy, against 8.9 in the UK) also tell you the continental markets are young. Sellers who enter now face less competition than they will in two years, but they have to make the numbers work on small orders.
How TikTok Shop works
TikTok Shop is a marketplace inside the app: people buy without leaving TikTok. Products sell from four places:
- Shoppable videos: short videos, from the brand or from creators, with the product tagged and buyable.
- LIVE shopping: streams where products are shown and sold in real time.
- Showcase and product page: the shop tab on your profile and each product's page, also reachable from in-app search.
- Affiliate program: creators pick your products, feature them in their content and earn a commission on the sales they drive. You set that commission.
Catalogue, orders, payouts and campaigns all run from Seller Center. The ad side (Video Shopping Ads, LIVE Shopping Ads and GMV Max) sits on the same stack and has to be planned with the rest of your media, not as a separate channel.
Requirements to open a shop
Seller Center lets you register as a sole trader, an individual seller, a private company or a listed company. In practice:
- Companies and sole traders need a VAT number, and the address must match the official company registration.
- Individual sellers without a registered business use their personal tax ID.
- Consistent data: everything you submit must match your official documents. Mismatches delay verification.
- One account per contact: each phone number and email can only be used for one seller account worldwide.
One detail many sellers miss: if you are registered in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland or Spain, you can sell in 13 European countries from the same setup.
What selling on TikTok Shop costs
Opening a shop is free. You pay on sales. The current EU rules, from TikTok Shop's Seller University (page updated 29 September 2026):
- Standard commission: 9% on settled orders across the EU, VAT included. Until 8 January 2026 it was 5% in Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Ireland.
- Eligible electronics: 7% effective rate, including beauty and personal care electronics, when correctly categorised.
- New sellers: 4% for 60 days in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Ireland. You must be new to TikTok Shop in every EU country, use EU local shipping, accept the "New Seller Commission Reduction" mission within 15 days and list at least 5 in-stock products. Reductions don't stack: the lowest rate applies.
TikTok's commission is only the first line of the bill. Every order also carries the creator's commission (when an affiliate drove the sale), advertising, shipping and returns. A hypothetical example: on a €40 order, TikTok's 9% is €3.60. If the creator's commission is 15%, that's another €6. You've given up €9.60 before paying for the product, the shipping and the ads. With baskets around €25, run this calculation product by product before you decide what goes in the catalogue.
How to open your shop, step by step
Register on Seller Center
Pick your seller type and enter company data exactly as it appears on your documents. A mistake here costs days of verification.
Link profile and shop from day one
Connect the brand's TikTok account to the shop straight away, so every piece of content already leads to a working shop, instead of building an audience first and thinking about sales later.
Catalogue and prices in line with your other channels
List products in the right TikTok Shop categories and sync prices and stock with your site and marketplaces. On Shopify, TikTok's official app syncs inventory.
Shipping and returns
Set up logistics and order handling before you push traffic. If TikTok Shop becomes one more channel to check by hand every day, it won't scale.
Affiliate program
Set creator commissions from each product's margin, not by gut feeling, and start recruiting creators who match your audience.
Content, LIVE and ads
A steady rhythm of brand and creator videos, LIVE streams when you have an offer to tell, and GMV Max or Video Shopping Ads on the products that already convert organically.
What actually drives sales: the Mamù Cookware case
Mamù Cookware had no TikTok presence at all: no account, no followers, no shop. In 6 months the channel reached €30,000 in monthly revenue. Three lessons that apply to any brand starting from zero:
- Creators are the engine, not the profile. I recruited and managed more than 100 creators in the affiliate program. With zero distribution, sales come from their content, not from brand posts.
- Consistency beats virality. Reach grew month after month from a steady publishing rhythm, not from one lucky video.
- Measure revenue, not followers. The 5,000 followers and 14,000+ likes were a side effect. Every creator was judged on the sales they actually generated.
The full breakdown is in the Mamù Cookware case study.
"On TikTok Shop, followers and likes are a side effect. The creator program is what turns the channel into revenue: everything else is there to support it."
The most common mistakes
- Treating it as a social project. TikTok Shop is a marketplace: catalogue, prices, stock and margin need the same discipline as Amazon or Zalando.
- A badly listed catalogue. Wrong categories and thin product pages cost visibility and, on electronics, the 2-point commission reduction.
- Creator commissions set at random. A high rate on a low-margin product produces sales at a loss.
- Watching followers instead of margin. Vanity revenue without a per-SKU and per-creator calculation is why many shops close after a few months.
- Ads disconnected from everything else. GMV Max and Video Shopping Ads belong in the same view as Google and Meta, not in a separate report.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a registered business to sell on TikTok Shop?
Not always: Seller Center also accepts individual sellers with a personal tax ID. But selling on an ongoing basis is business activity, so a brand needs a registered company and VAT number. Check the tax side with your accountant before you start.
How much does it cost to sell on TikTok Shop in Europe?
No setup fee. You pay 9% on settled orders (7% on eligible electronics, 4% for the first 60 days if you qualify as a new seller). On top of that come creator commissions, advertising, shipping and returns.
Can you sell on TikTok Shop without followers?
Yes. Mamù Cookware started with zero followers: the first sales came from affiliate creators, who bring their own audience to your products.
How long does it take to see results?
It depends on product, margin and budget, and nobody can promise you a number. As a real reference: Mamù went from €0 to €30,000 a month in 6 months, with more than 100 active creators.
TikTok Shop or Amazon?
They aren't alternatives. On Amazon, people search for a product they already have in mind; on TikTok Shop they discover it while watching content. Amazon is still the largest marketplace by revenue in markets like Italy, while TikTok Shop is a discovery channel that can bring new customers to your own site too.