It wasn’t an album, but on Oct. 6 Rihanna gave her audience a different kind of unexpected drop: The singer-founder appeared as a host of Fenty Beauty’s first 12-hour TikTok Shop Mega Live event, leading a makeup demo alongside a rotating cast of internet-personality cohosts.
The event garnered more than 53 million impressions, 10.9 million likes and 1 million unique viewers, according to the brand, and employed a number of engagement-driving tactics that are becoming increasingly popular as TikTok Live soars as a sales channel in beauty and beyond. Not all of them, however, include securing an A-list host.
Data from TikTok Shop U.S. shows that across categories, TikTok Live’s gross merchandise volume doubled year-over-year during the first half of 2026. Beauty is a key part of that volume, with numbers from Charm.io showing that beauty sales via TikTok Live reached $769.6 million in the 12 months ending September 2026, making up about 12 percent of the total $4 billion Charm.io estimates TikTok Live generated during the period.
And beauty is growing fast, up roughly 59 percent in the last year.
“Beauty and fashion are categories where, ‘show me how this looks’, ‘how did you do that,’ or ‘what fragrances layer well together’ — those have always been good fits for live, but now, finally, the brand appetite, platform capability, and the quality of the host talent has caught up,” said Ajay Salpekar, head of beauty, food and beverage at TikTok Shop.
Live selling has long been a big business overseas: Statista reports that in 2025, the livestreaming e-commerce market reached nearly 6.95 trillion yuan in China, almost tripling in size since 2021.
But Stateside, while live shopping TV channels like QVC and HSN were powerhouses in the ’90s and 2000s, they steadily crept out of favor — and almost skipped Gen Z entirely — as small screens and e-commerce took over in the years following.
Now, by reimagining live shopping for the very environment that accelerated its slowdown, TikTok Shop is seeing sizable gains.
Still, brands have key considerations to take into account if they want to make the most of beauty’s new live shopping opportunity.
“The part of Live that excites me is that you’re not just converting demand; you’re creating it,” said Maureen Kelly, founder and chief executive officer of Tarte Cosmetics, which has generated more than $19 million via TikTok Live in the last 12 months, making it the number-seven brand overall via the channel.
Kelly is no stranger to live selling: She and Tarte were mainstays on QVC in the early 2000s, and while Tarte’s TikTok Lives are more often led by makeup creators like Lexi Rosenstein or Kelly Rose Sarno, who have 150,000 and 820,000 followers, respectively, there is some crossover in what worked then and what works now.
“[Through QVC] I learned how important demonstration was, and how quickly you have to explain why somebody needs something,” said Kelly, adding that on TikTok, the brand’s years-old CC Undereye Corrector has seen unprecedented momentum thanks to live demonstrations of its concealing capabilities.
Unlike via old-school shopping channels, where brands are in constant rotation and must make their case in a limited amount of time, on TikTok, longer Lives are better.
Mega Live events, which app users can register for in advance, are often 12 hours long, and Kelly said that 24-hour Lives can produce five times the GMV of a 12-hour Live, as the algorithm promotes a stream more dedicatedly the longer it’s been on.
But programming matters just as much as timing, and that includes tapping the right host.
“A great Live host is like part salesperson, part entertainer, part educator and part best friend,” said Kelly.
Echoed Salpekar: “Host credibility definitely matters…[and] how well you engage the audience. It’s kind of like HSN/QVC crowd work, but it’s two-way; it’s much more digital and interactive.”
For Erica Taylor, a makeup artist and educator with 2.5 million TikTok followers, leading with education is critical, as can be tapping a moderator to flag key questions in the chat when it comes to bigger Lives.
“I learned from working at a makeup counter and interacting with real life clients that instead of selling, you teach, and if you teach, you never have to sell,” said Taylor, who occasionally hosts impromptu, hourlong Lives via her own page when she has the time, and has also teamed with brands like InnBeauty Project to host Lives via their pages.
Taylor’s sweet spot in terms of the number of products she showcases in a given Live is four, though TikTok Shop can encourage around 10. More broadly, many brands employ an everything-all-at-once strategy to keep audiences interested: There are flash sales, gifts with purchase; sometimes hosts will have bells or buzzers on hand to sound off during Live Auctions — a feature TikTok Shop added earlier this year — and programs are, in general, high-color and high-energy, almost like shoppable, adult versions of “Cocomelon.”
“We like to call [our lives] beauty-tainment first, and commerce second,” said Kelly.
Dr. Groot, a LG H&H-owned Korean hair care brand that debuted in the U.S. in 2023, is another big beauty player on Live which leveraged its success via the platform to launch at Sephora this spring.
“We think of our Live shoppers as more engaged customers, who are not just planning to shop but who also want to hear from us,” said Jamie Mori, LG H&H USA’s head of digital, adding that the brand tapped e-commerce agency SuperOrdinary early on to help grow its TikTok Shop presence.
Dr. Groot’s four bestsellers include its hair density shampoo and conditioner, $33 each; a $26 roll-on scalp serum for hair thickening, as well as an in-shower Scalp & Hair Hydrating Treatment, priced at $33.
“We definitely [used to] do more discounting, but as we’ve matured and gone into different retailers, there are additional considerations when we think about that — we don’t want to be a brand that’s always on discount,” said Mori, adding that Dr. Groot looks to think about different ways it can add value, like bundles or gifts with purchase.
Kelly echoed the sentiment: “Discounts can get someone in the room, but it won’t be the reason why they stay…the best Lives have to feel, in my opinion, like access and not clearance. Discounting can drive the transaction, but entertainment, education and community can build the channel.”
Even retailers like Ulta Beauty and Sephora are playing in TikTok Live, with Ulta hosting Lives around key campaign and launch moments, while Sephora tapped influencer and POV Beauty founder Mikayla Nogueira to host its first TikTok Live in September, shortly after the retailer announced it would enter the platform.
“Some of our strategies include connecting Live with IRL events and activations, incorporating more founder and brand storytelling, creating programming around new launches and developing category-specific moments that allow guests to discover and learn in real time,” said Jodi Williams, vice president of e-commerce at Ulta Beauty.
In general, brands are turning to Live to introduce new products, with E.l.f. Beauty unveiling its hair care foray via TikTok Live before it hit retail, and Fenty teasing a new “Uncensored” shade of its Stunna Stix Soft-Glide Matte Lipstick via its Mega Live.
“New products need a lot more education and introduction than existing heroes, and Live can work for existing heroes, but it works particularly well for new products,” said Salpekar, adding that the platform is next looking to “introduce more interaction models into Live, so that you can do everything from educate to promote to create more [kinds of] social dynamics on Live.”