When Nadya Okamoto launched her pajama brand Matching this past summer, selling on TikTok Shop felt like an obvious choice. The platform had already played a major role in the growth of August, her period-care brand, which boasts more than 410,000 TikTok followers and has landed on the shelves of major retailers including Target, Whole Foods and H-E-B. To Okamoto, TikTok Shop seemed like an easy way to get Matching in front of customers.
Now, a major change to TikTok Shop’s shipping policy is forcing Okamoto to shift gears.
TikTok Shop told U.S. merchants that it is discontinuing independent shipping in an email sent last week and reviewed by Modern Retail. The change, which is rolling out in stages starting Feb. 25 and is expected to be completed by March 31, according to the memo, will require sellers to fulfill orders through TikTok Shop’s proprietary logistics services. This includes Fulfilled by TikTok, also known as FBT, where merchants send inventory to TikTok’s warehouses, and the company handles storage, picking, packing and shipping in exchange for a fee based on the number of items sold and their physical size.
Alternatively, brands may use other platform-controlled shipping options like Upgraded TikTok Shipping, where TikTok automatically chooses the carrier, and Collections by TikTok, a door-to-door pickup service.
Brands selling on TikTok Shop have been able to handle fulfillment on their own since the platform’s U.S. debut in 2023. Under the new policy, sellers who are not fully transitioned to TikTok’s logistics system by the end of the rollout risk losing access to a crucial sales channel that puts brands’ products in front of some 170 million users. TikTok is allowing limited use of approved third-party software — including AfterShip, 4Seller and ShipHero — but only if those tools are fully integrated with TikTok’s logistics ecosystem.
Some brands and consultants who spoke with Modern Retail TikTok’s logistics services have historically been uneven, with merchants citing operational errors, shipping delays and limited support when problems arise. Others said moving inventory into TikTok’s fulfillment network could raise costs, squeeze margins and make it harder to offer the steep discounts TikTok shoppers often expect.
For Okamoto, the change is enough to push Matching off the platform altogether. Unlike August, which operates at a much larger scale, Matching is a small, newly launched brand that is still building out its business. The company fulfills orders directly and does not carry enough inventory to justify the added costs and operational complexity of TikTok’s logistics services like FBT.
“It just doesn’t make sense for the size of the business,” Okamoto said. “We would rather just have people go to our site than TikTok Shop.”
The new mandate has prompted some sellers to reconsider whether TikTok Shop still makes sense for their businesses, according to five brands and three consultants collectively advising hundreds of TikTok Shop sellers. Some merchants say they are planning to scale back their presence on TikTok Shop by reducing the number of products they sell, pulling back on promotions and exiting the marketplace altogether.
The planned pullback, which hasn’t been previously reported, underscores that TikTok Shop is still facing turbulence even as the threat of a U.S. ban has receded; TikTok finalized a joint venture handing parts of its U.S. business to a consortium that includes Oracle and investment firms Silver Lake and MGX. Early signs of strain have already emerged; users experienced technical issues over the weekend, according to Digiday. All told, regulatory uncertainty may not be the only hurdle TikTok faces in its quest to win over U.S. brands, especially bigger ones.
TikTok Shop has said the changes are intended to improve delivery reliability and order tracking, and to create a more consistent experience for shoppers. The company did not provide an on-the-record statement for this story.
‘It will be a roadblock’
TikTok has spent the past year trying to make its shopping platform more appealing to larger, more established brands. Big-name companies like Samsung, Ralph Lauren and Disney, that once shied away from selling on the nascent marketplace, all joined TikTok Shop in 2025. The influx of bigger companies on TikTok Shop has raised average unit prices across the platform and helped boost its revenues in 2025, Modern Retail previously reported. TikTok also launched a new program called Project Horizon that incentivizes agencies to onboard dozens of large brands driving at least $10 million in annual sales on competing platforms, an executive at one of the participating firms told Modern Retail on the condition of anonymity. The details of Project Horizon were first reported by The Information.
But TikTok Shop’s new fulfillment mandate risks alienating the big-name brands it’s trying to recruit.
Travis Johnson, the global CEO of Amazon marketing agency Podean, which works with 200 brands, including Mattel, Danone and Wella, said one client that drives hundreds of millions of dollars selling wholesale through Amazon had been looking to join TikTok Shop — but the shipping change has stalled their decision. The company doesn’t have any reta