Beyond Doubling Growth: A Rare 'High-Scoring Report Card' for Cross-Border E-commerce

[Ebrun Original] The 2026 cross-border e-commerce mid-year promotion has concluded. In the US market, facing a peak mid-year consumption season with multiple popular marketing events overlapping—from Amazon's Prime Day to Walmart's Summer Sale and TikTok Shop's Deals For You Days—major platforms are vying for consumer attention with more supply and greater investment.

For merchants, the mid-year promotion is the most important annual mega-sale besides Black Friday. Achieving record-breaking performance not only lays a better foundation for the sprint in the second half of the year but also further accelerates their overseas expansion journey.

However, if the promotion merely follows the traditional approach of answering questions like 'Did we sign up for the event? How much discount should we offer? How much inventory should we prepare?' then it inevitably falls into stagnation and fatigue. Especially when the industry has generally entered a phase of stable development, and promotions are no longer a 'flood irrigation' tactic, a new front that can deliver high growth and a new paradigm that can drive business from a higher dimension are what truly awaken the intrinsic energy of merchants.

After observing multiple promotion battlefields and communicating with different types of merchants, I found the answer.

TikTok Shop's US mid-year promotion saw overall business nearly double year-over-year, directly responding to merchants' desire for explosive performance. Behind this rare high-scoring report card lies a new breakthrough for interest-based e-commerce in the US market: live streaming broke through the promotion ceiling, AIGC short videos became a new engine, cross-border POP self-operated brand businesses achieved true synergy of brand and performance, and high-quality merchants and products accelerated the explosion of fully managed business...

Beyond GMV figures, the deeper significance and impact of interest-based e-commerce have also emerged. A vitality and confidence brought by a new business model is infecting all cross-border players.

01

A Mid-Year Promotion Running on 'Simultaneous Improvement in Quantity and Quality' High Growth

Under the achievement of TikTok Shop's US mid-year promotion overall business doubling year-over-year, both cross-border POP merchants and fully managed merchants achieved major victories: cross-border POP grew nearly 2 times compared to the same period last year, and fully managed business grew 1.5 times compared to the same period last year.

This is a rare high growth in the cross-border e-commerce industry. As one merchant told me: 'Some are still 'stable', some are starting to 'decline', but TikTok Shop is still 'charging forward'.

If what we see from the GMV explosion is merely growth in sales data, what caught my eye even more was the structural upgrade behind it—I call it 'GMV quality'.

First, the renewal of merchants and products. Whether a promotion can explode depends not only on the platform's heavy investment but fundamentally on how many good merchants are seriously engaged and how many good products are being carefully selected; this determines the foundation.

Under TikTok Shop's US cross-border POP model, brand business took a giant leap. The number of brand players appearing in the mid-year promotion battlefield was several times that of last year's Black Friday, making the merchant pool more substantial; the number of brands with sales exceeding one million USD during the promotion nearly doubled, and there were cases like EcoFlow breaking through ten million USD.

The fully managed model introduced more high-quality merchants and products. During the mid-year promotion, the apparel category focused on a rich and diverse supply of high-quality products, with GMV exploding over 200% compared to pre-promotion levels; the accessories category gathered a large number of seasonal new products, with growth exceeding 180% compared to pre-promotion; the general merchandise category focused on strict quality selection and novel/unique goods, with GMV growing nearly 200% compared to pre-promotion. Each category produced one hit product after another, with overall performance being impressive.

Second, the content field re-elevated the promotion standard. As the business model foundation of interest-based e-commerce, breakthroughs in the content field directly bring a multiplier effect to promotion GMV growth.

During the mid-year promotion, live streaming can be said to have opened the ceiling for interest-based e-commerce promotions, where the total GMV of cross-border POP live streams increased 3.4 times year-over-year, with both merchant live streams and creator live streams hitting new highs; the live auction, incorporated into promotion mechanics for the first time, became a new growth point, contributing over half of the merchant live stream business GMV.

The fully managed content field GMV also saw a major explosion. A key feature this year was the assistance of AIGC. During the mid-year promotion, AIGC short video posts increased by 1.5 times, effectively driving product business to grow nearly 2 times compared to pre-promotion levels.

Third, high-quality services anchored the promotion. Faster and better logistics fulfillment enhances consumer purchase confidence and directly impacts conversion rates and repurchase rates.

The significant investment in logistics services by the platform and merchants in the past period has borne fruit in this year's TikTok Shop US mid-year promotion: with over 84% of FBT orders achieving 3-day delivery, the volume of FBT orders for cross-border POP merchants exploded far higher than other orders; the further upgrade of fully managed local fulfillment allowed merchants using US overseas warehouses to see business explode several times compared to last year's Black Friday.

02

Behind the High-Scoring Report Card: Where Exactly Does Interest-Based E-commerce Win?

Although TikTok Shop's US development period is not long, the differentiated advantages of interest-based e-commerce have continuously become prominent. Each major promotion is a concentrated catalyst for user activity and a significant enhancement of merchant supply efficiency.

During this year's mid-year promotion, merchants leveraged intensive consumption nodes to frequently reach users with high-quality live streams and short video content, allowing users to intuitively perceive product functions and value. This not only efficiently captured existing market demand but also stimulated more potential demand, leading to a natural business explosion.

For example, I saw the merchant Weture from the furniture and home improvement sector effectively utilizing the 'dual-engine content' of interest-based e-commerce to explode high-average-order-value products during the mid-year promotion, directly becoming the Top 1 self-streaming merchant in TikTok Shop US's sofa category.

Weture focuses on sofa products, which are not high-frequency necessities, with an average order value exceeding $330. During the mid-year promotion, they continuously showcased real products in live streams, vividly explaining the sofa's space compatibility, dual-purpose sitting/lying functions, and conveying promotional benefits, achieving nearly $20,000 GMV in a single live stream. Simultaneously, they continuously built momentum through creator short videos featuring scenarios like unboxing, real placement, space transformation, and comfort experience, amplifying brand value and forming stable conversion.

Such examples appear across various categories and merchant types. For instance, the fully managed merchant HONG KONG SUCHUANG TECHNOLOGY LIMITED, which makes vacuum cleaners, also achieved GMV doubling through refined operations combining short videos and live streams.

They focused on scenario-based short videos and creator hands-on content, allowing users to have a clearer perception of core product selling points like suction power, battery life, and dust removal efficiency, greatly improving conversion efficiency. During the mid-year promotion, their monthly GMV increased 197% month-over-month. They not only exploded in the content field, but high-quality content also drove an increase in the proportion of shelf transactions, optimizing the overall structure.

Those trending products are typical examples of exploding orders by leveraging the advantages of the interest-based e-commerce content field. Combining the platform's social media attributes and massive UGC ecosystem, trending topic content naturally forms a 'trend-making' ability, where every user participating in the topic is a potential consumer. During this year's mid-year promotion, hotspots like the World Cup, Father's Day, and the 250th anniversary of US Independence Day sparked over ten million user-related content searches, driving business growth over 3 times compared to pre-promotion levels.

Many merchants achieved outstanding results in TikTok Shop's US mid-year promotion, which is the best validation of the advantages of interest-based e-commerce. At the same time, I believe the more landmark significance lies in how it changed the way merchants win promotions.

The core of traditional e-commerce promotions is discounts, using low prices to attract users with clear purchase intent. The user behavior path is search -> price comparison -> purchase, with merchants competing more for existing market share. The core of interest-based e-commerce promotions is content, using content to reach more user groups. The user behavior path is seeing content -> resonating -> sparking purchase demand -> direct purchase, greatly releasing incremental space while avoiding homogeneous competition and losses caused by price comparison. Various merchants can be chosen by consumers through content differentiation.

Content creates hits, also making promotions no longer viewed by many as a 'drain for excess inventory' as in the past. As long as you have new, good content, promotions can also be opportunities to launch new products, deepen relationships with users, and rapidly amplify brand power.

03

Beyond Selling Explosively in Promotions: Chinese Merchants Truly Enter the Fast Lane for Going Global

When I communicated with many merchants, I asked them: If you had to summarize the development state of interest-based e-commerce with one word, what would it be? The answers focused on 'high growth' and 'fast explosion'.

I think this is also why interest-based e-commerce is said to have opened an optimal efficiency path for Chinese merchants to go global.

Today, with the advantages of China's supply chain combined with technological upgrades and talent dividends, we can not only produce various high-quality goods but also have extremely fast innovation and iteration speeds. We have enough confidence to step onto a larger world stage. But relying on traditional channels to go global makes it difficult to efficiently convey our new appearance and new value to overseas consumers. The content characteristics of interest-based e-commerce precisely address this pain point, and its rapid growth further shortens the time for merchants to complete this leap.

Cross-border POP merchants achieve sales growth while faster promoting brand building and expanding brand scale; the fully managed model, with its 'merchants focus on products, operations are handled by the platform' lightweight approach to going global, lowers barriers and trial-and-error costs for a large number of industrial belt merchants and merchants without cross-border experience, accelerating their steps towards internationalization.

A great example is the breakthrough of the open-ear bone conduction headphone brand Shokz on TikTok Shop US. Over the past years, it has built a foundation in the US market through traditional channels. But facing fierce competition, how to maintain innovation, how to continuously scale up, and stand among global brands are problems it must solve in its new phase. Interest-based e-commerce became a key springboard.

Shokz targeted the growth dividend of TikTok Shop's sports category, quickly filling the gap in the health earphone niche, adapting differentiated product solutions to meet the demands of young sports enthusiasts for all-scenario headphone use. Under the trend of outdoor health consumption, it synchronized node marketing with new product launch rhythms, driving series of hits to continuously gain volume through multiple dimensions, achieving breakthrough performance growth.

More importantly, the new content formats and marketing methods here made Shokz's brand image more vivid and three-dimensional, with brand influence rapidly spreading. For example, they launched a series of quick-cut short films documenting marathon events, deepening the professional sports brand mindset with real event stories; customized content for different vertical creators, using videos to visually restore real usage scenarios and strengthen user empathy; and collaborated with professional marathon athletes for cross-platform momentum building, elevating the participation in Shokz topics across the internet to new heights and igniting brand buzz.

If we shift our gaze from mature merchants like Shokz to newcomers going global, what is their shortcut? I found the answer in two industrial belt merchants.

One is Wei Lai Jewelry. They were originally a domestic Douyin merchant, with a rich and high-quality product portfolio and strong content genes. By applying Douyin live streaming experience to TikTok Shop live streams and partnering with overseas creators for promotion, their GMV exceeded $30,000 within one and a half months of joining TikTok Shop's fully managed model. During this year's mid-year promotion, they even broke the record for the highest transaction unit price in live streams.

The other is Guangzhou Long Meng Meng Apparel, mainly selling bras. They had no experience in content creation but also stepped onto the fast lane for going global through interest-based e-commerce. They as a new merchant in TikTok Shop's fully managed model, used AIGC to operate 26 self-operated accounts, doing cold-start posts through methods like model wardrobes, outfit matching, and product recommendations, then expanding volume through agency product pushes and creator collaborations. Within three months of listing, they sold 20,000 units explosively, entering the TOP5 of the innerwear/sleepwear industry rankings.

Essentially, the most scarce value of the interest-based e-commerce business model is that through it, merchants can more efficiently connect with global consumers and reach their minds. Using rich and diverse content to directly reach consumers allows for better self-presentation and expression, as well as better listening to consumer voices. This process nurtures countless opportunities in niche sectors, allowing a large number of new merchants and products to stand out, and enabling brand value transmission to gain resonance and user assets to accumulate.

Looking back at this year's mid-year promotion, I believe that after a fierce battle, merchants not only reaped business explosions but also further enriched their capabilities—in the new front of interest-based e-commerce, how to enhance content power, how to manage users well, how to spread the brand. These were internalized and grew new 'muscles' during the concentrated training process of the promotion.

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