TikTok is taking a page from the playbook bargains app Temu employed to jumpstart its business in America: it’s promising merchants a fast-track to its burgeoning online marketplace — for free.
ByteDance Ltd.’s signature video service has begun pitching itself as a cost-free marketplace in a series of seminars and meetings with Chinese manufacturers and exporters. It’s dangling free listings, shipping, zero commissions and even warehousing to all comers: a tactic likely to disrupt a market now dominated by fellow Chinese-owned rivals Temu and Shein, and potentially undercut even Amazon.com Inc.
The stepped-up aggression move stems from TikTok’s ...
