Retailers like Levi's are finding early success selling products on TikTok — and say the video-sharing app could help bolster online sales amid coronavirus-related store closures

• Retail beta partners of TikTok's Shop Now feature are finding early success tapping into the app's 800 million global users.
• In a blog published on Monday, Levi's said its TikTok campaign more than doubled product page views of its customized denim items, with a video engagement time that was twice that of the platform's average.
• Levi's said TikTok may prove to be a helpful revenue stream and alternative way to bolster e-commerce sales as the coronavirus leaves brick-and-mortar stores indefinitely shuttered around the country.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

TikTok's 800 million global users are now able to use the app for more than just watching viral videos for hours on end — they can also shop for new jeans.

The popular video-sharing app has been teaming with major retailers like Levi's to experiment with TikTok's "Shop Now" feature, after first soft-launching the shopping tool in November 2019. As part of the beta program, brands are able to partner with influencers to showcase products in videos, and then link to e-commerce pages directly from their posts.

Levi's, which was among the first crop of beta testers when it began trialing the feature in December, found that a TikTok experiment designed to promote its customized denim products has more than doubled product page views. Further, it reported that watch time of these videos was twice as long as the platform average for TikTok, according to a blog on the company website.

Similar to social media shopping tools on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, the feature is intended to capitalize on a captive audience of young consumers viewing and sharing content en masse. While Shop Now is currently available to only a small group of users, Levi's said it could prove lucrative to retailers, especially those struggling to stay afloat during a "truly unprecedented moment" of mass store closures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

"While most of our physical doors aren't open today, the Levi's brand continues to find new ways to grow its digital business and connect with fans across all types of platforms, mediums and technologies," the blog reads. "That's what makes its newest partnership with TikTok so exciting — it's the brand's latest effort to enable consumers to buy its products directly from a social platform."

While TikTok did not respond to Business Insider's request to comment, the company told the Wall Street Journal in November that it is "always experimenting with new ways to improve the app experience," though it did not share specifics regarding the total number of beta users or if it has plans to take a commission from sales made through the app.

Ultimately, Levi's said the program may prove especially valuable for selling to Gen Z shoppers in the long-term — an estimated 60% of the app's users fall between the ages of 16-24 — and also as a way to connect with consumers during the pandemic in the near-term.

"As consumer behavior shifts over the coming months and people explore different online channels for shopping and engaging with brands, we are here to connect with consumers, wherever they are," Brady Stewart, Levi's managing director of US direct-to-consumer, wrote in the blog.