Can Tiktok Sell You an Electric Shaver?

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled Recommends programming to bring you news of a breaking development in the world of online shopping: TikTok Shop, the short-form video app as beloved by teens as it is bemoaned by their parents, is making it a whole lot easier to buy while you scroll.

TikTok has operated as vehicle for brand discovery since its inception. But the nascent days of the platform’s TikTok Shop often felt like browsing the world’s wackiest flea market, a cacophonous mishmash of nifty-seeming kitchen hacks, Christmas lights for your car, and custom T-shirts with your dog’s face printed on them. The environment was reliably overstimulating, explains GQ associate social media manager Trishna Rikhy.

Rikhy’s experience isn’t an anomaly—but soon enough, it might be. Earlier this month, the TikTok Shop unveiled a slew of new vendors enlisted to bolster its credibility in the e-comm space. Among them are names like Philips, Samsung, and Zwilling, powerhouse brands you probably recognize from your bathroom bureau or home-speaker setup. As of a few weeks ago, you can buy the best of their wares—along with, say, a Wahl clipper or a Gap sweatshirt—directly through each brand’s respective TikTok Shop, with the same frictionless ease long since mastered by the competition.

Familiarity—plus a certain degree of widespread name recognition—seems to be kind of the point. In an informal poll of GQ staffers, few had experience buying anything directly via TikTok, and the ones who did chalked up their purchases to spur-of-the-moment decisions. Last year, Kelsey Niziolek, a designer on GQ‘s art team, bought an economy-size box of Scrub Daddies after encountering the product on her feed, a testament to the platform’s ability to convert its passive scrollers into active customers, at least temporarily.

For plenty of TikTok users, buying a jumbo box of Scrub Daddies on a whim is part of the appeal; the next flex is making TikTok Shop their stop for a portable speaker or a QLED TV. But the platform’s renewed focus on the type of legacy brands we recommend here all the time bodes well for its prospects. We’d tell you to watch this space, but if your screen time reports look anything like ours, you don’t need the reminder.