An operational error nearly brought down sales of an e-commerce on the TikTok Shop

The rise of TikTok Shop as a sales channel in Brazil has opened a new growth front for small and medium digital businesses.Accenture report points out that social commerce is expected to grow almost three times faster than traditional e-commerce by 2026, driven by short videos, affiliates and impulse purchases.

This was the learning experienced by the businesswoman Sabrina Nunes, founder of Francisca Joias, and expert in sales on the internet.The brand even recorded peaks of up to 700 orders in a single day within the TikTok Shop, driven by own and affiliate videos that went viral on the platform. Shortly after, sales plummeted.

“The error was not marketing, nor product, nor lack of demand. It was stock. I neglected the depth and the algorithm responded by cutting the” distribution, says Sabrina. According to her, the drop did not happen gradually. “Over and over, orders simply stopped entering”, she says.

The operation of TikTok helps explain the phenomenon. Unlike more traditional social networks, the platform also operates as a search engine. Well-ranked videos continue to be displayed for weeks or months, which increases the sales potential.In the TikTok Shop, this effect is reinforced by the direct interest of the platform in scaling products with delivery capacity.

“When the system realizes that you do not have enough inventory to sustain demand, it understands that that product is not scalable. And if it is not scalable, it ceases to be a priority for the” algorithm, says Sabrina.

Data from TikTok itself, released in global commerce reports, indicate that sellers with a higher stock availability rate and consistent fulfillment are more likely to receive incentives from the platform, such as media vouchers and greater exposure in internal windows.In Brazil, the company has encouraged the sending of samples to affiliates as a way to increase the volume of videos, a practice that also requires operational predictability.

According to the businesswoman, the error was more evident when the brand started to integrate the stock via ERP, a system that connects online store and TikTok Shop.“O ERP plays the information in real time. If there is no depth, the signal for the algorithm is clear: this brand can not stand to scale”, he says.

The case draws attention because it contradicts a common logic among small shopkeepers, who bet on a wide variety of products. For Sabrina, the TikTok Shop is worth the opposite.“Iports more depth than mix. It is no use having many items if you can not sustain the one who is performing”, she says. She recommends starting with about ten products, provided there is guaranteed replacement with suppliers.

The learning occurs at a time of strong channel expansion.NielsenIQ study shows that videos with direct recommendation influence more than 70% of purchasing decisions in social commerce, higher percentage than traditional ads.“It is the busiest street in the world today.But if you are not prepared internally, the same speed that leads up drops”, says Sabrina.

For 2026, the businesswoman evaluates that the TikTok Shop tends to quickly separate structured operations from improvised ones.“It is not a small shop. It is a product scalar machine. And machine requires process, inventory and predictability”, she says. According to her, anyone who understands this early can capture an advantage difficult to recover later.“Who arrives before drinks clean water.It was so with Instagram, influencers and e-commerce. Now it is happening again.”