In a five-storey building on the outskirts of Shanghai, Reckitt, the company behind Dettol, runs 18 studios. From there its own staff stream live on social apps twelve hours a day, while a team behind the scenes swaps products in real time. The Wall Street Journal reported this in October 2026.

It is tempting to think live selling only suits fashion, beauty and gadgets that need showing off. But Reckitt sells disinfectant, throat lozenges and washing machine cleaner. Everyday products, in other words.

The lesson for an online store is not to build 18 studios. It is simpler than that: video and live show how a product is used, and that can work even when the product is ordinary.

What is Reckitt doing in China?

Reckitt splits the work into two steps. Its marketing director in China, Vivien Huang, summed it up at an investor seminar on 4 December 2025: “Short videos drive discovery. Livestream builds conversion.” The short videos are how people come across the product. The streams are where they buy.

There are a lot of short videos. Reckitt says its digital hub in China produced more than a million of them in 2025, each aimed at a particular moment in the customer’s day. According to the WSJ, some are comedy sketches about home life, often under a minute long. In one, a father and his teenage son argue over smelly trainers until Dettol sorts it out.

The streams work differently. According to Reckitt, a session often runs for four hours, with a host backed by a team that handles the questions. That is where viewers work out what the product does and whether it suits them, and where many decide to buy. In 2025 the company streamed more than 100,000 hours.

Does it work? According to its half-year report on 29 July 2026, Reckitt grew by double digits in China for the twelfth quarter in a row. But the company does not credit social media alone. On the half-year call, management pointed to new products and execution, particularly online. The format is not enough on its own. The product has to be right too.

Why does live selling work for everyday products?

Three things point that way.

The use is visible. A product photo of a bottle of cleaner says little. A video of someone showing when and how to use it says more. According to Reckitt, Dettol has grown from five to eleven categories in China, including a washing machine cleaner. A new way of using a product has to be shown before people understand it.

The purchase takes little thought. The WSJ describes Chinese consumers often buying household products while scrolling in their free time, without much deliberation. Everyday products fit that pattern: the price is usually low and a wrong purchase does not cost much.

The information is easy to take in. A study in Electronic Commerce Research (August 2025) suggests that more information cues in a live stream make it easier to absorb knowledge about low-involvement products. For more considered purchases, complex cues made it harder instead. It was a lab experiment with a limited sample, so read it as a direction, not a rule.

There are similar examples in Europe. Among the sellers TikTok highlights are Carrefour, Lidl UK, NIVEA and Rossmann (TikTok, 28 May 2026). In Germany, portable steam cleaners, cordless drill sets and cat scratching posts were among the most bought products in TikTok Shop’s first year, according to TikTok (24 March 2026). In the UK, TikTok says sales through LIVE shopping grew 55 percent in a year, with more than 6,000 shopping streams a day (ChannelX, 30 July 2026). Those are TikTok’s own figures, not independently verified.

One UK butcher says he sold £8,000 of meat in a three-hour stream, something that would otherwise take three to four days in the shop (ChannelX, 30 July 2026). It is a single example that TikTok itself chose to highlight, not an average.

Short video or live: which should come first?

Short video. Lengow, an ecommerce software company whose customers include TikTok Shop sellers, has compiled estimates from the analytics tool Kalodata for TikTok Shop in Germany, France, Spain and Italy from April to July 2026. By those estimates, about 64 percent of sales came through video and about 17 percent through live (Lengow, July 2026). The figures are modelled, not TikTok’s own, but the direction is clear: short videos carry most of the sales and live adds to them.

That matches Reckitt’s split. The video sparks the interest. The stream serves the people who are already curious and have questions.

Key figures on live selling: an estimated 64 percent of TikTok Shop sales in four EU markets came through video and 17 percent through live. Reckitt made more than a million short videos in China in 2025.
By modelled estimates, short videos carry most TikTok Shop sales in four EU markets. Live adds to them.

Can you do the same in Europe and Sweden?

Partly. Reckitt’s model rests on a market where shopping in social apps has grown for years. According to the WSJ, around 800 million of China’s 1.4 billion people use social apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou every day (Wall Street Journal, October 2026). Reckitt estimates, according to the same article, that users watch short videos for around 90 minutes a day on average and that half have bought something through the apps.

In Europe the in-app checkout already exists in 14 markets: 13 EU countries and the UK. TikTok Shop opened in the UK in 2021, in Spain and Ireland in late 2024 and in Germany, France and Italy in spring 2025 (Ecommerce News Europe, June 2026). Since 15 June 2026 it has also been live in eight more EU countries, according to TikTok’s transparency report (31 August 2026), and TikTok’s European seller page listed 13 EU markets when we read it on 14 October 2026. The May press release named only four of the new countries: Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland (TikTok, 28 May 2026). The report also counted the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal and Hungary (here is why the counts differ). If you already sell through TikTok Shop in one of those markets, you can test live selling with the checkout inside the app today. A TikTok seller page dated 8 June 2026 also describes a Sell Across EU feature: a seller who has registered and opened a shop in one EU country can use the same registration to open shops in other EU markets. TikTok’s current Sell Across Europe page (8 October 2026) lists 13, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal and Hungary, although food and drink, supplements and a few other categories are excluded in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

Sweden is not on the list. The Swedish trade publication Market.se reported on 14 April 2026 that a Nordic launch was being prepared, but gave no date. As of 14 October 2026, TikTok had not announced a launch date for TikTok Shop in Sweden or the rest of the Nordics.

That does not make it too early to start. Short videos and live streams work today. In Sweden the purchase simply goes through your own store instead of the app. According to TikTok’s help centre, you need to be at least 18 and have at least 1,000 followers to go LIVE, though the follower requirement varies by region (as of 14 October 2026). Read more about how to prepare your store for TikTok Shop in Sweden and how TikTok Shop compares with Instagram Shopping.

How to start, in the right order

  1. Make short how-to videos. One product, one problem, one solution. Show the situation where the product is used, how it is done and what it looks like afterwards. Under a minute is enough. Ten simple videos beat one expensive one.
  2. Test more than one version. According to Reckitt, each new video is tried out on consumers and changed within hours if the message does not land. You do not need a test panel. Post two versions with different openings and compare.
  3. Run a short test stream. Pick two or three products that have already had a response in video. Decide in advance what you will show, in what order, and how the viewer buys. Label the stream with TikTok’s commercial content toggle, which TikTok requires, and with the word “reklam” (Swedish for advertising), as the Swedish Consumer Agency recommends.
  4. Put the right person in front of the camera. More on that below.
  5. Measure and adjust after every stream, not after a quarter.
  6. Scale up only once something works. Reckitt’s CEO Kris Licht told Semafor (May 2026) that the company tested on a small scale first and scaled up afterwards. The same order works at any size.

Not sure TikTok is the right channel for you at all? Start with our guide to whether your business needs TikTok.

Who should be in front of the camera?

Whoever knows the product best and can answer questions without a script. In 2024, Reckitt’s head of China said the company uses its own employees in studios or at factories, explaining where the products come from, rather than the influencer model that is more common in the West (Reuters, February 2024). Streams can also be led by influencers or AI avatars (Reuters, December 2025).

For an online store, your own team is often a good place to start: someone who packs orders, answers customer emails and knows which questions tend to come up. The questions in the chat are often the same ones customer service gets, only live.

How do you know if it is working?

According to Reckitt, its teams follow sales in real time during streams. If something is not selling, they change the setup straight away, for example the script, the offer or which product is in focus. The same principle works on a small scale:

  • Short videos: how many people watch to the end and how many click through to the product.
  • Streams: how many questions come in, which products they are about and how many orders arrive during and right after the stream. Give each stream its own discount code or link, so you can see what it actually sold.
  • Over time: whether customers buy again. Reckitt says a third of the more than 40 million new users it gained in China in 2025 have already bought again.

Viewer numbers say less than questions and purchases.

What can go wrong?

Even big brands slip up in review. In June 2026, Dettol in China pulled an ad video of around five minutes after users criticised it as sexist. The topic drew more than 80 million views on Weibo. Dettol said the aim had been to challenge unequal attitudes to gender, but apologised for failures in its review process. The video was made by an outside agency (Sixth Tone, 23 June 2026).

The lesson: have someone other than the person who made a video check it before it goes out, whoever produced it.

How we help

We produce video content and run live selling with salespeople who are used to being on camera. We also build fully custom ecommerce on top of Shopify, where you own the account, the domain and the customer data. Among other things, we have built a store like this for a leading Swedish artist.

If you want to start with short videos and test streams, see our social media and video services. If you want a store that is ready for the orders, read about how we build ecommerce on Shopify, or talk to us about live selling.

Sources