In 2026, the U.S. cross-border e-commerce market remains full of imagination.

Despite current macroeconomic fluctuations, the purchasing power of U.S. consumers remains solid. More importantly, U.S. consumers' shopping habits are rapidly migrating to mobile devices, and the demand for interest-driven instant consumption is becoming increasingly prominent. Consumers' decision-making path has shifted from the traditional "search - purchase" shelf logic to an interest e-commerce model driven by content, which includes "discovery - interest - trust - purchase". This instant and grassroots consumption demand provides an excellent environment for new cross-border models.

However, opportunities come with challenges. Rising traffic costs, shortened lifecycle of hot products, intensified homogenization competition... The past extensive strategy of "stocking up + investing in traffic" is becoming ineffective. Under the dual changes of the market and consumer paths, simply selling products is no longer sustainable. In 2026, building a brand has become a must-have option for cross-border merchants.

How to build a brand in the wave of interest e-commerce? At the "New Opportunities, Win Growth" TikTok Shop U.S. Cross-Border POP Annual Conference held on March 16th, the platform provided a targeted solution. The conference not only clarified the annual business orientation but also invited top merchants for practical sharing, and upgraded the release of the "2026 ACE Your Shop U.S. Merchant Operation Methodology" - this methodology is not just armchair strategy but a systematic answer to help more merchants achieve long-term growth and strengthen their brands.

The U.S. enters the era of interest e-commerce,

TikTok Shop enables long-term brand growth

In the United States, TikTok has more than 200 million active users, and the average daily usage time has been climbing for five consecutive years. In the context of interest e-commerce, content is traffic, and trust is conversion.

Consumers are no longer passively receiving advertising pushes but discovering interests through high-quality content, establishing brand trust, completing the purchase closed loop, and even becoming spontaneous brand communicators; the merchant structure has also iterated, with early "stocking-up" sellers gradually being replaced by brand-oriented sellers and integrated industrial and trade enterprises that focus on long-term operations. Pure price competition is no longer sustainable, and brand strength has become the key to the survival and development of merchants.

Against this backdrop, TikTok Shop, with its unique platform ecosystem, has become the core position for merchants to undertake interest dividends, help merchants achieve long-term growth, and strengthen their brands. Among them, the number of top stores with annual sales of tens of millions of dollars has increased by more than 70%. The latest data shows that in 2025, TikTok Shop's U.S. business grew by nearly 80% year-on-year, and more and more merchants choose to build their brands here, making TikTok Shop their core operating position for long-term growth and brand strengthening.

TikTok Shop's Vice President of Cross-Border E-commerce, Mu Qing, emphasized: "TikTok Shop has opened a new era of 'interest e-commerce' in the United States! Interest e-commerce uses high-quality content as a link, closely connecting a massive number of potential users with brands, shortening and intensifying the operation link, bringing more exposure, more user operation space, and more business opportunities to brands, helping more merchants achieve long-term growth and strengthen their brands!"

Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms' traffic allocation logic, TikTok Shop uses high-quality content as a bridge to closely connect potential users with brands, breaking down the barriers between content planting and transaction conversion, allowing merchants to stimulate user interest while occupying brand mindshare and precipitating user assets. On TikTok Shop, it is no longer a one-time traffic sale but a brand operation position that can be accumulated and amplified.

TikTok Shop also has a strong spillover effect across the network. The latest data shows that on the brand building level, merchants who settled in TikTok Shop in 2025 accumulated a total exposure of 1351.5 billion times within the platform, and their official merchant accounts added a total of 690 million new followers. It also had a significant "spillover effect". Observation data shows that some brands that cooperated deeply with the platform had a DTC channel GMV spillover rate of more than 70%.

The beauty brand Fenty Beauty, a U.S. cross-border POP merchant, is very representative. While achieving a leap in transaction scale on TikTok Shop, it also drove the synchronous growth of the brand's independent website. Experimental calculations by third-party institutions show that for every $1 of incremental sales on the TikTok Shop platform, about 6.7 times of incremental sales outside the platform can be leveraged.

At present, TikTok Shop is also becoming the "main position" for brands to go global. They hope to jump out of the past passive "product selection - traffic - conversion" logic and instead actively define consumption scenarios in the content field, building a more controllable business certainty.

Take the global cleaning appliance brand Dyson, a U.S. cross-border POP merchant, as an example. During Black Friday, the GMV of the G10 Pro hot product broke through one million dollars, the highest transaction amount in a single live broadcast exceeded ten thousand dollars, and a single video performed well.

On the one hand, Dyson cooperated with technology, home, and lifestyle bloggers for scenario-based evaluation to truly show the adaptability of products to life; on the other hand, it took the live broadcast room as a key position, intuitively demonstrating product strength through real-time demonstration and interactive Q&A, continuously accumulating brand reputation and establishing user trust barriers. This also means that Dyson regards TikTok Shop as its core platform for key operations.

The ACE operation methodology is implemented in the U.S.,

Winning the brand battle with a certain approach

More and more merchants deeply understand that whoever establishes brand awareness first will take the initiative in the next round of competition.

Mid-tier merchants try to shift from "category sales" to "brand operation" but lack practical methodologies suitable for the U.S. market; newly settled merchants face fierce competition, and even cold start has become a problem, let alone how to break through the boundaries of business growth.

In 2025, the "PEAKS Going Global Operation Methodology" has helped a large number of cross-border merchants run through the core operating fields of TikTok Shop and achieve business breakthroughs. With the evolution of the market and the deepening of merchant practice,at this conference, TikTok Shop U.S. POP officially upgraded and released the "ACE Your Shop U.S. Merchant Operation Methodology" - shifting from single-module operation to multi-field collaborative force, helping overseas merchants achieve long-term growth and strengthen their brands.

Ryan, General Manager of TikTok Shop U.S. Cross-Border POP Operations, emphasized: "The essence of the ACE methodology is a full-domain growth flywheel: the outer ring is the three major operating fields supporting long-term growth, and the inner ring is the core three elements driving and amplifying each field. Only by coordinating with each other can the flywheel really start and achieve high outbreak of full-domain brand and performance!"

ACE Full-Domain Growth Flywheel

Simply put, the ACE methodology breaks down merchants' business on TikTok Shop into three core consumption fields - influencer content field, merchant content field, and mall & search, and injects three core elements into each field: good products, good content, and good marketing.

Influencer Content Field: The accelerator for business outbreaks, quickly covering users with the influence of influencers' fans;

Merchant Content Field: A controllable and efficient new engine to help brands accumulate assets and convey images;

Mall & Search: The stable growth foundation, accurately undertaking users' active purchase demands.

When these three elements are precisely implemented in the three major fields, the business is no longer a scattered point-wise operation but a growth system that can be coordinated and replicated.

In actual operations in the U.S., many merchants often fall into the inertia of "single-field operation": either relying solely on influencers to drive sales, or focusing only on self-broadcasting, or only paying attention to mall traffic. However, consumers' shopping paths are no longer linear - they may be planted in short videos first, then watch explanations in live broadcasts, and finally search and place orders in the mall. If merchants still operate the three major fields of influencer content, merchant content, and mall & search separately, not only will traffic be difficult to reuse, but they will also miss the opportunity to precipitate brand mindshare.

The real value of the ACE merchant operation methodology is to break the disadvantages of single-field isolated operation, realize the mutual guidance and coordinated force of traffic in the three major fields, and enable merchants to shift from "single sales" to "full-domain brand operation".

The growth trajectory of a fast-moving consumer goods merchant is very representative. In the early days, they used influencer live broadcasts to quickly open up the U.S. market, and the GMV contributed by influencers once accounted for more than 20%. But they soon realized that although influencers can bring volume and sales, they are difficult to accumulate brand assets, and channel costs are high. Subsequently, they began to consciously make up for their self-broadcasting capabilities, and the business structure gradually moved from "relying heavily on influencers" to a balanced development of "influencers + self-made". Today, the proportion of self-broadcasting has increased to 12%, and the overall gross margin has also been restored from the early low level to 18%. This year, they plan to further deepen the operation of shelf fields such as malls and searches, optimize traffic structure and profit margins through multi-field coordination.

When merchants move from relying on a single field to a balanced layout across all fields, the certainty of brand growth and profit quality will both improve.

Three core fields + ACE core elements,

Breaking through the boundaries of business growth

The ACE methodology outlines a clear growth blueprint for merchants: using good products as the cornerstone of trust, using good content as the engine of traffic, and using good marketing as the fuel for breaking out. When these three core elements are efficiently coordinated in the three major fields of influencers, merchants, and malls, merchants will not only harvest the GMV peak of a single event but also a "growth flywheel" that can continuously accumulate brand assets and drive business positive circulation.

Wavytalk, which has extensive experience in operating U.S. cross-border POP, is a representative brand in the beauty tool category. It achieved a double breakthrough in brand and sales by using good products + good content + good marketing and linking the three major fields.

At the level of good products, Wavytalk insights into user pain points and launches innovative products such as a 5-in-1 curling iron; at the same time, it carefully crafts product design, turning practical hairdressing tools into "fashion accessories" that users are willing to show off.

At the content level, Wavytalk summarized the "golden 6 seconds" hot product formula, grabbing users' attention with visual impact in 0-6 seconds, showing the easy use process and product value in the middle section, and issuing a call to action at the end, so that every short video can achieve efficient planting. At the same time, it has built a diversified content matrix to realize functional aesthetics, scenario resonance, emotional value, and interactive gamification, so that content can not only convey product advantages but also convey brand concepts.

In terms of the influencer ecosystem, Wavytalk has built a "pyramid-shaped" influencer co-creation matrix to achieve a double amplification of brand voice and sales: 1% of stars & super influencers for deep co-creation, defining brand height; 5% of top KOLs for periodic cooperation, creating benchmark cases; 40% of mid-tier influencers as the main content force, producing scenario-based content on a large scale; 54% of tail influencers for widespread planting, stimulating real UGC.

In terms of marketing, #PassYourWavytalk Challenge has become a classic marketing case, through the content form of "real transformation record × easy styling demonstration × tool interaction", ultimately achieving amazing results of over 200 million video views and 5 times GMV growth, and successfully precipitated the brand mindshare of "sharing and empowerment", achieving a double leap in brand and sales.

Merchants who have thoroughly understood the ACE merchant operation methodology are not limited to Wavytalk.

EcoFlow, also a U.S. cross-border POP merchant, focuses on personal and family cleaning energy storage and has achieved "rush-style growth" in sales from 2023 to 2025. The core of its success is the ACE merchant operation methodology.

EcoFlow laid the foundation for growth through strategies such as product structure breakthrough, the best prices for hot products across the network, and sufficient inventory; in 2025, the brand participated in NA and SBD events, with NA's D3C sales exceeding 4,500 units; during the November BFCM-SBD period, the highest daily GMV completion rate exceeded 140%, fully reflecting the explosive power of the combination of good products and good marketing.

In 2026, EcoFlow will continue to launch key strategic new products on TikTok Shop, ensure sufficient inventory; for high-ticket products, increase investment in self-made content and live broadcast fields; on the basis of consolidating existing Spanish-speaking influencers and users, accelerate the expansion of English-speaking influencers and users.

At the content level, EcoFlow deeply cultivates Spanish-speaking influencers and completes the first Spanish-speaking live broadcast on TikTok Shop with a GMV of over $100,000, covering 90% of Spanish-speaking top influencers on the platform, and the GMV