TikTok Shop merchant Jessica Slone typically sells clothing and accessories, but recently hosted a live pickle taste test.
Bad Addiction Boutique.
TikTok became obsessed with pickle-jar sweatshirts this summer, driving tens of thousands of sales.One merchant, Jessica Slone, has sold over 43,000 sweatshirts through TikTok Shop.Slone has become a de facto brinefluencer, receiving swag and other freebies from pickle brands.
TikTok is aggressively pushing its new e-commerce platform Shop. The company has been flooding users’ “For You” feeds with items for sale, offering steep discounts to first-time buyers.
Sometimes the products are standard fare, such as an Anker phone charger or a pair of wireless headphones from Newegg.
Other times, they’re pickle-jar sweatshirts.
This summer, the app became infatuated with a set of gray crewnecks adorned with jars from brands like Grillo’s, McClure’s, Mt. Olive, and Claussen. Hashtags like #picklesweatshirt and #picklejarsweatshirt have been viewed hundreds of millions of times.
One seller, Jessica Slone, founder of Bad Addiction Boutique, has sold over 43,000 pickle-jar sweatshirts at $44 a pop through TikTok Shop.
It can be difficult to trace the exact origins of the pickle-jar trend, but Slone was clearly one of the earliest purveyors of the product. She posted a TikTok video in January of herself wearing the sweatshirt, months before pickle mania kicked off. As with any novelty item that goes viral, a slew of Shop competitors are currently selling pickle-jar clothing using a similar 12-jar design, though often featuring a different set of pickle brands.
“The Pickle Jar sweatshirt was never supposed to be a product,” Slone told Insider. “My husband hates pickles and it’s my favorite snack. I love to eat them late at night and he can’t stand it. So I thought it would be funny to make a sweatshirt just to annoy my husband.”
Slone said she added the product to Bad Addiction’s online store after users on the company’s Facebook page asked for their own. But sales really began to surge after she joined TikTok Shop and videos tagged with the product, posted by either Bad Addiction or influencers commenting on the product, went viral. Influencers earn a commission on sales when their videos lead to a purchase.
Just like TikTok’s non-shopping content, TikTok Shop is built around viral videos, be it a sudden interest in pickle clothing or a frenzy to buy freeze-dried Skittles.
“It is wild how it kind of snowballs,” Slone said.
A viral video tagged with a product can lead to a sudden rush in sales, which is wonderful for merchants but can also lead to logistics challenges. TikTok has a strict three-day shipping window in the US, and repeated failure to meet that deadline may result in an order volume limit or “violation points” from TikTok that could eventually escalate to expulsion from the platform.
A TikTok spokesperson said the company sets its fulfillment policies to allow for timely fulfillment and delivery of orders, with the goal of giving a positive experience for customers. It offers features to assist merchants in processing orders, including a Shop app store and its own “Fulfilled by TikTok” services. The company also hosts sessions for sellers to connect with and learn from the Shop team, they said.
For Slone, the pressure to meet Shop’s fulfillment requirements after going viral became too much. She decided to outsource the task to a local print and fulfillment team.
“TikTok has very strict policies and rules on their orders, so we had to bring in someone else,” she said. “It was literally physically impossible for just my husband and I and our small family to keep up with that requirement,” she said of the three-day-shipping rule.
Still, Slone isn’t complaining.
“It’s been absolutely life-changing for us and for our business,” she said of achieving TikTok fame.
Bad Addiction’s TikTok account now has around 230,000 followers, and Slone herself has become a pickle star, or brinefluencer, if you will.
Wickles Pickles sent her a PR package with swag and product samples. Other brands have shipped out so many free jars that her fridge is overflowing with brined-cucumber offerings. The Today Show’s digital desk did an interview with Slone in August, and she said up-and-coming pickle brands are lining up to have their products considered for future versions of the jar sweatshirt.
Slone recently hosted a pickle taste test on TikTok Live. And Bad Addiction Boutique now has a dedicated “Pickle Collection” on its website, featuring pickle-themed glitter stickers, a “Big Dill” can koozie, and a “Pickle Slut” t-shirt. The company released a Halloween version of the pickle-jar sweatshirt ahead of the holiday.
“TikTok Shop is kind of this roller coaster, and right now it’s on this amazing uphill journey,” she said. “We’re going to ride that roller coaster until pretty much the wheels fall off.”