#545 – TikTok Shop USA Booming and New EU Packaging Policy | Weekly Buzz 8/13/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.
TikTok Shop’s U.S. GMV Nearly Doubles to $11.8B in H1 2026
https://www.netinfluencer.com/tiktok-shop-us-gmv-nearly-doubles-to-11-8b-usd-in-h1-2026/
Why China’s traders, e-commerce merchants feel boxed in by new EU packaging rules
https://www.scmp.com/economy/policy/article/3363746/why-chinas-traders-e-commerce-merchants-feel-boxed-new-eu-packaging-rules
Most Asked For Helium 10 MCP Update
Helium 10 has launched Black Box Niche for MCP, giving sellers the X-ray-style data they’ve been asking for directly inside Claude. Instead of researching keywords one at a time with the Chrome extension, users can analyze multiple niches at once and compare metrics like search volume, top-product revenue, number of listings generating over $5,000 in sales, and how many top products have low review counts. The feature makes it much faster to compare market opportunities and competition across multiple keywords using the Helium 10 MCP.
How Amazon’s AI shopping assistant makes hundreds of millions of products feel personal
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-learn-and-be-curious-podcast
Optimize your listings with built-in Seller Central tools
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHR1ZKWFZETkRTSFhYQVo1
Amazon Expands Locker Network to more than 750 U.S. College Locations
https://press.aboutamazon.com/retail/2026/8/amazon-expands-locker-network-to-more-than-750-u-s-college-locations
In episode 545 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Bradley talks about:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 00:43 – TikTok Shop US BOOMING
- 03:13 – New EU Packaging Regulations
- 05:11 – Most Asked For MCP Update
- 09:13 – Amazon’s Alexa Predictions
- 14:36 – Research Dead Amazon Listings For Opportunity
- 17:55 – Amazon Caters To College Students
Transcript
Bradley Sutton:
TikTok shop USA sales are booming. There’s some new regulations for packaging. If you’re selling in Europe, the most asked for tool for MCP for Helium 10 is now available. These stories and more on today’s weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host Bradley Sutton.
Bradley Sutton:
And this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz where you give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzy.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, guys, let’s go ahead and hop right into the news. The first story is from net influencer.com and it’s entitled TikTok shops. Us GMV nearly doubles to 11.8 billion in H one of 2026. All right. So this is not TikTok shop overall. This is just us. All right. So doubling in the first half of this year, you know, shows that, Hey, business is actually booming on TikTok shop. Us now as a whole, TikTok shop globally is on track to hit a hundred billion dollars of GMV for 2026.
Bradley Sutton:
According to the article. Now it says that the largest markets for TikTok shop are US and Southeast Asia. However, Mexico and Brazil have growth that beat expectations. Now, what about how sales are made on a platform? What kind of changes have there been? According to this article, it says that the shop tabs share of attributed GMV rose from 36% to 51% over this period and live narrowed to 8.2%. How many seven figure sellers on TikTok shop more than 5,700 million dollars sellers on the platform. How many seven figure sellers just in the first half of this year alone, more almost 6,000 stores cross a million dollars in GMV, which is eight X year over year. And 500 of those actually already hit eight figures, $10 million or more. So what does all this mean guys, if you’re not selling on TikTok shop yet, you should get on there.
Bradley Sutton:
Is it too late to sell? Of course not. You know, TikTok shop is in its infancy compared to Amazon’s. It’s kind of like Amazon 10 years ago, but guys, TikTok shop sales keep increasing. And even if you’re not trying to necessarily get profit on TikTok shop, you’re just trying to get exposure. It’s working great. People are able to get different individuals aware of their brand and their products who might never have discovered their products before. And where do these people end up buying? Sure.
Bradley Sutton:
Some of them buy on TikTok shop. A lot are also buying on Amazon, which is going to help your Amazon profitability. So again, use the Helium 10 tools to research your products on TikTok shop, migrate your Amazon listings over, and maybe even connected to the MCF so you can start fulfilling your first orders through Amazon multi-channel fulfillment.
Bradley Sutton:
Speaking of different marketplaces, let’s talk about Amazon Europe. Here’s an article from scmp.com entitled why China’s traders e-commerce merchants feel boxed in by new EU packaging rules. All right. So from Belgium or Brussels, there’s new rules that have been aimed at reducing packaging waste. Now you guys might be wondering, Hey, you know, how in the world does this concern me? What, why, why is this even a story?
Bradley Sutton:
The story says on Wednesday, the EU’s packaging and packaging waste regulation, that doesn’t make any sense. Why is it called packaging and packaging? Like anyways, it says the acronym is PPRW. So yeah, packaging twice, whatever the PPRW became applicable across the block. Now, basically this sets requirements for all packaging that is on the EU market, obviously, including Amazon. It covers chemical restrictions, recyclability, producer responsibility and other compliance obligations.
Bradley Sutton:
Now this, these new rules cover everything from the type of, you know, shrink wrap that you’re using to package stuff that you’re importing to EU. It covers the type of bubble wrap you’re using you know, plastic bottles. And this has to do with a wide variety of categories as well, including electronics, auto parts, medical devices, and more. All right. So this is something that if you’re importing products to EU, you should start Googling some of this new PPRW and see if any of these rules apply to you and what you’re importing. And if like maybe the kind of packaging, you know, could potentially be blocked.
Bradley Sutton:
It says that exporters could face fines, custom blocks, and the withdrawal or ban of packaging or package products from the EU market. If they are found to be non-compliant. All right. So guys check this out and see if this affects you. Now, next up is a new feature alert, and this is probably the most anticipated one or a recent MCP launches. As soon as the Helium 10 MCP came out, what everybody was asking me is, Hey, when will you have MCP for X-ray?
Bradley Sutton:
And the answer in a nutshell is never, you know, X-ray is a Chrome extension. It’s not something for the MCP. That being said, basically what you guys were looking for is now here. Is it X-ray MCP? No, it’s actually called black box niche MCP, but it’s kind of the same thing, something completely unique to Helium 10. How does it work? Let me show you. Black Box Niche is a tool that has been in Helium 10 forever. Basically you enter in a keyword and you get all of the search results as it looks on Amazon, but with all the details, but it’s inside of Helium 10.
Bradley Sutton:
So now what you can do is you can enter in, you know, like 10, 15, 20 keywords to Claude and get X-ray level information. Let me go ahead and enter in like five keywords here to Claude and show you how this works. Now, what I just entered here into Claude was five keywords, coffin shelf, coffin, bath, mat, coffin, mirror, Gothic decor, and Halloween party supplies.
Bradley Sutton:
And then I said, Hey, first take these keywords. Tell me the search volume for each of these. And then also of the top 20 organic results, you know, I can go top 50 top 100. Again, this is kind of like what X-ray gives you, right? For the top 20 organic results for each using black box niche, what the total sales are for those top 20 products, how many listings have more than $5,000 of sales in the last 30 days. And then going to the top 10 products, how many of them have less than 150 reviews.
Bradley Sutton:
So it’s even like better than what people were wanting for MCP for X-ray, because this is not something that you could just filter out easily when you’re using the Chrome extension. So let’s see what Claude says using the Helium 10 MCP and take a look. We’ve got the results right here. It gave me this little chart shows me the search volume, Halloween party supplies is in the lead at 15,000 total sales. We can see a, uh, there’s definitely kind of heavy, the coffin bath mat, Halloween party supplies. You can see the total revenue it’s in the millions of dollars for a couple of these for the top 20 products.
Bradley Sutton:
Uh, how many listings greater than $5,000 worth of sales it’s showing me a coffin shelf is actually the least. And then how many of the top 10 that have less than 150 reviews, Halloween party supplies only has one, but coffin mirror has eight. All right. So these were just a sample of the kind of things I can ask it. But again, this is what everybody was asking for, uh, which is, Hey, we want to see basically X-ray level data and be able to search it so that I don’t have to go one by one on X-ray. So this is something that I want you guys to play with.
Bradley Sutton:
Just trigger it by saying, Hey, black box niche, uh, with the MCP guys, if you haven’t tried out helium tens MCP yet, make sure, you know, give it a try, give it a spin. I can give you guys a deal for up to six months, 20% off using the code SSP20. All right. And by the way, guys, usually we do like a new feature alert, just one, maybe two. The last couple of weeks, helium tens developers have been just going buck wild teams on things. And I’ve got over 10 new features just released this week alone. So this is just one of them. If you want the rest of it, make sure to subscribe to AM/PM podcast. We’ll do the other 10 on a special episode this Friday or Saturday.
Bradley Sutton:
There’ll be plenty of other stuff, including like index checker now available in keyword tracker available in the MCP, uh, real time sales data for your Tik TOK shop account, AWD inventory, Walmart inventory data. The list goes on and on tons, tons of new things that are, were the top things that were asked for by you guys. Uh, make sure to check out that special episode this Saturday AM/PM Podcast, subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts, or wherever you’re listening to this on.
Bradley Sutton:
Next story, it’s something that was released this week from about amazon.com. All right. This is one of Amazon’s websites. Interesting. It’s, it’s talking about Doug Harrington, who’s the CEO of Amazon’s worldwide stores. I think these were like excerpts from, I guess he’s got his own podcast or something or it’s an Amazon podcast, but it’s interesting.
Bradley Sutton:
He’s got some interesting points, but there’s a couple of contradictions here. All right. Let me just explain it. All right. So, so first of all, you know, now first of all, if the head of Amazon’s global worldwide stores is saying something, of course you got to listen to it. All right. And that’s why I read this article, but he’s talking about like how there have been big shifts in retail. And that’s a hundred percent correct. He says here, Hey, he has a 1910 Sears catalog to talk about, you know, how different back in the day shopping was.
Bradley Sutton:
And I don’t know about you guys. I know I’m aging myself here. I remember those Sears catalogs and those other JC Penney’s catalogs and we break it out. There’ll be like thousands of products in there. And we’d get those every month and we just, you know, look through and maybe order some stuff. Obviously Amazon and the search bar completely changed things.
Bradley Sutton:
You know, we’re not still using those big catalogs today, but here’s the thing in this article, he’s kind of inferring that we’re we’re in the midst of another big change. Now, maybe away from the search bar, he says here, Hey, I feel like at some point you have so much selection and we need a kind of new technology to make it possible for customers to find the best products. And he says that technology is conversational AI now available to customers as Alexa for shopping his guests on the podcast, who also from Amazon and executive there said, I really believe that we’re headed into a world where more and more customers are going to type whatever they want.
Bradley Sutton:
And we’ve got to do something helpful with it. Interestingly, despite saying that the kind of examples they’re talking about, about how people are using Alexa, it’s not about product discovery. You know, they talks about, Hey, where are my AA batteries? You would ask Alexa, of course. Like, Hey, well, where’s my shipment at? That’s pretty cool. That’s a great use case for Alexa has nothing to do with discovering products. Right. It says more complex questions like the difference between a regular coffee machine and a cold brew machine.
Bradley Sutton:
You can ask Alexa 100%. I’ve used Alexa for shopping like that. Again, it’s not about finding a product like an inherent shift in the way that people search. It talks about taking a picture of his fridge and asking Alexa for shopping to suggest a weekly grocery order. I mean, people weren’t using necessarily just the regular Amazon for groceries. So being able to take a picture and ask stuff.
Bradley Sutton:
Sure. I’m sure, you know, people might start using it like that. They even make a bold statement here, saying, Hey, we’re going to look back five years from now and say, Hey, the house is reordering its regular supplies for itself. And we’re going to think that’s totally normal right now. It seems like science fiction. He says, I don’t know exactly how it’s all going to play out, but I’m holding it all lightly for how the future could unfold.
Bradley Sutton:
Now this is interesting because on one hand, they’re not going out and just saying, Hey, there has been a big shift and now people are discovering products. If you listen to people on LinkedIn and other places for the last two years, you would think that there has been a big shift guys. Alexa and Rufus has been around for two and a half years.
Bradley Sutton:
Have we seen a shift in people using keywords to search initially for a product? It’s been two and a half years. We have not seen any decline in search volume for keywords with the data from Amazon. We did a report on this a few weeks ago that that shows the data. This article was released this week, the same time, almost the same day. Another article was released in seller central.
Bradley Sutton:
It’s linked to below. It’s entitled optimize your listings with built in seller central tools. It says discover how customers search for your products. Is Alexa mentioned at all here? No, it says the search query performance dashboard shows you the exact terms customers type when looking for products like yours. We’ve these insights into your titles, bullet points, blah, blah, blah.
Bradley Sutton:
So again, guys, there’s Amazon knows people are still using search terms. Stop listening to nonsense out there that, Oh, nobody’s finding products through keywords or there’s been a big reduction in the number of people use keywords. Just conversational AI is where it’s at. People are absolutely using conversational AI. I use it on a weekly basis or even more, but it’s not about discovery. You need to optimize still just as much today as you did last year, two years ago, three years ago for search terms.
Bradley Sutton:
Now on top of that, you need to make sure you’re optimized for people who are comparing products, you know, using Alexa and different things like that. But even Amazon itself is not putting out information that’s trying to infer that the entire game has changed. Nobody knows. All right. Uh, this Amazon executive says, Hey, maybe in five years we’re going to be in a completely different world and your own devices at home are ordering for you. I mean people are just throwing out random ideas that could be true.
Bradley Sutton:
But again, we’re talking like five years from now. So stop trying to change your habits because of what doomsday people out there say on LinkedIn and things. Wait until actual changes happen. Amazon gives sellers tons of data. We are going to know when there is a big shift in how people discover the products right now. Guys, we don’t see that yet. Next up, let’s go to for our strategy of the week. Here’s a very unique thing that you can only do with Helium 10 and I call it the zombie listing hunter.
Carrie Miller:
How to discover products that other Amazon sellers have given up on. We like to call this method the zombie listing hunter. Now that’s not an official term, but what we consider a zombie listing is a listing that is dead on Amazon.
So maybe the seller went out of business. Maybe the seller is out of stock. Maybe the seller just gave up on the product and stopped selling it.
Carrie Miller:
Now, why would this be interesting to you? Well, you might find product opportunity this way. Like maybe somebody was just crushing it and then for whatever reason they had to stop selling on Amazon and nobody picked up that demand because it was a pretty unique product, right? So this is how you can find that here in Helium 10 black box under products. There is a button that says find out of stock products and Helium 10 is the only tool that can do this. So for example, I’m looking here in the home and kitchen category.
Carrie Miller:
I’m saying, Hey, when this out of stock product was in stock for that year, whatever year it was in stock, it had at least, you know, 500 units of sales. I’m just throwing random numbers here. You guys can do whatever works for you. And then I say, Hey, when was this listing last active? It’s inactive right now. So when was it last active? I put here a range of February, 2025 to like March of 2026. And then I say, you know what? I’m looking for a new coffin, you know, kind of product for my spooky brand.
Carrie Miller:
I put in title keywords coffin and there are tons and tons of other filters I could use, but once I hit that, now I get a result and there’s 10 items that have come up here. So there’s something here that’s interesting, a coffin Zen garden. And as you can see, this product is out of stock, pretty interesting looking product. It’s well reviewed. When did it go out of stock? Well, I can look at the BSR history here. Look, it went out of stock like all the way back in August of 2025. Now, how was it selling when it was out of stock? Well, actually a thousand units.
Carrie Miller:
So they gave up on this product, right? Here’s another one. Look at this coffin makeup shelf. This product was doing a $30,000. All right. And now if you click on it, they have been out of stock. You see it’s completely out of stock. You would never be able to find this product on your own. And it’s been out of stock for, let’s just take a look. Like looks like over a year, this product has been selling, you know, it was selling hundreds and thousands of units even now completely out of stock for whatever reason. And actually because of Bradley finding this product, he actually did a launch of a coffin makeup shelf and he was able to go into historical Cerebro. Look at all of the products, old keywords.
Carrie Miller:
It was getting sales from back in the day and he launched a new coffin makeup shelf product that’s being launched right now and taking advantage of why this seller just giving up on this product. Um, now obviously you have to be careful because who knows the reason why some sellers give up. Maybe there was a patent issue.
Carrie Miller:
You should do your due diligence and make sure there’s no issues like that. But in this case, Bradley was able to use this tool to find a product that a seller gave up on, take advantage of that and all of the previous research and all this advertising data and be able to launch his own product without having to completely ideate something brand new, something that was, you know, proven to sell. So this zombie hunter or this out of stock listing finder guys only available on Helium 10. So use it to find some cool product opportunity.
Bradley Sutton:
Getting back to Amazon again from about amazon.com, something that might not affect a lot of you, but it’s kind of interesting. It says Amazon expands a locker network to more than 750 us college locations. So those lockers are kind of like where you can go and pick up Amazon packages. Like, you know, sometimes you can’t get stuff directly to your door like in college dorms, but they have these lockers near dorms, right? Where college students can just go and go to one of the lockers where, you know, the Amazon tells you where your product is and you just go there and pick it up. So this is interesting.
Bradley Sutton:
750, uh, college locker locations on 500 campuses. Okay. And then there’s this other program I didn’t even know about says high school education students, 18 to 24 years old, can sign up for this new program called prime for young adults and enjoy prime savings at 50% the cost. So I just mentioned this cause it’s interesting how Amazon is expanding to this. And so, Hey, are you an Amazon seller that is, you know, selling products that are good for dorms or for college students, things like that might want to look into, you know, doing some AMC advertising for audiences or some perhaps a brand tailored promotions or some kind of discount program or something that targets potentially college students, uh, or gets on their radar a little bit more because now they might be even more incentivized to order from you because of this new locker network that is around. I might have to do that for one of my coffin shelves. You know, like I can see college students, some Gothic college students, perhaps wanting a coffin shelf on their wall, who knows?
Bradley Sutton:
Or maybe one of my bat shaped, uh, bath mats for their dorm bathroom. We’ll see. But guys, just a little kind of like fun, uh, fact, Amazon is still finding new ways in order to get products to customers, certain aspects of customers, uh, faster and more efficiently. All right, guys, that’s it for the news this week. Don’t forget to tune in Saturday for a special 10 brand new strategies from Helium 10, uh, here on the AM/PM Podcast. And we’ll see you next Thursday on this show so that you can see what’s buzzing.
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Want to absolutely start crushing it on eCommerce and make more money? Follow these steps for helpful resources to get started:
- Get the Ultimate Resource Guide from Bradley Sutton, Carrie Miller, and Shivali Patel for tools and services that he uses every day to dominate on Amazon!
- New to Selling on Amazon? Freedom Ticket offers the best tips, tricks, and strategies for beginners just starting out! Sign up for Freedom Ticket.
- Trying to Find a New Product? Get the most powerful Amazon product research tool in Black Box, available only at Helium 10! Start researching with Black Box.
- Want to Verify Your Product Idea? Use Xray in our Chrome extension to check how lucrative your next product idea is with over a dozen metrics of data! Download the Helium 10 Chrome Extension.
- The Ultimate Software Tool Suite for Amazon Sellers! Get more Helium 10 tools that can help you optimize your listings and increase sales for a low price! Sign up today!
- Does Amazon Owe YOU Money? Find Out for FREE! If you have been selling for over a year on Amazon, you may be owed money for lost or damaged inventory and not even know it. Get a FREE refund report to see how much you’re owed!
- Check out our other Amazon FBA podcasts including the Serious Sellers Podcast.
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