How We Bruteforced a Brand From $0 to ±$500k/Month on TikTok Shop

Cover image

I see so many Meta-dependent brands struggle to make TikTok Shop work.

And I think the biggest reason is pretty simple:

They treat TikTok Shop like another paid media channel.

It’s not.

We took this brand from literally $0 on TikTok Shop to consistently floating around ±$500k/month this year.

But the TikTok Shop revenue itself isn’t even the most interesting part.

That volume is now driving another ±$300k–$500k/month in spillover revenue across Amazon + Shopify.

Then you add the amount of creator content TikTok Shop is generating for us, which we can repurpose across Meta, YouTube, AppLovin, etc…

And suddenly TikTok Shop becomes much more than a marketplace.

It becomes a growth engine for the entire business.

So I’m going to break down exactly how we approach it.

The #1 lever on TikTok Shop is content.

Not GMV Max.

Not some fancy affiliate outreach strategy.

Not some secret setting inside the Seller Center.

Content.

And I’m not talking about just “making more content.”

You need quality, consistent content at scale.

In my humble opinion, quality + quantity matter equally here.

You could have the best creator in the world, but if they make two videos for you every month, you’re probably not going to build a serious TikTok Shop business around them.

At the same time, you could have 2000 videos going live every month, but if the vast majority of them are complete shit, that doesn’t exactly help either.

You need both.

And the easiest way we’ve found to bruteforce that from the beginning is pretty simple:

Spend $$$ on creator retainers.

For this brand specifically, we started at around $20k/month purely in creator retainers.

As the channel grew, that number increased to roughly $40k-$50k/month.

And yes, I already know what some people are thinking:

Why would I pay creators upfront when I can just DM them and send free samples?

Because when you’re a nobody brand doing barely any GMV on TikTok Shop, good creators have basically zero reason to care about you.

You can DM hundreds of creators through Euka, ship samples everywhere and hope they decide to post.

Some will.

Most won’t.

And even the ones that do might post once, make something mediocre and disappear.

That isn’t predictable.

If you want predictable content output, you need to pay for predictable content output.

But there’s another side to this.

Don’t read this and start throwing retainers at every creator with followers.

That’s probably one of the easiest ways to light money on fire.

Especially when we were starting out, we generally wanted L3–L8 creators with actual GMV behind them.

Basically, creators who had already proven they could actually move units on tiktok shop.

Then from there, it came down to product-creator fit.

Does this person actually make sense for your product?

Does their audience make sense?

Does their content naturally fit the way your product needs to be sold?

Can you imagine them making ten different angles around the product without everything feeling forced?

Most importantly:

Do you actually have conviction that this creator could perform for your brand?

GMV history tells me you know how to sell.

Product-creator fit tells me there’s a chance you know how to sell my product.

You need both.

Once you have creators on lock and posting consistently, in my opinion, you’ve done around 90% of the job.

Seriously.

If I had to choose one KPI I care about most when looking at TikTok Shop, it’s probably:

How much good content are we consistently putting into the ecosystem?

Everything else becomes much easier when that number is moving in the right direction.

Which brings us to the other 10%.

GMV Max.

For the Meta ads guys, GMV Max is basically the paid media layer of TikTok Shop.

Except it’s considerably simpler than Meta.

If you understand Meta ads, GMV Max should take you like 20 minutes to figure out lol.

But there is one thing we do very aggressively during launch:

We make our target ROAS as low as we can stomach.

For this brand, we launched at roughly a 1.5x tROAS.

We were completely willing to lose a good amount of money initially.

In fact, we expected to.

Because during month one, I’m not sitting there thinking:

How do I maximize contribution margin from every single dollar TikTok spends?

I’m thinking:

How do I give TikTok the most room possible to figure this product out?

A lower tROAS gives TikTok more room to spend.

More spend means more creator content gets tested.

More angles get tested.

More audiences get explored.

More purchasing pockets get found.

And ultimately, you’re giving the algorithm a better chance of finding something that actually pops.

This is where I see a lot of brands fuck themselves.

They launch TikTok Shop.

They spend for a week or two.

ROAS doesn’t look incredible.

They panic.

They jack their tROAS up because they want immediate profitability.

Spend dies.

Nothing gets enough distribution.

Nothing gets enough data.

Nothing gets enough momentum.

Then three weeks later they say:

TikTok Shop didn’t work for our brand.

Maybe.

Or maybe you killed the experiment before TikTok even had enough information to figure out what worked.

Here’s what the actual progression looked like for us.

Month 1:

We spent $44k on GMV Max.

Actual ROAS was around 1.4x.

Not exactly a number I’d screenshot and flex on Twitter.

But again…

We didn’t care.

The objective was getting the channel moving.

Then during month two, one video started picking up.

Not “it had one good day.”

It was showing real traction.

As soon as we saw that, we slowly started increasing the tROAS.

Month 2:

We ended up spending around $119k at a 2.86x ROAS.

Now things suddenly start looking a little prettier.

But month three is where the whole thing really started compounding.

By then, our retainer creators were posting consistently, with most of them already finishing the set deliverables.

We were continuously cutting creators who weren’t performing and replacing them with new ones.

The viral content from month one and two had started creating obvious momentum around the product.

And then something important happened:

Other creators started coming to us.

Top affiliates started requesting samples.

Why?

Because now there was something worth participating in.

They could see the product moving.

They could see other creators generating GMV.

They could see videos taking off.

They could see commissions being made.

They wanted to ride the wave too.

Month 3:

We ended up spending roughly ±$244k through GMV Max at around a 2.81x ROAS.

And this is why I think the whole “just DM creators and send free samples” discussion needs some context.

When you’re a nothing brand on TikTok Shop with $0 GMV and zero momentum…

DMing random creators and offering them a sample isn’t that powerful.

There’s very little incentive.

They don’t know whether your product sells.

They don’t know whether the content will convert.

They don’t know whether they’re going to make any money.

But once you have momentum?

It becomes a completely different game.

Now creators are actively looking at your product.

Now they see other affiliates making money.

Now your sample approval means something.

Now your outbound gets more responses.

Now people actually want to work with you.

That’s when open collab becomes extremely powerful.

That’s when Euka outreach becomes extremely powerful.

That’s when I’d start approving samples very aggressively.

50–100 samples/day while scaling isn’t crazy at all.

Because now the loop becomes:

More creators → more content → more chances of finding winners → more GMV → more creators wanting in.

And around and around you go.

Today, the TikTok Shop side of this business is floating around ±$500k/month.

Last month, we ended around a 3.34x ROAS on GMV Max spend.

And if I had to simplify the entire machine down into three major levers, it’s basically:

Creator retainers.

GMV Max.

Open collab + sample approvals.

Obviously there are 100 smaller things underneath those three.

But those are the things actually moving the needle.

If I was launching another brand from $0 tomorrow, the playbook would be pretty straightforward.

Spend meaningful money on creator retainers immediately.

Find creators who have actual GMV history and make sense for the product.

Set GMV Max tROAS low enough that TikTok actually has room to work.

Give creators an open collab commission that is decent.

20–25% is a sweet spot in my opinion.

Once momentum starts, approve samples aggressively.

Cut bad retainer creators.

Replace them with new ones.

Keep pumping content into the ecosystem.

Because ultimately - the whole game is:

Get as much quality content into the GMV Max ecosystem as possible, then give TikTok enough freedom to figure out which creatives sell.

But there’s something very important brands need to understand before doing any of this.

TikTok Shop is usually not a high-margin channel.

@drewfallon12 not too long ago said the average EBITDA margin of brands on his platform is around -30%.

For this brand specifically, we’re sitting at roughly 6% net margin after allocating basically everything.

Because think about what you’re stacking in order to seriously compete on TikTok Shop:

Meaningful discounts + promotions.

20–25% creator commissions.

Tens of thousands of dollars in creator retainers.

GMV Max spend.

Platform fees.

Fulfillment / FBT.

COGS.

And everything else that comes with actually operating the business.

Once you start layering all of that together…

Margins get skinny very quickly.

So if you’re entering TikTok Shop expecting the same kind of first-order contribution margin you might be used to seeing elsewhere, you could easily conclude that the entire thing isn’t worth doing.

But I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.

Because you can’t look at TikTok Shop’s P&L in isolation.

This is where economics start getting really interesting.

If you also sell through Amazon, Shopify, retail or some combination of them, the spillover from TikTok Shop can be incredible.

Think about the consumer journey.

Someone sees one TikTok about your product.

Then another.

Maybe they see four different creators talking about it over two weeks.

Now they’re interested.

But instead of checking out through TikTok Shop…

They open Amazon.

Why?

Because Amazon is still Amazon.

They trust it.

Their card is already saved.

They have Prime.

They want to read reviews.

It’s the default buying behavior for a massive pool of consumers.

So that TikTok creator generated the demand…

But Amazon gets attributed the sale.

For this particular brand, we estimate the TikTok Shop ecosystem is generating roughly another ±$300k–$500k/month across Amazon + Shopify.

Now the math starts looking very different.

Because suddenly the question isn’t:

How much profit am I generating directly from TikTok Shop?

The better question becomes:

How much profitable demand is TikTok Shop creating for my entire brand?

Those are two very different things.

If TikTok Shop itself is roughly break-even, slightly profitable or even somewhat negative…

But it’s throwing hundreds of thousands of additional dollars into Amazon, Shopify and eventually retail…

That can still be a great trade.

And this gets even more interesting if you know your way around Meta ads.

Because TikTok Shop isn’t only generating revenue.

It’s generating creatives.

A fucking lot of it.

@couuor, CMO of Ridge, has talked about how a major part of the value they get from TikTok Shop isn’t necessarily the GMV directly coming through Shop.

It’s the creative engine.

Think about it. You have hundreds of creators making content around your product.

Different hooks.

Different angles.

Different demographics.

Different objections.

Different visual formats.

Different ways of explaining the same benefit.

And unlike paying some random UGC creator upfront, getting five videos delivered and then hoping one works on Meta…

TikTok Shop is already testing this content against real purchasing behavior.

You know who actually moved GMV.

You know which videos sold.

You know which hooks resonated.

You know which creator styles worked.

Then you take those winners and repurpose them onto Meta, YouTube, AppLovin and wherever else you’re buying traffic.

Ridge was putting roughly ±15% of its Meta spend behind creatives that originated from TikTok Shop.

Now, 15% might not sound that insane by itself.

But Ridge is a huge brand.

When you’re doing roughly eight figures a month and deploying serious money into paid acquisition…

15% of total Meta spend is a shit ton of creative volume.

And that’s the bigger point I’m trying to make.

If you already know your way around Meta, TikTok Shop can become one of the best creative sourcing and testing engines in your entire business.

You’re no longer just buying GMV.

You’re building a pipeline of proven creator-led ads.

TikTok Shop generates the creators.

The creators generate the content.

The content generates GMV.

The GMV helps identify what resonates.

You repurpose the winning creative onto Meta.

Meta scales Shopify.

TikTok + Meta generate more branded demand.

Amazon captures more of that demand.

Retail benefits from increased awareness.

And as the brand gets bigger…

Even more creators want to work with you on TikTok Shop.

Everything starts feeding everything else.

That is essentially the entire play.

Get TikTok Shop GMV pumping.

Use that momentum to generate a ridiculous amount of creator content.

Find the winning creative.

Repurpose it across the rest of your paid channels.

Use those paid channels to scale Shopify.

Let Amazon capture the additional branded demand.

Build more awareness for retail.

Then use the larger brand to attract even more creators back into the TikTok Shop ecosystem.

It becomes one giant loop.

And imo, that’s why brands that look at TikTok Shop purely as:

“another marketplace where we sell some units”

are massively underestimating the channel.

TikTok Shop can simultaneously become your:

Sales channel.

Affiliate channel.

Creator acquisition engine.

UGC sourcing engine.

Creative testing engine.

Top-of-funnel awareness engine.

And eventually…

A channel that makes every other part of your business perform better.

That’s the opportunity.

Anyway.

If you’re a brand that wants to get into TikTok Shop…

Or you’re already doing decent GMV and want to scale much harder…

Or you want L3–L8 creators running content for your Shop…

That’s basically what we do.

We currently have 50+ top 1% creators in our network who collectively drove $10M+ in GMV over the last 30 days.

Shoot me a DM and we can see if we’re a good fit or nah.

That’s it for today.

GOOD LUCK & HAPPY SCALING 🫡