The TikTok Shop Playbook Behind Grüns, Ridge, and HexClad Ft Alex Rudolph & Tyler Brechbiel

Full conversation and audience Q&A

Hey everyone, I'm Alex, co-founder of Teabord Partners, and today we're gonna be talking about how to build the best in-class TikTok shop affiliate program and what actually moves the needle on TikTok shop. Like I said, I'm Alex, co-founder. We're a full-service TikTok shop agency working with some of the biggest brands in the space.

And also some recent news, we got acquired by Common Thread Collective actually today. this is in honor of our golf event with Taylor Holiday that we actually won. so yeah, here's our AI graphic

Now getting into it, like I said, we work with brands like VitaCoco, Gruns, Ridge, David Protein, Krave Wellness, Hexclad, and many other brands. We do full service for these brands on TikTok Shop. I'm probably on fifteen to twenty calls every single week with new brands, and I hear these five things way too often about what a poor TikTok Shop program looks like.

Number one, sample volume is way too low. Number two, there's a very bad ratio between how many samples you're getting shipped and then how many creators are actually making videos. Number three, there's no creator community or loyalty. Number four, there's no content flywheel or spillover. And number five, bottom-of-funnel content is the only content that's working in GMV Max.

These are the five things that I see way too often that we help brands all the time with. Number one, our take on TikTok Shop. We tell brands when we get on calls, outreach is a factor, but it's not what's most important. GMV Max is super important, but it's mostly set and forget. What really matters and what really moves the needle on TikTok Shop is how you manage creators at a personal level at scale and how you set them up for success.

We spend most of our time here. If you're a brand owner today, this is what you should be focusing on, is how you manage your creators because everything on TikTok Shop is affiliate-driven. For us, we have Discord communities for all our brands. What we do is we staff these Discord communities by hiring ex-TikTok Shop affiliates.

We coach them, and then these affiliates are inside these Discords. They know content better than anybody. They know content better than myself. They know content better than my partner, Tyler. They're the ones who have done hundreds of thousands of dollars o-- in GMV on TikTok. So we hire these content coaches, we call them, and then we staff our Discords with these affiliates.

They lead the one-on-one calls, daily hooks, video inspo. They give feedback in every single creator's video inside these Discords, very similar to the comfort clothing playbook with Hudson. This is super, super important, having these content coaches inside the Discord, giving these creators everything they need to make tons of money.

So for all our brands, like I said, we have these Discord communities. We're trying to funnel these creators inside the Discord, and in there, they're being coached and trained and given everything possible for them to make tons of money and tons of videos. So take-taking a step back, outreach to creators.

This is step one. We do this in four different ways. This is what I would recommend. We use UK AI. It sends five thousand invites a day. Those invites are pushing creators to request a sample. We also do manual DMs off the brand page. So log on to your brand page, send DMs to the top creators. We have listed them.

You could find them in Calo data. I highly recommend doing that. It cuts through the noise. We also recommend doing email campaigns to find creators. And then for us, we have an SMS text bots with over three thousand phone numbers. Essentially, all our top brands, we take their top creators' phone numbers, and we just send them a text message.

We push these four forms of outreach to sample requests. So when you're doing outreach, then you go through the sample request, and oftentimes we say, "Hey, we're going to set a GMV floor." So we're only accepting samples of creators that do above, let's say, three k GMV. They have to have an eighty percent post rate or higher, and the content has to be top of funnel or middle of funnel.

We don't want any bottom of funnel. We don't want any of that in GMV Max. It just doesn't work. After the outreach, now our work starts. This is what we really focus on as an agency. And if you're a brand owner, this is what I would focus on. These creators, when you send product to them, they're only required to make one video back.

That's all they're required to make. But one video is not enough. We want to get at least three videos back per every sample we send to these creators. So for most of our brands, we're shipping out five hundred samples per month. Our goal, bare minimum, is to get at least fifteen hundred videos back as an-- as, for a brand.

So if you're sending a thousand samples-- And I talked to a brand owner the other day, he's like, "Hey, we're shipping out a thousand samples. We're only getting eight hundred videos back." That's terrible. We want to be getting at least three thousand videos back. All these videos then go into GMV Max, and that's how you scale on TikTok Shop.

So to make everything more profitable, our goal is to get as many videos back per sample we send to each creator. And like I said, all these videos then go into GMV Max. And on TikTok Shop, we know on the back end that video volume and GMV have a direct correlation. So the more videos you're getting into the algorithm, the more videos that are going into GMV Max.

That's how you scale on TikTok Shop. Any brand you look at that's doing significant revenue, they're getting thousands of videos back every single month, and those are all going into GMV Max. And how do we get these-- you know, how do we get this three to one ratio? Well, all the outreach we're doing, we're pushing the sample requests, then we're accepting the creators we like.

We get them inside the Discord, and then we're coaching these affiliates with the content coaches I was talking about earlier. They're the ones teaching them how to make a good hook, how to make a good angle, hopping on one-on-one calls with them. 'Cause their first video, it might suck, it may not convert, but when these coaches are teaching them how to make better content, eventually they'll start getting sales.

They'll post more videos, and that's how we're able to achieve this three to one ratio. Number two, how to manage affiliates at scale. My partner, Tyler, he's going to walk in depth what our creative briefs look like, what our Discord communities look like. And the third thing, what we're seeing work super well, is this content on meta that we're getting for a ton of our brands

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Link in the show description. Now back to your replay. Hello, everyone. I'm Tyler, the other co-founder of TBar Partners. So I'm really excited to be here. We have a lot to get through. So first thing, as Alex was saying, the outreach is pretty automated on TikTok Shop. And so we put a lot of focus, and a lot of brands should put a lot of focus into how to manage affiliates at scale.

And so we're gonna get into what that actually means here. and so you can see sample shipped. we have multiple different touch points in the CRM. And so the first touch point is sample shipped. We send them a creative brief, sample delivered, we send them the Discord community, and then content posted.

We ask for the spark code and then another touch point for the Discord. So you'll see the Discord. we have multiple touch points for that. It's gonna be a very big part of the strategy is getting creators into this centralized communication place, which is super, super important. so creative brief, like I said, before, it's the first touch point.

It's when the sample gets shipped. this is gonna be really important to give creators everything they need about the brand, about the products, the ingredients, video inspo, whatever that is, it's all gonna be inside this creative brief. so you can see here, this is one we built for Gruns, one of our clients that we've worked with.

so you can see here on the left side, we have just product highlights, target audience, and then another link to the community here. so this is the first touch point to join the community. and then we also have why should someone join our community? So everyone on TikTok Shop has their own community, but why should someone join yours?

And the reason for that is we have more creative resources. So what that means is we have coaching inside the community. we run competitions. They can make more money. Everyone wants to make money, so, that's great for them. And then also we can offer retainers to these creators. so multiple different reasons for them to join.

And you can't see here, but that's a link. So you can click on the link, and it'll redirect you to the community. and then we like to leave little snippets of, "Hey, we're looking for more than one video. Our top TikTok Shop creators are posting more than one video," just 'cause we know on the back end there's a direct correlation between video volume and GMV.

And so we need to be incentivizing and telling creators, "Hey, we're looking for more than one video." Next one. So this is gonna be different for every single brand. Hard goods is gonna be different. It's not gonna be about ingredients and, and what the ingredients do. So for Gruns, obviously they're a gummy supplement.

They have multiple different angles, so just talking about the ingredients here. but let's say for like the Hexclad, theirs is gonna be more about like how their pans have better value, in, in, in their product details. and then this slide is, is really, really important. There's gonna be about four slides that are about the same here.

they all do have the same purpose, and so it's just a bunch of video inspo 'cause everything on TikTok Shop is very, very visual. and so we wanna show visual examples to these creators, not just written hooks, written angles. And that's still gonna be a part of the brief, but it's not gonna be the main focus.

so you can see here, I wish we could click the videos, but you can't on this 'cause it's a screenshot. But the second video here is a skit style doctor video that one of our creators made that just absolutely blew up for Gruns. the third one is the GLP-1 angle about bloating, having low energy on GLP-1.

The fourth one, the lady drops a pill in each cup for each problem and solution. and so that is an angle that went viral not too long ago for a lot of brands on TikTok Shop that we've really leaned into. And then here's some more for like Benefiber, Metamucil, all their competitors that have worked either on TikTok or Meta.

and then just more here, even some more. and then here's the written notes. So this is not as important, but we wanna provide as much inspiration as possible to these creators to give them everything they need. And the goal of the creative brief is make it as frictionless as possible for these creators to post quantity of videos but also high quality videos.

So you can see even more, more angles here. and then do's and don'ts. So this is more important for like supplements or regulated spaces, but other brands really don't need this. You can customize this slide however you'd like, but do's and don'ts, especially with like GLP-1 fat loss, you gotta be careful what you say.

So I wanna make sure we're very clear about that to creators And then last slide, just summarizing everything. and so the first touch point there, just incentivizing creators, to continue posting video volume, and our best creators are posting video volume, a lot of volume from each creator. and then another link to the community, and then a place to submit your spark codes.

and then that is the end of the creative brief. And so just to kind of summarize what the creative brief is for, once again, to hammer down on this, is to make it as frictionless as possible for creators to post quantity videos and also quality videos at the same time and make it really, really easy for them to do that.

And that creative brief should be refreshed at least every single month with new angles, what's working on TikTok, what's working in meta-the meta ad account. And for a lot of brands, for the video inspo, if you're not already on TikTok Shop and you don't have TikTok videos to add into that for inspo, pull it from your meta ad library or from other competitors on TikTok, to build that out.

and then the next touch point is the Discord community. So Discord community is the centralized communication place where we try to get every single affiliate. We're managing them inside that with coaching, resourcing them, with different scripts, angles, and then build that relationship. So very, very similar to what you guys might be familiar with is the Comfort Clothing Playbook, that's talked about a lot and how you build this cult-like community of creators around your brand and really get them bought into what you're doing.

so we build a community for Ridge, we build this for all of our brands. so this is kind of what it looks like here. So when a creator joins, they see the welcome channel, and the welcome channel makes it very, very seamless for them to know how to navigate the entire server. So ways to earn money, announcements, campaigns, and so on, make it really easy.

And then you can see, Sean Frank's head is peeking out there. he made a welcome video for all the affiliates, getting them excited, t-telling them how they can make a ton of money with Ridge and how he-he's grateful for them to be a part of the brand. ways to earn money, so this is also pretty straightforward.

Be straightforward, how can a creator make money in our program? So for this example, it's Tribe, TikTok Shop, and they also offer Amazon Commission, which is a very small part of it, but we're testing it. Announcement, so this is anything important going on with the brand. so this is gonna be, you know, updated commissions.

We just started offering Tribe, which we've been doing for a lot of our brands. and then also any competitions we have going on Campaign. So this is something we do with a lot of our brands. There's a couple different names for it, so you might have heard like blitz competition or, blitz launch or just contest or competition.

But really the goal of this is to incentivize volume. So you can see here, first place is three thousand dollars cash for number of posts. Second place, two thousand dollars cash for number of posts, and then third place and so on. And then we also sen-incentivize the number one GMV creator. But the entire goal is to incentivize volume because we know creators can-- it's pretty much an effort-based competition.

We know creators can sit down and post, you know, thirty videos a day, a-and just hammer those out. And then we know on the back end that TikTok Shop-- on TikTok Shop, video volume and GMV have a direct correlation. and so a lot of creators are a little weary about, joining these c-competitions that are GMV-focused because they're not making GMV with your brand yet, or if they are, it's not much.

and so this incentivizes new creators to join the program or creators that maybe fell off to, to reengage with your brand. and a part of this entire strategy here is you can't really see it, but it's right under the videos must be requirements thing. There's a QR code that people can scan, all these creators can scan, and we'll get usage rights to all their videos in perpetuity.

and so on a later slide, I'll show you Ridge got thousands of videos in perpet-- usage rights in perpetuity that they've been using on Meta, and it's been crushing, which is a big part of the value out of TikTok Shop is getting all this content and then using it on Meta. Next one, community chat. so also just all the creators can talk to each other.

Pretty straightforward, pretty easy. wins channel. The goal of this is to create FOMO. We want creators to see other creators making money. and so all the creators can post any time they get sales or if they win any money or anything interesting going on. and then we have a VIP chat. So we've been-- this is kinda different for every brand, but we've seen a, a lot of success with having a VIP group in, of some sense, and, and the rewards kind of change for every single brand.

But for example, Ridge, they have tribe commission just for their VIP creators. And so those VIPs can make a, a meta ad commission which other creators can't. and then for other brands, all VIPs get a retainer, or for other brands, all VIPs get a Boosty commission on TikTok Shop. It changes for every brand.

But it's very important to incentivize your top creators because your top ten creators are gonna drive ninety percent of your revenue, but it takes the amount of volume of sending hundreds of samples, getting thousands of posts to find those top ten creators And then the brief, which I already showed you guys, so I won't show another.

and then inspo. So we have top TikTok shop creators in all of our Discords. and we see that creators respond the best to other creators making money with the brand to actually get actionable steps about coaching, following inspo, feedback on their videos. And so we like to have top TikTok shop creators giving weekly inspo of what's working, the angles, the hooks, giving feedback on their videos.

so here we have another TikTok creator giving feedback on all their videos. We've seen a ton of success with this in coaching up these L1 and L2 creators to become your top creators because a lot of them are still really good at content. They just haven't really generated a ton of GMV yet because this might be a little bit thing-- a li- a little bit of something off in their video.

So it could be like pacing, or it could be lighting, whatever that is. and so we've seen a ton of success with coaching these creators up to be your top creators. And a lot of these creators would have to pay hundreds of dollars a month to get this type of coaching. And so when we're pouring into them, giving all this free resource to them, they're really bought into our brand and really bought into what we're building, and they'll always be your most cult-like following a part of your community And then weekly calls.

So we have daily calls for Ridge. for most of our brands, we do weekly calls and then work our way up to daily calls. So on Tuesday, there's a community call about product launches, campaigns, the creator program. Wednesday, is a content workshop with one of our TikTok Shop content coaches. Thursday is another one.

Friday's with only the VIPs, and so that one's separate from everyone else. Wanna continue to separate those VIPs, get them really exclusive, excited, incentivize them well. And the entire point of the creative brief in the Discord community is for volume and retention, because a lot of TikTok Shops are sending hundreds of samples, but creators are falling off after one video.

And so if you're not retaining creators well for three-plus videos each, it's gonna be really hard to find profitability on TikTok Shop, but also scale to the next level on TikTok Shop. and so the entire goal of the creative brief is make it as frictionless as possible for creators to post. And in the community, it's help creators get better and better at content, so they're making money with your brand, because inherently, every creator goes where they're gonna make the most money.

And then number three, reframing how you think about TikTok Shop. I think TikTok Shop is a, a super hot platform right now, but a lot of brands don't understand what goes into TikTok Shop, what it means, what the numbers behind all these shops look like. and so TikTok Shop as a sales channel is, is relatively small compared to Amazon and, and your Shopify, and, and retail as well.

And so if you're doing 100K a month on TikTok Shop, that's actually a pretty successful TikTok Shop. But I would assume most brands doing around 100K a month, even 50K a month, and we've seen brands even at 20K a month, be able to extract a lot of value out of TikTok Shop at that level. And so I would assume most brands here are probably not extracting the maximized amount of value from their TikTok Shop.

And so going back to the competitions and just usage rates in general, so a big part of our strategy on TikTok Shop is getting content for Meta and, and scaling that side up because almost every brand, their lifeblood of their business is Meta. And so we need to get a ton of content for Meta because Meta is a very hungry beast, and so we need a lot of high-performing content.

and so you can see here the competition, the QR code, which I already went over. When they scan the QR code, we get usage rights in perpetuity to all their content. And so for Ridge, we got a couple thousand pieces and, and of content use with perpetuity, of usage rights. And then we also do retainers.

so that's a flat fee to acquire the high GMV creators and get the usage rights for them. And I would say like the average rate is about $50 a video for 30 videos, which is a lot lower than UGC. So you can get a lot cheaper rates and a lot better content 'cause it actually performs in the ad account and then this is a case study for Ridge, he posted on X.

so they've been using our TikTok shop content on Meta. Right now-- this, this was in the beginning of July. We were taking fifteen percent of their spend, over the last thirty days. And I would say right now it's probably closer to twenty-five percent. but they're seeing fifteen percent lower CPMs, two times the click-through rate by this TikTok shop content.

And I, I truly think it's because TikTok shop content is a lot more raw and organic compared to polished UGC. And so a lot of buyers have their guard up when they're looking at this content, and it's not performing as well as it used to. And so we're, we're seeing a lot of-- a, a big shift into TikTok shop content being a big part of a lot of brands' ad account.

And so I encourage every brand here to start testing TikTok shop content on Meta. And if you're not doing that, you're losing out on a lot of value. we have brands that are stuck at like five to ten K a month on TikTok shop, in GMV, but we're the number one ad in their ad account. So they're willing to continue through the storm and the unprofitability of TikTok shop because it is actually profitable in the end.

They're seeing a ton of value from it. And then to talk about the halo effect. So everyone talks about the halo effect on TikTok shop, but really no-nobody knows what that is, and everyone's just guessing. and so we have a couple different case studies here about the halo effect. and so this is for a, a pretty heavy Amazon brand, and they're also in Costco and a couple other retailers.

and so they're a food company. they were doing about eighty K a month on TikTok shop, so nothing too crazy, but they were still seeing some success on TikTok shop. And for every a million views, they saw fourteen K in spillover. and they were doing eighty K a month on TikTok shop, and so they got four million views that month, that we did eighty K.

So they saw like a sixty K spillover on eighty K sales. and that's just for Amazon. That's not even including, the halo effect to retail, which they just launched in Costco. And they said they were selling off the shelves to Costco, at which they could only relate that back to one thing that changed during that entire time.

And then Ridge did an incrementality test through Haas, and they saw a fifty percent spillover to Amazon. so they saw a pretty big spillover. So two purchases on TikTok equaled one on Amazon, which is pretty crazy. and then DTC saw a forty percent spillover, which is a lot bigger than we usually see.

But I would say Ridge is pretty dialed in on their website, so that's why they saw such a big spillover there And then most of our brands and, and all the brands we look at on TikTok Shop, most of them are running at break even, negative, or a single-digit profit margin. Most brands are not running above a single-digit profit margin on TikTok Shop.

But the reason they're doing that is for the content for meta, which ma- actually makes the platform super profitable, and then the halo effect as well, which even adds more value. And so if you're a CFO or anyone on the marketing team looking at TikTok Shop, you cannot look at TikTok Shop just as its own P&L.

You actually have to look at it as like a marketing channel. How does it affect our entire business? and so what you have to account for is the halo effect and the meta ad content, which is in s- a super important part of our entire strategy, and should be a, an important part of every brand strategy on TikTok Shop.

And then to kind of wrap everything up here, three things to go away, with is stop putting so much time into the outreach. It's gonna move the needle maybe a couple percentage points, but you're-- it's pretty much wasted effort. And you need to be taking that time into managing creators well by giving them everything they need to succeed.

So that goes into getting them in the community, getting the brief to them, giving them coaching, giving them daily inspo, weekly hooks, weekly angles, whatever that is, incentivizing them, to perform. and really treating your creators well and building a r- a true relationship with them. And then number three, maximize the value of TikTok Shop by accounting for the halo effect and the value of the meta content pipeline, which like I said, is gonna be extremely important when you look at the financials and you look at its own P&L.

It's not gonna be pretty, but if you account for the halo effect and you account for the meta content, it actually is one of the most profitable channels and one of the most valuable channels that all of our brands have. All right. That's it. T-shirt boys. So I think we have a Q&A now. Thank you very much, guys.

Round of applause. Bring, bring the, bring the big guy out here. All right. Where's the big guy?

So I've-- I obviously was, like, trying to build a TikTok shop situation. Let's go into slide two. Okay. I've been trying to build the TikTok top, and I'm like, "Am I going on Yuka? Am I going on Reacher? Am I going on any of these platforms?" And I'm just sitting here going like, "Okay, people say only work with the GMV that has generated this, and the response rate has been, like, this high."

Like, is there, like, some minimum rubric of I only really do wanna do outreach for, let's say Someone that has a high enough response rate. Like, is there some rule of thumb decision-making you guys do for who you actually reach out to before you start doing seeding? Yeah. So all of our outreach is mass outreach.

So we re- outreach to everyone. We cast a wide net. and then from there in the sample request, that's where we narrow down based on obviously the brand's goals, the interest we're getting from creators. 'Cause you really don't know until you send those invites what creators you're gonna get back. and so it's kind of a toss-up.

We've had brands over a weekend get 18,000 sample requests. We've had brands only get 10 sample requests. and so it really depends there on the creator interest. so yeah, I would say it, I would say it's dependent on every brand. Alex, I don't know if you have anything else to add there. To be honest, I couldn't even hear the question.

Yeah, you're all good. I'll speak up. I'll say it with my chest. let's talk about the first one. Can we get the slideshow? Of course, we can get the slideshow. What is a criteria, budget required for brands to actually do some of this stuff? Any, any agency, not just specific here. I would say most of our brands happen to be, like, the eight-figure, nine-figure brands just 'cause TikTok Shop is super expensive, and it's kinda pay to play, but it is by far the most rewarding channel.

So naturally, just bigger brands came to us. I would say, like, in terms of GMV Max... So in terms of cost, there's GMV Max cost and there's sampling cost. What we tell our brands, "Hey, on GMV Max our... let's set a target ROI, so it's two or three or two five. If we're hitting that target ROI, are we good scaling infinitely?"

So we kinda come up with that number, and we have a, essentially a profit calculator that we could, you know, see what your break even is. So GMV Max ad spend and then sampling costs, most of our brands are sending 500 samples minimum. So whatever your COGS are, obviously times that by 500. It gets expensive, and then obviously there's commissions to creators.

So naturally, most of our brands are eight, nine-figure brands. But we have some seven-figure brands that we have really good case studies for. It's just they have to be really willing to invest in the platform, and most seven-figure brands just can't go to negative for three months in the beginning. I feel you on this.

Where do you find the content creator coaches? This is something I've debated is, do I want an, an agency to manage this shit, or do I want my own person in charge of brand, in charge of voice, in charge of who they're actually, like, being loyal to from the creator community? That's my biggest fear of, like, wanting to outsource that.

Yeah. I would say a lot of our content coaches have come just from our top-performing creators on the brand. So, like, you could probably message your top three creators right now, and one of them would say they would do coaching, especially if, if you incentivize them. And so we've heard brands all over the place, like Haas, they give a percentage to those creators for coaching, those creators up.

And so they're highly incentivized for other creators to perform and invite other creators to the program. so every brand has a different kind of way of going about it. But as long as you incentivize those creators to invite more creators, and coach them up, the, - You can f- definitely find some people.

Yeah? Cool. If a brand... How, how do you get to the brief to the affiliate and telling them that the directions, and then tell them to join the Discord? I don't think TikTok lets us do that. Is that true? So in Yuka, we set up a CRM. So when the sample gets shipped, that's when we send them an automated message with the creative brief.

So we send a message, and the creative brief is in there. When the sample gets delivered, that's when we send them the Discord link. So Yuka has a CRM feature that we could set up different agents, so sample shipped, sample delivered, content pending. At those different stages in the affiliate journey, that's when we hit those affiliates with those custom messages.

That's well done. Okay. How do you handle niche audiences, blue collar or how do you vet them from a brand or demographic standpoint? Yeah. I would say, like, you could do niche collabs on TikTok Shop. So we could pull, like, let's say it's a, I don't know, like a, a supplement only for elderly people or something.

so we could just focus and, and really segment just for that outreach. but I would honestly kind of push back on that and I would say go broad because we've seen across TikTok Shop is an audience that you might not think will do well actually is your best performing, angles. And so a good example of this is, like, the number one sellers in women's probiotics right now on TikTok Shop are men.

And so no one would think, would think that or would send a sample to men, but it actually was the top performing, and it's made the brands millions of dollars, from that. So I would say go broad, and you could be r- really surprised at some new angles that you can push. Got you. Do you ever do refundable samples where creators buy the product, then get discounted after a few sales?

Yeah. It's not gonna move the needle that much, I would say. Yeah, we do it very oft- very, not very often. Why would someone do this? Essentially, if you just don't wanna send out f- free samples. You want somebody to, you know, make a sale and then refund them for the sample. Like, we'll have it on, but, like, it's, like, a very small percentage of, of that will come from it.

Got you. Is the ability to scale purely on organic content dead? Yeah. I said this earlier on, on a show. Like, organic on TikTok Shop's dead. TikTok wants to make money, so that's why they came out with GMB Max. Every single video runs through GMB Max and, like, you literally can't do any significant revenue without it.

There was a brand, Portland Leather Goods, they were doing, like, a million dollars a month. They turned off GMB Max, and their sales literally went to zero. So TikTok Shop's making it pay to play. I would say, like, 95% of your revenue will come from GMB Max. so yeah. Ooh, these are c- these are f- these questions are flying in.

This is sick. Have you ever seen a brand launch on TikTok, no other acquisition channel, day one of the brand is just straight TikTok Shop? we actually had a brand not too long ago that we did that for, and it actually did really, really well. I would ad- advise highly against it 'cause someone's gonna capture that demand you're creating on Amazon, or in retail or whatever that is.

So I, I would say if you're a mature brand, you should launch on TikTok Shop. But if you're not a mature brand, I would maybe start to do content on your own page on TikTok, not really push affiliates 'cause affiliate costs add up pretty fast. I feel that. Thank you. should I make all my products available to creators, just select ones?

How do I manage inventory expectations and model demand? This is, this is something that I'm personally dealing with is like, do I put all my products here? Am I gonna start with a hero? Do I go the cheapest route? So we recommend having all your products available, but in the beginning only sampling your hero product, right?

But oftentimes, like affiliates will tell you what your hero product is. So for Ridge, they're a wallet business, but on TikTok Shop, that's not their hero product. Tracker cards is. So we had the tracker cards up, and we just started seeing affiliates request for the tracker cards. So we were like, "All right, let's start sampling this," and then that turned out to be their hero product.

But like in the beginning when we launch a brand and we wanna push the hero product on DTC, that's the one we wanna push. But like affiliates will tell you what is actually gonna work. It's kind of crazy how it happens. I feel you. Is the strategy still worth it at two hundred samples a month? Because everyone's always saying, "Bro, you gotta hit five thousand.

You gotta up this. You gotta keep going." What if we don't wanna do that? 'Cause again, this is also why you don't go to TikTok Shop unless you have inventory or a little bit of momentum. Is this fair to say? I would say you're gonna have to go all in on TikTok Shop if you want to actual-- like to see results.

But if you wanna send two hundred samples and just go the route of getting content from Meta, I think it could work. You just probably won't see a ton of GMV on TikTok Shop itself and actually scale that setup 'cause you need to get to a thousand videos a month as fast as possible. That's kind of like the number we see where brands kind of see that initial success and really scale up the GMV is around a thousand videos a month.

Appreciate that. Last one. Do you guys use all TikTok videos on Meta and test or just the viral videos? So for some of our brands, like they'll get s- thousands of videos. I'll give an example. In July, Ridge had seven thousand videos they had the full usage rights to use. Obviously, they're not gonna test all seven thousand videos, so we just filtered by their top a hundred videos.

We gave it to their paid team, and they just took the top a hundred videos. So we don't test all of them, but normally, if a video is going viral on TikTok Shop, it's gonna work on Meta paid. We've just seen that work super well. Gentlemen, well done. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.