TikTok Shop Is A Discovery Channel With A Payroll, And Amazon Still Takes The Order

TikTok Shop's head of strategic initiatives, Patrick Nommensen, told Forbes that the number of U.S. brands on the platform roughly doubled last year to 215,000 and that U.S. sales rose 120 percent, though he declined to give Forbes a dollar figure ^[1][2]. The merchants in the same story describe something narrower and more useful: a place to buy attention with labor rather than media budget, sitting on top of an Amazon business that still books most of the revenue ^[3][14].

Look at the splits. Jared Mortensen's Real Men Apparel Co. does $10 million a year, of which 15 percent runs through TikTok Shop, 50 percent through Amazon and 35 percent through its own site ^[3]. That is roughly $1.5 million, $5 million and $3.5 million respectively ^[4]. Michael Corrigan of Trtl, a Glasgow travel pillow brand that started on Amazon in 2015 and joined TikTok Shop last summer, puts his mix at 50 percent Amazon, 45 percent web and 5 percent TikTok Shop ^[14]. Two very different businesses, both with Amazon at half ^[23].

The cost structure is the interesting part. Mortensen has 11 livestreamers and content creators on a staff of 25, which is 44 percent of headcount pointed at making video ^[6][7], plus contracts with about 2,000 independent creators who take a percentage of the sales they generate ^[8]. Brandon Himmel of Houston-based Ruff Liners says he paid his top creator $23,000 in a single month, mostly in sales commissions and earned bonuses ^[19]. That is not an ad budget. It is payroll and revenue share, which means the spend is variable and the brand owns the output, but also that the channel does not scale without hiring. Mortensen is blunt about the volume required: "You have to post a lot. It's very intense," he says, describing it as throwing spaghetti at the wall ^[10]. Some of that spaghetti is video testing which household objects fit in the underwear's pouches, which are sized A to D like bras ^[11].

The attribution claims are self-reported and worth reading carefully. Corrigan says he would credit TikTok Shop for the growth in his other channels ^[14]. Himmel says searches for Ruff Liners by name on Amazon are up 26 percent since he started promoting there in late 2024, and that the brand went from $6 million a month to $8 million a month, a 33 percent increase worth about $24 million annualized ^[15][16][17]. His summary is "I think TikTok is growing Amazon" ^[18]. Mortensen says TikTok saved his business during a cash crunch at the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, largely by lifting sales elsewhere ^[5].

TikTok is positioning itself accordingly. It paid for a GlobalData survey of 6,000 Americans that found 67 percent of online shoppers go to TikTok to find new products and brands versus 57 percent on Amazon, a ten-point gap in TikTok's favor on discovery ^[20][24], and that 72 percent of people who learned of a new brand there cited one with under $15 million in sales ^[21].

What to watch: whether the doubling of brands to 215,000 thins out the same attention these merchants are converting ^[1], and whether any of them can show the search lift with data that did not come from the seller.