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They Built Thriving Businesses on TikTok. The Ban Could Destroy Them.
Ann-Marie Alcántara
6 min read
Paulina Hoong and Elyse Burns are small-business owners who believe a TikTok ban will hurt their revenue. - Paulina Hoong, Elyse Burns
To a growing number of shop owners, TikTok has become their storefront to sell everything from candy to kitchenware.
Now, the shops they have built into thriving businesses—some raising millions in seed capital and employing workers around the country—are at risk. On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell or shut down the social-media app by Sunday.
TikTok started going dark for U.S. users on Saturday night. Instead of videos, TikTok showed app visitors a message that said: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S.” How long it will be offline, nobody knows. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday signaled he would work to reinstate TikTok after he takes office Monday.
The way sellers make money on TikTok can vary. Some sell directly through TikTok Shop, the app’s digital retail network. Others post videos to steer customers to their own sites. And many creators are marketers, paid by brands to turn their entertainment feeds into a massive vehicle for product promotion. TikTok has said seven million U.S. businesses use the platform.
“My business is going to take a huge hit,” said Paulina Hoong, owner of Menmin Made, a home goods and apparel brand inspired by Asian-American culture.
She was early to join TikTok Shop, in July 2023, and immediately saw success, with $5,000 in sales that month alone. Later that year, a viral video led to a flood of orders. Her entire stock of 600 tote bags was gone in days.
TikTok started going dark for U.S. users Saturday night. -
The reason sellers have found so much success is that the Chinese-owned platform has nailed the formula for an energetic mix of entertainment and impulse shopping, according to business and marketing experts, pushing it past Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.
Small-business content is particularly enticing for buyers. Some 52% of TikTok users that come across small-business content have made a purchase, and 82% of users have said they discovered a small business on the app before finding the company on other sites, according to TikTok.
Skipping the bar
Elyse Burns was 18 when she started Elyse Breanne Design. Her shop includes stickers, planners, tea towels and laptop sleeves featuring patterns based on her original artwork.
Throughout college, she kept it as a side hustle. During law school in 2020, though, she decided to promote her small business on TikTok and saw instant success: $360,000 in revenue that year alone.
She graduated from law school in 2022, decided to abandon becoming a lawyer, and instead hired three full-time employees for her business. She joined TikTok Shop in 2023 and generated about $600,000 in revenue. Last year, she brought in about $990,000.
Her first TikTok Shop post was about gel pens, and garnered 11 million views. Another viral video was about desk pads: They are now her bestselling product on TikTok, with about 11,000 units sold last year. Burns enjoys the comment section on her TikToks, which have inspired her to launch numerous new products, such as Kindle cases and desk pads.
“It’s like having a focus group for free everyday,” she said.
Today, Burns said 25% of her sales come from TikTok Shop, with the bulk coming from direct website sales.
She moved her inventory and office space to a bigger location and now employs 12 full-time employees, in part to handle the influx of orders and customers from TikTok Shop. She is worried about the sales hit she will take if TikTok goes away, plus the cost of paying for the larger space.
“I’ve built the business to accommodate the sales from TikTok Shop and TikTok in general,” Burns said. “Without that, it’s going to suck.”
Elyse Burns expanded her businesses warehouse and employee roster to meet the demand of TikTok Shop. - ELYSE BURNS
Not so sweet
James Hicks, co-founder of the candy brand Final Boss Sour, has seen similar success on TikTok and TikTok Shop. The company generates most of its revenue from TikTok, making about $1.4 million last quarter directly from TikTok Shop, according to Hicks.
While Final Boss Sour makes its own videos, it also depends on TikTok’s affiliate program, where content creators can make posts about the product and receive a commission of the sale.
“We built the product to be viral on social without any particular platform in mind,” he said. “TikTok happens to be the best platform at the moment for this.”
Final Boss Sour experienced a viral moment when Keith Lee, a food reviewer with more than 16.8 million TikTok followers, posted about taste-tasting sour cranberry, strawberry and blueberry flavors, with increasing levels of tartness.
“It comes down to the quality of the other content on the platform—the power of their algorithm to mix in commerce with entertainment,” Hicks said.
Final Boss Sour recently raised $3 million seed funding round in October. While Hicks might be able to weather a TikTok ban, he worries it could “increase and bolster the monopoly power of Google and Meta.”
Uncertain future
Hoong started Menmin Made in 2021, selling on Etsy and at pop-up shops and fairs in the Bay Area, and later opening a Shopify-powered website. In 2023, she made about $31,000 from TikTok Shop. She brought in $19,000 the following year.
Paulina Hoong joined TikTok Shop in 2023 with her Asian-American-theme accessories and saw immediate success. - KELLI SANTOS
Hoong believes the decrease happened because of other businesses crowding into TikTok Shop and TikTok-funded launch-year discounts that were no longer available.
Smaller sellers find some TikTok Shop requirements challenging. Products must be shipped within three business days, and sellers must maintain low refund rates and positive reviews. When Hoong sold all those tote bags from her viral video, she had to get the orders out fast and it was very difficult, she said.
Still, she now supports herself with the business, and considers even her web-store traffic to be largely motivated by TikTok. Even in person, TikTok drives sales: Countless customers have come to her at pop-ups around the Bay Area and said they saw her products on the app, she said.
“I’m not really sure what the future holds,” Hoong said. “I’m going to try to continue to cultivate community on whatever platform is next.”
