Stormi Steele, founder of startup Canvas Beauty, logged on to TikTok Shop in June to sell her hero product, a moisturizer that goes on slick and shiny, like the glaze on a doughnut. On a livestream, she chatted about her glazes with tens of thousands of her followers, who could then buy the product directly from the app. TikTok would get a small cut of the revenue. And within minutes, she’d sold more than 40,000 units, generating more than $1 million in sales.

Steele spoke with a thick Alabama accent, surrounded by the employees who help her pack boxes in her Huntsville warehouse. Canvas Beauty’s branding isn’t polished or minimalist like the skincare brands you might find on Sephora’s shelves. The packaging is covered with a variety of fonts, set against photographs that look like they were pulled from a Google image search. They have names like “scent from heaven” and “hawt cocoa.”

But Steele makes a convincing case for her nascent brand, and her videos resonate with TikTok users. The livestream video highlighting her moisturizer broke all of TikTok’s sales records, prompting the platform to call to congratulate Steele, and later invite her to its California headquarters. Steele might stand out for her success, but she’s far from alone.

TikTok Shop launched in September 2023 featuring shoppable livestream videos. By the end of last year, there were already more than 15 million sellers worldwide, including half a million in the United States. Top TikTok Shop sellers make tens of thousands of dollars per month, or more. And while the platform does not disclose financials, TikTok could soon become a major player in the e-commerce landscape.

The question now is whether these brands can pivot from a successful launch on TikTok to a sustainable long-term business that exists outside of the platform.

How To Succeed on TikTok

TikTok is focused on helping small businesses—particularly those founded by minorities—succeed in its TikTok Shop. This summer, it launched a “Women-Owned TikTok Shop Accelerator,” a six-week-long program designed to help female founders thrive on the platform. It’s brought on advisers like Tina Wells, author of The Elevation Approach, who has a successful product line at Target, to help mentor these entrepreneurs.

Wells says being successful on TikTok often looks different than it does on other platforms. Over the past 15 years, social media platforms were crucial to a brand’s success, but they operated quite differently than TikTok. “Instagram’s purpose was to inspire you, while Facebook was about fostering connections,” Wells says. “For brands, TikTok’s purpose is to inform.”

Wells notes that founders who emphasize authenticity tend to do well. TikTok users can see through beautiful but contrived backdrops; they don’t want to see founders whose makeup and hair is always perfect. They’re interested in “realness,” and getting an accurate sense of what the product is like, even if they aren’t able to try it in person. This is why she believes Steele has been so successful. “She is 100% herself,” Wells says. “You trust her when she shows you what the product has done for her skin.”

Take a founder like Annie Leal, who sells I Love Chamoy, a sugar-free, diabetic-friendly Mexican candy sauce that is beloved in Texas. She launched the brand at the end of 2021. Since TikTok Shop didn’t exist at the time, she simply filmed content about her products, and people had to go to the link in her bio to buy it. But when TikTok launched its shop functionality, allowing users to buy directly from a video, sales went wild. She sold 750 bottles in the first week of business, and now has sold more than 110,000 bottles. She even went on Shark Tank, and though she didn’t walk away with a deal, she speaks highly of the experience and surely gained some fans from the exposure.

Leal says that TikTok users love to go behind the scenes with a brand, to see both their successes and failures, and over time this makes them feel more connected and loyal to the brand. She has documented every time she’s moved factories to increase her production runs.

She’s also been willing to be vulnerable, like the time she shared how an entire run of 40,000 bottles of I Love Chamoy sauces were stolen from a van. She went on TikTok to explain what happened, and to tell customers that they would have to wait a month to receive their product. “I had invested all my revenue into that production,” she tells Fast Company. “I told my followers everything, and I expected them to cuss me out or cancel their orders. But not one person did. I was met with love and understanding. People were really rooting for me.”

Building a specialized brand

Wells believes that specificity works well on TikTok. Whereas on Instagram many creators want to make products that appeal to a broad range of consumers, TikTok founders tend to create products that appeal to a very specific customer. Steele, for instance, speaks to Black women who might not be served by other beauty brands. And over time this approach has won over people from many backgrounds. “The most successful founders on TikTok are people who are very clear who they’re speaking to,” Wells says. “When a video pops up, you immediately know if that’s your person or not. You’re never confused.”

This has been true for Leal. In her videos, she often goes out into her community, showing local fairs and taco stands featuring enormous slabs of meat on a grill. These are images that people who love Mexican food and culture will immediately understand. And indeed, Mexican Americans are excited about a brand that makes a healthier version of chamoy, a product they already know and love.

But Leal has also found that being authentic on TikTok has allowed her to grow her audience beyond her immediate community. She’s had Muslim people asking whether it’s halal, and she’s seen people posting videos putting chamoy on eggs and cottage cheese. “I’ve never seen a Mexican who does that,” Leal says. “But I don’t think I’ve ever really catered to the Mexican audience. I’m just sharing my own experience, and I happen to be Mexican, but people from all backgrounds can relate to me.”

Scaling Beyond TikTok

TikTok Shop is still young, but TikTok wants to help brands that have found early success take their ventures beyond the platform so that other companies see TikTok as a place to do business. Over time, this could become a significant revenue stream for the platform.

Given how specific the TikTok aesthetic is, Wells says brands need to think carefully about how they will need to evolve to find success elsewhere, including in retail stores. She emphasizes, however, that there isn’t a single path to success for a brand. She points out that founders can opt to remain a direct-to-consumer brand, try to get into small boutiques, or shoot for larger retailers like Target and Sephora. It’s possible to generate enormous amounts of revenue across all of these channels, but it has a lot to do with what founders want to do with their time.

“If you’re in a large retailer, a lot of your time will be spent on logistics and shipping,” Wells says. “If your passion is really product development and creativity, then that kind of growth won’t feel good. You need to be asking what kind of growth you want.”

So far, many TikTok founders are finding that selling directly to their customers works best. Lindzi Shanks has a business called XO Marshmallow that sells gourmet marshmallows. Although she founded her brand nearly a decade ago, her revenues have spiked thanks to TikTok, where she regularly posts videos from her factory. She puts on gloves and sinks her hands into the confections to give followers a sense of how they feel and sound when pulled apart. She expects to generate $1 million in revenue this year from TikTok. She’s launched a marshmallow café in Chicago, where customers can buy marshmallows and also order s’mores and hot chocolate. By selling across her own channels, Shanks is able to control the aesthetic of the brand and keep her voice consistent.

Meanwhile, Leal’s I Love Chamoy is now in retailers across Texas. A buyer from a grocer called H-E-B noticed Leal’s posts on TikTok and asked to carry the brand. Now the product is available in more than 400 stores. It’s also available at Wegmans and T.J. Maxx.

But even though the brand has made it big, Leal isn’t going to stop making TikToks. She’s found that these retailers aren’t affecting her direct-to-consumer sales. “Being in retail doesn’t cannibalize the sales on our website,” she says. “In fact, when people go into the store and see our product, they get really excited because they recognize us from TikTok. So they’ll make content and post it on TikTok. It’s this really amazing virtuous cycle.”