Last October, I was sitting across from the founder of a small skincare brand – let’s call her Maya – watching her scroll through her TikTok Shop dashboard with a mix of frustration and disbelief. She’d invested nearly $4,000 in product photography, written what she thought were compelling descriptions, and launched twelve SKUs on TikTok…
Last September, I sat across the table from a DTC skincare brand founder who was visibly frustrated. She’d burned through $47,000 on TikTok ads over three months with a blended ROAS of 0.8x. “I keep hearing TikTok is where the money is,” she told me, “but every time I scale, my costs spiral.” I pulled…
Last October, I helped a client launch a small line of organically scented soy candles on TikTok Shop. We had gorgeous product photography, a competitive price point, and even a couple of micro-influencer partnerships lined up. After two weeks, total sales sat at exactly seven units. Seven. The product was strong, the content was decent,…
Last November, I watched a client’s TikTok Shop listing get 240,000 views in 48 hours. The product – a $28 ceramic hair tool – was trending. Creators were posting about it organically. The traffic was, by any reasonable standard, extraordinary. And the conversion rate? 0.3%. That’s roughly 720 orders from a quarter-million eyeballs. My client…
Last October, I watched a client’s TikTok Shop listing for a $22 silicone kitchen gadget go from 11 orders per day to over 340 in a span of 72 hours. We hadn’t changed the product. We hadn’t launched a new ad campaign. What we had done was spend two weeks obsessing over TikTok listing analytics…
Last September, I was sitting in a co-working space in Austin, staring at a dashboard that made my stomach drop. A skincare brand I’d been consulting for – a small team of twelve people who’d poured everything into their TikTok Shop launch – had just watched their best-selling serum plummet from a 4.7-star rating to…
Last September, I was sitting across from a skincare brand founder in Austin who was genuinely baffled. Her TikTok content was gorgeous – beautifully lit, well-edited, genuinely helpful tutorials on retinol routines and barrier repair. She was posting four times a week. Her engagement rate from existing followers was solid, hovering around 6.2%. But her…
Last October, I was sitting across from the founder of a mid-size skincare brand – let’s call her Mei – watching her scroll through her TikTok Shop product listings with a look of genuine confusion. “We’re spending $8,000 a month on TikTok ads,” she told me, “and our click-through rates are decent, but nobody’s actually…
Last September, I was sitting in a cramped conference room with a skincare brand founder who was on the verge of pulling her entire TikTok Shop. She’d invested $14,000 in creator partnerships over two months, her videos were racking up views – some hitting 400K+ – and yet her conversion rate on TikTok Shop sat…