Is TikTok Shop an e-commerce channel or a marketing channel? Ask ten marketplace managers right now and you'll get ten different answers – and that confusion is exactly where this episode starts.

Ingrid and Valerie sit down with Max Burianek, Head of TikTok Shop Germany, who built the platform's UK business before bringing it to Germany. Germany is scaling faster than the UK did at the same stage after launch – driven by sellers leaning into content and creator collaboration from day one. The price tag has gone up too – commissions in Germany just rose from 5% to 7–9%. Particularly telling: enterprise brands like Philips are now pulling up to 70% of revenue from content formats – proof this isn't just a playground for social-native D2C brands anymore.

The real insight, though, is organizational. Burianek argues brands need to treat creators the way they've treated CRM for the last decade – he calls it "Creator Relationship Management." Where the team sits matters less than who leads it.

If you're still on the fence about TikTok Shop, or unsure who in your org should even own it – this one's for you.

We grew much faster than we had even expected and our ambition was already high.

So I think the best metric probably to underline that is if you look at how many German online shoppers have by now already bought something on TikTok shop.

Let's Talk Marketplace.

The Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Vana Vridisti.

Hello and welcome to another episode of let's Talk Marketplace.

I'm Ingrid, your host as always and with me today is also Valerie, as most times.

So Valerie, it's great to have you with me today.

Yeah.

Hi everyone.

It's really great to be here and yeah, what a topic we're digging into today because we are right on the hype with this one.

Yes, I think so.

Especially because we are doing something of a follow up episode, I guess a few weeks ago when I was on holiday in episode 153, you spoke with Stephanie from Philips about their journey on TikTok shop and that was quite an interesting episode, wasn't it?

Yeah, it really was.

Stephanie was really totally open with how they approached building this new channel, how they use creators, how they totally investing in the channel first in order to learn how it works.

It was really great because it was really from this old brands perspective.

I mean I think let's say.

Okay, that's.

Let's what?

Let's say what?

Established.

Established.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, established.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

So compared to.

Because I was at the annual anniversary of the TikTok shop Germany and I saw really many brands I have seen never before.

So I really was like, okay, like this is really like a kind of new world.

And on the other hand it was.

It's a topic of.

Yeah.

Established brands who are more like more critical maybe and more have more insights about and.

And thoughts about.

Nah.

Shall we start?

Shall we.

Don't start.

And yeah, that's actually the foundation which we will talk about today, which we talked with Stephanie last time.

Yeah.

And today we're flipping the table around.

I would.

Because instead of asking a brand, and in that case of Philips, an established brand, how they experience TikTok shop today we thought why don't we go to the source directly and ask TikTok shop themselves.

Yeah.

What does the platform actually want from brands?

What does a brand need to look like to succeed on tts?

And the question that comes up literally in every conversation that we have with Marketplace managers right now is is that an E commerce topic or is it a marketing topic?

Where do I put the people who sell on TikTok shop?

We are confused yeah, so that's, I think, the main questions for today.

Yeah.

And to answer all of that, we have someone who has been building TikTok shop markets from the inside.

First in the UK, now in Germany.

Max Burianek, head of TikTok Shop Germany.

Welcome to let's Talk Marketplace.

Thank you.

I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, we're also happy to have you here.

And as usual for our guests, we would start with our three classical questions.

So, yeah, Max, in short answers, first of all, who are you?

Yeah, so I'm Max.

I lead TikTok Shop in Germany.

I'm quite happy to do that.

Based in Munich, that's where I'm from.

I spent some time at Amazon in my past and started my career in consulting.

That's me, basically.

That's great.

And what do you say?

Do you do best?

I think what I do best is what I enjoy most.

And hopefully then also that's a good basis to do best, is motivating sellers to see where TikTok shop could contribute value to their growth.

That's super interesting.

And now let's become a bit more private.

Maybe can you tell us a fun fact about yourself that most of our listeners probably don't know?

Yeah, maybe a fun fact.

I was on TV in my past for 12 hours in one row, separating piece from lenses with chopsticks.

That was on a.

It sounds absolutely incredible.

Right.

But I needed.

I needed the money then.

And it was about like, I guess, like 20 years ago.

Yeah, that's a nice one.

The things you do at the beginning of career.

I was.

Yeah, exactly.

I was already in content then.

Yeah.

I think every one of us has a story like that to tell.

I used to write horoscopes, actually, for a radio station.

That was interesting as well.

Yeah.

So I was a waitress in a Bavarian restaurant wearing dirndl and serving beer.

Oh, yeah.

Got strong arms from that, I guess, from that time.

And strong communication skills, I tell you.

Definitely.

Right.

Okay, Max.

Yeah.

It's great to have you on the show.

And as we said, we have been talking a lot about TikTok shop over the last year, I guess, both on our podcast, but also when we do a news review.

There was also always something to talk about on what TikTok shop is doing and in a newsletter.

So it's really good to hear it from the source, as it were.

So let's maybe first look at the situation in TikTok Shop Germany at the moment, because you are live now for just about over a year, I think.

It was March or April last year that you started out.

So where do you stand now compared to where you started and compared to the expectations you had when you started in this market?

Yeah, I think obviously if you start building a new business on a platform like TikTok, you always start with very big ambitions because obviously the reach is huge.

With 27 billion monthly active users on TikTok, I really can can say that that we grew much faster than we had even expected and our ambition was already high.

So I think the best metric probably to underline that is if you look at how many German online shoppers have by now already bought something on TikTok shop.

And if you ask Nielsen IQ Market Research Company, they found out in March that more than 15, so 1.5percent of German online shoppers had already bought via TikTok shop.

So it's a large number and it's growing quickly and it's supported by the 25,000 sellers that we have.

Okay.

And growth is still or last that I saw was still triple digit when it came to gmv.

So moving really fast.

Are there differences regarding categories or products?

Are you moving faster in some areas and slower in others?

Yeah, purity was very, very strong right from the start.

Right.

I think it's just a super category to show before after effects.

It's very emotional category also.

But what we've seen very recently is very strong growth in electronics particularly, which may be a bit of a surprise given many of those products actually quite high aov.

But in a, in a nutshell, VC grows across all categories.

It's just that it shifted a bit from the start to where we are now, which categories are growing faster.

But it also very much driven by strong brands.

Very recently more nutrition has been super strong.

So FMCG is catching up in growth to where we are in electronics.

But overall I'd say we are very satisfied with the growth across all categories.

Can you give me a bit of an international aspect of this as well?

So there's a lot more legacy here and more experience.

So how does the German story differ from the other European stories for TikTok shop at the moment?

And especially how does it compare to the UK story?

Yeah, so having the UK is really great.

Right.

Because it's a bit like my personal crystal ball, right.

And we are not developing exactly the same, but the trajectory of TikTok shop in UK has been quite impressive.

By now we've got in the UK 6,000 daily shopping, live streams.

We have more than 200,000 sellers now.

Compare that with a bit more than 25,000 we have here in Germany.

So it also sets the bar quite high, Right.

And it also shows where we want to go in Germany.

The good thing is that we've been growing stronger than the UK right after its launch.

So we obviously see that our sellers have been looking at what works in the UK and got some inspiration there.

Our creators have done the same.

We have learned quite a bit about how to further develop our product and I think we're therefore getting there.

Right.

We are probably not exactly where the UK is today, but we really aim to catch up with them very fast.

We have like major brands that are successful in the uk.

We already have them in Germany, like brands like Crocs or Philips or l', Oreal, Mac Cosmetics, P and G, Shark Ninja, you name them, right?

Qvc.

And I think there is something really in common.

So this ability of those successful sellers to leverage content and content is at the core of the platform.

So we really do see that also in Germany, sellers generate around 60% of their revenue through shoppable, video and live shopping and some enterprise brands, which might be quite surprising.

Enterprise brands, as we mentioned, they are more established.

You might think they move a bit slower.

You might think that adopting something like content commerce is a bit more difficult for them.

But we see enterprise brands that achieve up to 70% already of their revenue via content formats.

I'd say the biggest areas where we want to further accelerate and where the UK is still a bit ahead of us is clearly.

I mean, I mentioned the number of sellers, right, Mix of sellers I mentioned we are already getting there also with not only smaller sellers, but also established brands, but then also like on the creator ecosystem.

Right.

Obviously the UK creator ecosystem has matured already a bit more than here in Germany.

We are getting there by building vertically creator pool tools.

So creators who specialize on certain categories, subcategories, even the UK is a bit a step ahead in that.

But I'm quite confident in that we are getting there quite soon too.

And then.

Sorry, one, sorry to interrupt you.

One thing that just I want to call out is also, I think there is one key difference in the way we now launched in Europe versus the way the UK business is being operated, which is the Great thing about the EU is that you can help sellers grow across many countries.

Right.

Right.

And sellers sold on that island.

And what we actually do see in the markets that we launched now last year, like Italy, France, Germany, a couple of months before that, Spain, we see that there are many, many sellers who open up a shop in one country and then they successfully expand from that one shop registration to the other countries.

And I think that's a bit special about.

And different versus how we launched in the uk.

Yeah.

It's now more nearer to each other.

Right.

In terms of region, but also in terms of timing.

And you can exactly what you learned in Germany right now adapt to the other countries.

I mean, obviously you need to adapt it, but language w. I mean, in live commerce, how do you.

How do they deal with that one?

It's a.

It's a brilliant question.

So.

And you are completely right.

If, if I'm a brand that has mostly one host to do live shopping and that host happens to be, for example, the founder or just a key figure on that company, then that is difficult to translate directly into other languages.

What we do see so is that we also have a flourishing ecosystem of agencies.

Absolutely.

And those agencies, increasingly we've got local agencies, but also agencies who set themselves up also in a pan European way.

So we see many of those agencies also helping sellers to expand to other countries, finding live hosts there.

And then when you go beyond life.

Right.

The biggest GMV contributor when it comes to content is still video.

And video is mostly driven by creators in that affiliate collaboration model and creator pools.

Affiliate pools have been developed by TikTok shop in all the markets that we're in.

So if you are a German brand, you want to expand to France, you can connect with French creators who can promote your products.

Right.

So the whole point around creators, actually creator collaboration makes it quite easy to expand.

And then last, not least, we help where we can with translation tools, obviously helping to translate, for example, product detail pages, et cetera.

Yeah, interesting.

I also find it really interesting what you said about how fast you're moving in the German market, because after all, Germany has always been the place where people said, yeah, live commerce won't work here.

That's just not the culture.

We're not ready for that.

I can understand what you're saying because there was a lot of hype created around TikTok shop because everyone was looking to the UK and going like, what these guys are doing There, this looks interesting.

And the numbers were soaring and so everyone was quite ready to try it out, I guess.

Yeah, but.

Well, Valerie, let's maybe move a bit to the side of how brands are doing on the platform.

I mean, as you said, right, next you've got all the types on the platform like DTC startups, big global established brands, resellers, what would you say, who are actually doing well?

And I mean, you already shared some numbers and who's still struggling even when they put real money in?

Yeah, so that's a great question.

I think the type of brand or the type of organization you are, of course it plays a role, but I do think actually it's much more important how the organization sets itself up for TikTok shop and how fast they can act.

So obviously you'll see like really social native sellers who are naturally strong.

Right.

But it's not, maybe not so much because of whatever factor, it's just that they've been used to this kind of working in a quick agile mode.

Right.

They understand TikTok to some degree, have used it before as an awareness channel.

And brands like, like Pumice or cfap, they have these viral trends that they can trigger.

They actually are leaning into building their strong creator networks and they are absolutely ready to generate 90% of their sales via video and live formats.

And they understand that content is the core of the platform.

But as I mentioned, there are also quite established brands.

Right.

I mean, you were mentioning Philips, that's a great example.

It's not a social native brand.

They weren't born as this, but they just really have, I think, a strong team and they really buy into the vision.

So I do think that it's really much more how an organization sets itself up and it's also not so much dependent on a single category.

We've got Pepsi, who uses TikTok shop as a test laboratory, like as of to pilot product launches.

We do have electronics brands like Shark Ninja.

They're going all in with live with collaboration with creators.

We've got even heritage brands like Czech Wolfskin.

Right.

So it's not so much, I wouldn't say, it's like you should look at your brand and say, well, we were just not born for TikTok shop.

Right.

It's more what you make of it.

Yeah.

What I also sometimes see is really when I talk to brands, they were like, oh yeah, we got connected on Shopify and then we don't have sales now.

And I'm like, yeah, but do you do anything else?

And he's like, no.

I was like, yeah, yeah, it's not.

Working like any other marketplace.

There is this big difference also, which I realized in the talk with Stephanie is that the need of agencies who supporting you with the right knowledge, the speed, the people is really necessary.

And I think this is also something which is really common for also Chinese platforms is this partner setup.

Right.

So that's, I think, quite necessary.

And as well the willingness of the C level to really get things going and believe in it.

And also let the team try out this, like six months till they realize, okay, now it's working.

And now it's like, you know that because sometimes that's also like, oh, we're three months doing it, there's nothing happen.

So like, let's cut it down.

So like, yeah, okay.

But they need to trust the investor.

Time to really prove and learn and adapt how it works.

Right?

Yeah, I think maybe.

Sorry, just to add here, I think you're spot on with that also regarding the time horizon.

Right.

And I think, for example, TikTok shop is a lot about visibility, also awareness.

Now, if you think of other awareness channels, right.

I mean, I think if you, if you think of SEO, for example, search engine optimization, there are, I think there are, there are a few out there who say, no, I'm going to create that website.

Right.

And I expect to show up in say your favorite search and in top 10 tomorrow.

Right.

So you really have to invest and build it.

Right.

I mean, the price is really high because the platform reach is huge, as I mentioned.

But it's clearly something that you need to, like, you need to lean in and you need to lean in for more than a week.

Right.

It's something that also grows as you continuously invest and build your presence on TikTok shop.

Yeah.

And that's also comparable to the marketplace business, right.

If we tell someone like, hey, yeah, start with this new channel, then you also need to give it like time, three to six months to get things going and online before you can even.

Say that channel is working for me or it is not.

Yeah, but I mean, speaking on that, because we had, especially in the German market, there were a few brands that went out again after a very short period of time, say, yeah, it's not working for us.

Have you been.

How are you reacting to these kind of very short dropouts?

Are you getting back into contact or you.

How can you convince those maybe that maybe tried it out but then found out that it didn't work for them the first two months or something?

Yeah, I think the most fundamental question is, I guess, are your customers on TikTok?

And if I look at the reach again, 27 million monthly active users, the likelihood that your customers are among those 27 million is just very, very, very high.

So your target audience is there.

And then I think it really depends on what operating model do you choose.

Right.

Do you have a clear strategy for your assortment?

Do you have a clear strategy for content?

And then do you leverage our campaigns?

And yes, we are in touch with many who actually are considering to onboard.

And sometimes this really takes a bit.

Right.

Because organizations really have to figure out who should be the best owner in the company.

What would be their product strategy, where should they put it?

Marketing, E commerce.

You already indicated that question.

And then if someone failed, it's also good to just do a check which of those things actually was missing?

Did you go in without a clear idea what your we call it hero product should be?

Right.

Products that you focus on and that you try to push a lot via content?

Or did you have a content strategy that really was built on a strong creator community like these things?

And we reflect on that regularly.

Also, the platform has, even though we are only here for a bit more than a year.

Right.

The platform itself has further developed.

Right.

And some sellers who joined us in the very first one or two weeks, like back in April.

Right.

I mean they probably had a very different experience than what they'll find now in terms of what tools are available, how many users are buying, what's the majority of creators in certain vertical pools.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we do have obviously as we continue to grow and establish ourselves further, we collect grade cases.

Right.

That's also something.

And those cases actually then inspire again other sellers.

Right.

I think it was very nicely put at K5 two weeks ago, like Francisca from Glow25 said when they started it was really difficult in Germany, like right after launch because there was no clear playbook.

Right.

And she says it's actually much easier now to start because there are successful examples in almost all categories.

That's interesting.

I mean, focusing up on that because you mentioned now a few things that brands can do wrong in the beginning.

And one might be don't not give it enough time to develop because that is just one of the rules for social commerce, that it needs to add a bit of time to simmer in a way.

The other might be not really focusing on the content or not understanding that this is a content, content based platform and that shopping is sort of the aftermath of that.

What else have you encountered what kind of mistakes do brands make, especially brands that might be, you know, strong in their marketplace business and now come to TikTok shop and don't know how to adapt to this new platform and its new neurals.

Yeah.

So I think two things you mentioned, and I'm just going to recap because they are really important, they are spot on.

So one is to be very well aware it's not a fire and forget platform.

It's not like you list your product and then you set up some advertising campaign that spends and that's it.

But it's really about content.

That's what you just said.

It's really like the reason why users go to TikTok is because they love the content and that's a huge opportunity.

But that also implies that there's a task to have a content strategy.

The second one, exactly, as you also said, is like, what's your time horizon to come up with a strategy?

Right.

You build something strategically.

You don't go in after and after a week, you judge, but you build.

You create a community.

You test what the hero products are.

And there are two more things that I think some brands underestimate when they start.

One is community really is a trust layer and community.

And I'm, I'm referring to both the end customer community that you built on TikTok shop, right?

Your followers, on your account, your fans.

But I'm also particularly referring to the creators, also your creator community, they're really an asset.

And those brands that we see that grow strongly, they've understood it and they build a pool, a community of creators and they keep them quite tight, right?

So they, they provide them with new information, they provide them with certain challenges, incentives to do content and provide them with briefing, they provide them with experience, can even be offline events.

And these creators, the great thing about these creators is they sometimes know more about the brand's products than the brand team actually knows.

They know exactly what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses, what stories work about the product, what stories don't work.

And they are often much closer to the end customers, to the fans, than the brand team is.

Right.

Few brand teams interact at that scale with end customers and get at that scale, direct feedback and can test out and try things.

So the creator pool is a real asset.

And I love saying that.

I think over the past 10 years, many brands have put quite some thought and efforts in building really very strong customer relationship management strategies, CRM.

And I think that the same effort, the same ambition, the same thoughtfulness they should.

And the same laugh they should put into the relationships with their creators.

So the C actually would be then creator relationship management.

That's really something that can really make a huge difference today.

And this is what we see with the strongest brands we have on the platform that they do.

That's also what Stephanie said.

And also to trust them not to like, write down every word they are allowed or not allowed to really trust them and say like, okay, I trust you that you know it better and present it in a good way.

Right.

Because.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I mean, we must not underestimate our users.

Right?

The users, they've been in the Internet, depending on the age, for 25 years now, right?

Some maybe if they are not so long, but they've been at least they didn't find the Internet yesterday.

And I think they can differentiate quite a bit between what's a brand's message and what is an individual creator.

And we've all done purchases on platforms based on customer reviews, right.

And we are able to read customer reviews.

We understand it's not the brand writing a customer review.

Actually quite the opposite.

Right.

If a, if it's too polished a customer review, if it's too much in line with what the brand would say, we doubt its authenticity.

Right.

And this is how our users have learned to deal with reviews on the Internet.

So I think they can clearly differentiate between what's a review and what's a brand message.

And actually you need to leave a bit of freedom to the creators to give them, like you could brief them with what are the core messages, what's the USP of the product.

But there needs to be enough flexibility for the creators to in an authentic way tell the story about a product.

And if you work with 200, 300, 400, 500 creators, each of them will give it a little twist.

And imagine working with 500 creative advertising agencies and not just having them pitch.

And then you have to pick the best one because you can't afford to work with 500, obviously, regardless of the effort of managing them.

But you actually tell them now do the campaign and let's see which works best.

Right.

I mean, that's a real really cool way to look at your creator collaboration.

Yeah.

So max, you said TikTok shop needs content, creator relationships, live production and marketplace operations, logistics, actually all running at the same time.

So in most brands, those things sit in completely different teams.

Maybe sometimes they don't even have those teams yet.

Where should TikTok shop actually live?

So in E commerce or in marketing or what is your best practice experience?

Let's keep it like that because I.

Think there's like put the TikTok shop.

Manager, where do you put it?

It's such a great question.

And you're so right in that TikTok is a huge awareness channel.

Right.

That's all about discovery.

And then further down the funnel there's at some point the conversion and you're completely right.

All these different things need to work together.

So actually I'm going to quote someone who's been doing that quite successfully, right.

There is Jack Timpani, manages L' Oreal's TikTok shop in the UK.

He's a great guy and I recently was in a session together with him.

And basically what checks it, you see that it really doesn't matter where this team sits, where this role sits.

Right.

What matters is really the profiles of the people working on it, so.

Exactly.

Chuck said you need people working on content, like experts on content.

You need people who are like experts on relationship management with creators.

You need really good E commerce people and people who understand all the physical distribution and fulfillment part.

But the hardest thing, the hardest thing, and this is, I think where Jack really had a point is you need someone who leads that team and who has an appreciation for all of those different functions and the ability to pull them together.

That's the hard part.

And the hardest part is finding that person, giving that person the mandate and then it doesn't really matter so much where that person sits actually.

Right.

It's really someone who can coordinate and work across these different functions.

Yeah.

And then to find also the other people.

Right.

Because you don't find like, I don't know, like xmi, like really trained people where you can say like, oh, they have like a good, they studied this social commerce so you can find this.

Right.

You really need to have people who, yeah, worked in the.

Already in the business and learned from themselves or are themselves creators.

Right.

So I think that's also a challenge because those profiles are still like growing themselves.

Right.

I mean, let's.

Like In e commerce, 15, 20 years ago, there was also like no E commerce management apprenticeship or something.

So I think it's a bit comparable.

Yeah, no, it's, it's a great comp.

It's a great comparison.

Valerie.

I, I really think if you.

Exactly.

If you.

I have to think back of like 10, 15 years ago when, when I was sitting with vendors and nobody really knew how that E commerce game worked, but there were some people who just thought, okay, this is something maybe That I can really build a career in the capabilities that, the skills, the experience.

I gather they are an asset in my skill set, in my tool set.

And they really leaned in because they felt like they can be part of something new that's going to stay right.

I see the same with successful TikTok shop operator these days.

They really believe in, like, if you look at the brand side, right, they really believe in the vision.

They really understand they can build something big and they really understand it's not a side job.

It's not like they're doing this, this, this, this and this and, and then there is another channel.

But they really think they want to do it, they really want to learn it, they will understand it, they want to test and iterate and also lift the frustrations if something doesn't work.

But then also draw the lessons learned and try one more time and find out what works.

Absolutely.

Looking at the time, I'd like to put in one or two other subjects that we haven't touched upon so far, and one of them is cost.

Because in January 26th you moved your commissions up a bit.

They had been at 5%, now that at 9%.

So you're still lower than most marketplaces, which are normally run around 15%, depending on the category.

But still that is an increase.

The question is, of course, is that the seeding or is that, you know, just another step along the way and where is the goal for that?

And also, what does it actually cost a brand to sell on TikTok shop, apart from the commission?

I mean, there's content and agency fees and, I don't know, affiliate commissions for the creators, all of that.

So is that.

How profitable is this, this game, so to speak?

Yeah, so I mean, you're right, right.

Current commission is 9%.

In electronics, it's 7%.

And you're right that we increase the commission from the initial 5%.

And this basically reflects the growing value delivery on the platform.

If you see the GMV that our sellers can generate on the platform, it actually has grown quite strongly.

So between, between August and February, it almost doubled within that half year.

And at the same time, we continue to invest in the ecosystem, right?

Whether it's building creator pools, whether it's new tools, further improving our seller support systems.

And then I think what's a great question also is how.

What should be the total cost considerations for any brand starting on TikTok shop?

And right there is the 9% commission and seven for electronics.

That's universal across the sellers.

But beyond that, it really Depends on your strategy on TikTok shop, right?

If you work a lot with affiliates, then if that's your key growth channel, then you factor in cost.

For affiliates, which are commission based, we see some brands who are strongly life driven for life.

Obviously you have different costs.

There are no extra costs, typically that you pay to someone else unless you work with an agency, right.

VC sellers who do actually both.

And then I think it also comes down to not only what does it cost you.

So you have the 9% commission and then you have affiliate cost.

And you, you also can invest in advertising at an ROI basis, but also in like, what do you get out of that platform and what you compare it against.

So the affiliate model that we have on TikTok shop, right, where the creators are compensated based on the actual sales, if you compare that to traditional influencer marketing, that's mostly based on flat fees, right?

Upfront fees, it's a very different game in terms of efficiency.

And we also do have some ways by which sellers can optimize their cost base.

To give you an example, one important ingredient to working successfully with creators is free samples.

So you provide a creator who produces a piece of content for your product with a free sample.

There are at the same time tools that, for example, refundable sample, where the creator buys, regularly buys that sample from you via TikTok shop.

And then you set a certain number of videos that the creator should generate.

And even if he produces beyond that number of videos or achieves a certain number of sales only, then actually you refund the cost of the sample.

So there's a whole lot of ways how you can modulate.

And it really comes very much down to what is your specific strategy.

Do you work with live, do you work with creators?

Do you work with a smaller pool of creators?

Do you work with refundable samples?

All these things, yeah.

Interesting.

Okay, so maybe before we wrap up our next Monday question that we normally place, like, what can we do?

Or what can you take away from this podcast for our team meeting on next Monday, for example?

So if you consider the brands that might have been, you know, standing on the sidelines and looking at TikTok shop and going like, yeah, I'm gonna wait until it's a bit more grown up before I invest or not, I guess there are a lot of those, especially in Germany.

So how can they make a real decision on whether to keep waiting or investing?

What is a concrete thing that they could start next Monday to bring them along?

I think it's actually three things.

One is there are great cases for TikTok shop success in all categories.

And I mean previously you would have looked at the uk.

These days you can look over at like a number of German examples.

And I think one thing you really should do is if you are a brand wondering if you should start on TikTok shop, just look at those examples, right?

There is a lot of case studies out there, a lot of LinkedIn posts by people about their journey.

Try to understand like how they're approaching it.

That information is readily available.

And I'm really, many times I'm really amazed how much our sellers know about how other sellers are doing.

So they're like, I think and maybe you even connect with people, right.

I found that some people really are absolutely happy to share about their own journey.

So you can reach out probably you know someone in your category if you even who's been successful.

The second one is think how you could make TikTok shop really a priority for your organization.

I recently was at an event with a couple of brands and there was one very successful brand and there was a lot of information sharing and after that many of the brands said yeah, we want to start too.

And there was one brand who was not so clear whether they wanted to do it right and, and then they were asked why and, and they said well we don't know, we was still a very small company, we've got so many priorities.

And the advice by that successful brand, they also were not a big player but the advice was really well if you, if you're not 100% sure right then, then you won't be successful.

It's not something that you do on the side, right?

You need, you need to do to give it your all right, make it a proper channel.

You need to assign someone who builds that.

And I think the last thing I would really advise is that brands get in touch with my team.

We are here and we are not yet in self service mode.

We are not like everybody has to figure it out themselves in some kind of DIY heroism way.

But we are very well aware it's a, it's a new channel, it's a new playbook and my team is really here to help.

So reaching out like pinging me on LinkedIn or pinging others on LinkedIn or whatever, finding us on events, just asking all those questions that you might think are stupid but that probably everybody else has been wondering about, probably like that goes a long way.

Yeah, that's actually quite interesting.

So if you want to find max on LinkedIn, it's Maximilian Burjanek because I also had some difficulties when I first wanted to find you because you're there with your whole name obviously.

So yeah, I think a huge thank you, Max, for joining us today and for being so direct about where things actually stand and what and how brands can actually work with TikTok shop shop.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And thank you to all, all of you for listening today.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and maybe got a few ideas on what to do on TikTok shop in the future.

Please follow subscribe to let's Talk Marketplace.

Always helpful if you are there on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever.

And yeah, it was great to have had you for another episode.

Okay.

Right.

And then hopefully tune in next time again.

So thank you.

Bye bye.

Bye bye bye.

You listen to let's Talk Marketplace, the.

Marketplace podcast with Ingrid Lommer and Valerie Dichtel.