TikTok Shop Launches 'Project Horizon' to Ramp Up Big Brand Recruitment, Aiming for Brands with $10M+ Annual Sales in the US

Ebrun Exclusive, January 23 - According to foreign media reports, TikTok Shop has launched a new merchant acquisition program called "Project Horizon" in the US market. The platform is actively working to attract well-known, established brands to TikTok Shop.

Specifically, the project is calling upon 100 e-commerce enabler agencies, with each agency responsible for recruiting dozens of brands that have achieved at least $10 million in annual sales on other platforms like Amazon and Shopify.

Foreign media, citing anonymous sources, stated that these enabler agencies primarily assist brands in managing their e-commerce operations across various online shopping platforms.

Under the agreement, TikTok will provide incentives to participating agencies if they successfully recruit at least 30 brands and the collective sales of these brands on TikTok Shop reach $50 million by the end of 2026. Regarding the incentive structure, reports indicate that agencies that successfully recruit brands and meet the targets will receive a percentage of the sales revenue as a commission.

The reports note that within TikTok Shop, "Project Horizon" is considered the top priority for the US business this year. Its goal is to attract more trustworthy brands as suppliers, thereby expanding the product selection within the app. Currently, many brands still view TikTok primarily as a marketing tool rather than a sales channel. However, TikTok hopes that stronger brand trust will help retain more sales within its own platform.

In fact, some US marketing service practitioners mentioned that since the second half of 2025, as the risk of a TikTok ban has gradually decreased, many US e-commerce brands have been accelerating their move towards TikTok and increasing their spending on the platform—this helps them reach consumers outside of Meta's social platforms.

It is worth noting that TikTok Shop is not the first cross-border platform to adopt a "middleman-led recruitment" strategy in the US market.

At the end of 2025, Temu also sought to rapidly expand its US seller network by offering high bounties to "middlemen."

At that time, Temu frequently emailed Amazon platform consultants (professionals engaged in Amazon e-commerce operation consulting) with offers such as: "$1,000 for every successful referral of a US seller." This reward far exceeded the industry's standard "registration bonus" norms.

This time, TikTok's "middleman-led" approach goes a step further than Temu's by directly linking rewards to brand sales revenue, potentially indicating that competition among major platforms for high-quality brand resources will intensify further in 2026.

According to eMarketr data, TikTok Shop's total sales in the US for 2025 are estimated to be approximately $15.8 billion. Meanwhile, its share of the US social commerce market has reached about 18.2%. Another report from Momentum Works pointed out that as of the first half of last year, the cumulative GMV growth of TikTok Shop's US site was astonishing, surging 91% year-on-year.

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