Business
L.A. influencers, businesses live or die on TikTok's algorithm. Now they fear for the future
Brandon Hurst has built a loyal social media following and a growing business selling plants on TikTok, where a mysterious algorithm combined with the right content can let users amass thousands of followers.
Hurst, who’s based in the San Fernando Valley, sold 20,000 plants in three years while running his business on Instagram. After expanding the business he launched in 2020 to TikTok Shop, an e-commerce platform integrated into the popular social media app, he sold 57,000 plants in 2023.
He now conducts business entirely on TikTok and relies on its sales as his sole source of income. Hurst, 30, declined to say how much he makes.
Hurst also posts content about plant care for a 186,000-person following on TikTok. He’s one of thousands of content creators who engage with an audience on the app and make money doing it — whether by selling products or partnering with brands.
But Hurst, along with many other creators and influencers, is now wondering whether Washington could threaten the progress he’s made with his business.
After President Biden signed a bill into law that would ban the Chinese-owned app in the U.S. unless it is sold to an American company, social media experts said the economic effects would extend beyond individual creators such as Hurst.
TikTok has advantages that set it apart from other platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat, Hurst and other creators said.
“What makes TikTok special is the algorithm,” Hurst said, noting that if TikTok’s owners sell the app, the algorithm could change.
As with other social networks, TikTok uses a secret algorithm to determine which videos to show to each user, based on what they’ve seen before and with whom they have interacted. What sets it apart is the videos are usually short, informal and designed to entertain, and many spark conversations among creators.
Many small businesses prefer TikTok because of its informality — they don’t need a big production budget to showcase their products or services. They just need a good hook to grab viewers, and once they’ve gone viral a time or two and established their niche, TikTok will bring the viewers to them.
A ban on TikTok would have cascading effects — especially in Los Angeles, where so many influencers live and work. The Hollywood apartment complex 1600 Vine, for example, is considered by many to be a headquarters for content creators.
That address isn’t the only hub for TikTok stars. Another group lives in a Beverly Hills home dubbed the Clubhouse. If TikTok is banned in the U.S., many creators would lose large portions of their business, they said.
But a sale doesn’t solve every problem either. Some players are already lining up to buy the app even though it’s not yet for sale. And creators such as the Clubhouse residents, who make content as their full-time job, fear a new TikTok ownership could make it harder to attract an audience.
Any ban is expected to face legal challenges and delays, and TikTok executives have said there will be no immediate effect on the app.
Roughly 7 million small-business owners and 1 million influencers rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, according to Rory Cutaia, chief executive of Verb Technology, which owns a livestream social media shopping platform that has partnered with TikTok Shop.
The platform Market.Live helps small-business owners launch on TikTok, where they also often post videos about their products. TikTok Shop receives around 6,000 applications from small businesses each day, Cutaia said.
Banning TikTok would send ripple effects through the economy because it’s become a primary platform for emerging companies, he said.
“You’re probably talking about billions of dollars that would be removed from the economy,” Cutaia said. “The entire world of retail has changed completely. Today, you need to be distributing your products through social media.”
People calling for the banning of TikTok attend a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2023.
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
Adam Sommers, who owns Willow Boutique in Cincinnati, Ohio, with Chelsea Sommers, said TikTok leveled the playing field for small businesses. His was one of the first to sell merchandise on TikTok Shop.
“Everybody had an opportunity to become the next giant in their industry,” Sommers said. “A lot of people have scaled probably beyond their wildest dreams.”
Influencers don’t need to own a business to make money on TikTok, one creator said. They also don’t need to have huge followings to make significant profits, according to Denise Butler, chief operating officer at Verb Technology.
“TikTok very uniquely sets up a content creator to build community and provides amazing exposure,” said Payton Reed, a lifestyle blogger based in Memphis, Tenn., with around 16,000 followers. “When I first started blogging and creating content, I didn’t realize that it could eventually turn into a career.”
Reed makes money sharing links to other products. She was able to help support her husband financially through medical school with her content creator income, she said.
For small-business owners, TikTok Shop makes it “frictionless” to sell and buy products on the app, Butler said. Users can shop while watching a relevant video, interact with others who have purchased the product and complete the purchase without leaving the app.
Although some say TikTok is superior to other platforms for its e-commerce functionality, not everyone relies solely on the app.
Adam Waheed, a sketch-comedy content creator based in Los Angeles, said it’s important to have income from more than one platform. He made around $11 million last year across his social media platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook.
“We’ve worked so hard to build these platforms,” Waheed said. “I think for certain creators who rely more on TikTok, it’s going to be much more of an issue,” he said of the potential ban.
TikTok users in L.A. include small-business owners, content creators and everyday users who can engage with millions of personalities and products. The app is its own local economy, and a ban would leave a gaping hole, creators said.
According to a study from TikTok and Oxford Economics, 890,000 businesses and 16 million people actively use TikTok in California. Forty percent of small to midsize businesses in the state said TikTok was crucial to their business.
TikTok also released national economic data showing the app drove $15 billion in revenue for small businesses.
“More than half of small-business owners say TikTok allows them to connect with customers they can’t reach anywhere else,” the report said.
Content creators and the companies that work with them aren’t the only ones concerned about a potential TikTok ban. Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) recently wrote a letter to Biden urging him to consider how a ban would affect laborers.
“Approximately 8,000 people work for TikTok in the United States, concentrated in California and New York,” the letter said. “Their employment and the livelihoods of their families hang in the balance.”
The senator said a ban would harm small-business owners, contractors and other workers, including janitors and servers who help businesses run.
“We need to be taking the time to consider the broader economic impacts,” she said in an interview with The Times. “There are thousands of workers who I think are not being considered.”
Lululemon, the yoga pants and athletic clothing company, has hired a former executive from a rival, Nike, as its new chief executive.
Heidi O’Neill, who spent more than 25 years at Nike, will take the reins and join Lululemon’s board of directors on Sept. 8, the company announced on Wednesday.
The leadership change is happening during a tumultuous time for Lululemon, which had grown to $11 billion in revenue by persuading shoppers to ditch their jeans and slacks for stretchy leggings. But lately, sales have declined in North America amid intense competition and shifting fashion trends, with consumers favoring looser styles rather than the form-fitting silhouettes for which Lululemon is best known.
“As I step into the C.E.O. role in September, my job will be to build on that foundation — to accelerate product breakthroughs, deepen the brand’s cultural relevance, and unlock growth in markets around the world,” Ms. O’Neill, 61, said in a statement.
Lululemon, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has also been entangled in a corporate power struggle over the company’s future. Its billionaire founder, Chip Wilson, has feuded with the board, nominated independent directors and criticized executives.
Lululemon’s previous chief executive, Calvin McDonald, stepped down at the end of January as pressure mounted from Mr. Wilson and some investors. One activist investor, Elliott Investment Management, had pushed its own chief executive candidate, who was not selected.
The interim co-chiefs, Meghan Frank and André Maestrini, will lead the company until Ms. O’Neill’s arrival, when they are expected to return to other senior roles. The pair had outlined a plan to revive sales at Lululemon, promising to invest in stores, save more money and speed up product development.
“We start the year with a real plan, with real strategies,” Mr. Maestrini said in an interview this year. “We make sure decisions are made fast.”
Lululemon said last month that it would add Chip Bergh, the former chief executive of Levi Strauss, to its board to replace David Mussafer, the chairman of the private equity firm Advent International, whom Mr. Wilson had sought to remove.
Ms. O’Neill climbed the organizational chart at Nike for decades, working across divisions including consumer sports, product innovation and brand marketing, and was most recently its president of consumer, product and brand. She left Nike last year amid a shake-up of senior management that led to the elimination of her role.
Analysts said Ms. O’Neill would be expected to find ways to energize Lululemon’s business and reset the company’s culture in order to improve performance.
“O’Neill is her own person who will come with an agenda of change,” said Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, a data analytics and consulting company. “The task ahead is a significant one, but it can be undertaken from a position of relative stability.”
Eaton wildfire survivors’ anger about Southern California Edison’s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with residents calling on government officials to temporarily halt the work.
In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, more than 120 Altadena residents and the town’s council wrote that they had witnessed “manifest failures” by Edison in recent months as it has been tearing up streets and digging trenches to bury the wires.
The residents cited the unexpected financial cost of the work to homeowners and possible harm to the town’s remaining trees. They also pointed out how the work will leave telecommunication wires above ground on poles.
“The current lack of coordination is compounding the stress of a community still reeling from the Eaton Fire, and risks causing further irreparable harm,” the residents wrote.
The council voted unanimously Tuesday night to send the letter.
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Wednesday that the company has been working to address the concerns, including by looking for other sources of funds to help pay for the homeowners’ costs.
“We recognize this community has already faced a number of challenges,” he said.
Johnson said the company will allow homeowners to keep existing overhead lines connecting their homes to the grid if they are worried about the cost.
Edison’s crews, Johnson said, have also been trained to use equipment that avoids roots and preserves the health of trees.
The utility has said that burying the wires as the town rebuilds thousands of homes destroyed in the fire will make the electrical grid safer and more reliable.
But anger has grown as work crews have shown up unexpectedly and residents learned they’re on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars to connect their homes to the buried lines.
Residents have also found the crews digging under the town’s oak and pine trees that survived last year’s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.
Amy Bodek, the county’s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that “utility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.”
Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison’s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.
“While our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,” the residents wrote.
They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.
Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.
The work — which costs an estimated $4 million per mile — will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.
But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.
“We are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,” Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. “Incurring the additional burden of financing SCE’s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.”
Other fire survivors complained of Edison’s lack of planning and coordination with residents.
“I’ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won’t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,” wrote Gail Murphy. “So apparently I’m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?”
Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line — 1-800-250-7339 — is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.
Residents can also go to Edison’s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.
It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried.
The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company’s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.
The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.
The fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.
Oil prices rose and stocks moved slightly higher on Wednesday as investors tried to make sense of President Trump’s decision to extend the cease-fire with Iran despite doubts about the status of another round of peace talks.
An adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the influential speaker of the Iranian Parliament, dismissed the cease-fire announcement, saying that it had “no meaning.” He equated the U.S. naval blockade with bombings, with commercial vessels coming under attack near the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping lane that has been at the center of a growing energy crisis.
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