Can you reduce the 9% TikTok takes?+
No, and neither can anyone else. TikTok's published rate card puts supplements at a flat 9% inclusive of VAT in the UK and across the EU. Any agency telling you they can reclassify a supplement or a cosmetic into a cheaper bracket is proposing a policy breach on a category you had to apply to enter. Beauty devices are the exception, and the only legitimate one. Hair tools, shavers, toothbrushes, hair removal, facial beauty devices and massage devices genuinely sit in TikTok's reduced 7% tier. If you sell one and it is filed in the wrong category, that is two points of GMV you are giving away, and we will move it. What we reduce elsewhere is the other 25 points: return costs through shop performance score, return rate, and blended take rate through order value and roster mix.
Why is there no commission at all?+
Because our cost is your roster, not your revenue. Sourcing a creator, vetting them, shipping them product, briefing them and approving what they say costs us the same whether that creator sells £200 or £20,000. Charging you a percentage of the second one is charging you for our luck rather than our work. It also removes four arguments neither of us needs to have: what counts as attributable GMV, how returns are netted, where the baseline sits if you already sell, and what happens in the month a single video goes unusually well. None of that is on your invoice now.
What counts as an active creator?+
One who published at least one piece of content featuring your products in the calendar month. That is the whole test. Creators we sourced, seeded and briefed who never posted are not billed to you. We carry that cost, because finding the ones who post is the job. It also means we have no reason to pad your roster with names, which is the usual failure of this channel. You move up a band after two consecutive months above the threshold and down after one month below it.
Can we start with something smaller than six months?+
Yes. That is what the pilot is for. One market, thirty-five samples, at least fifteen videos with usage rights, and a written read-out on whether the full channel is worth building for your catalogue. £850 or €990, once per brand, and it comes off your first invoice if you go ahead within thirty days. If the answer at the end is that this channel is not for you, you have spent under a thousand finding that out instead of thirty.
Are these reviews?+
No, and the difference is not cosmetic. What we produce is creator video content with the commercial relationship disclosed. It is not a rating on your TikTok Shop listing. TikTok's review policy prohibits sellers from offering money, free products, discounts, refunds or any other incentive in exchange for listing reviews, and the penalty is violation points or losing your selling privileges outright. In the United Kingdom, commissioning a review while concealing the incentive is separately an offence under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, enforceable by the CMA without going to court. We do neither. Disclosed creator content is exactly what TikTok's sample programme exists to generate, and it is the thing you can legally run as an ad and put on your own site. Any agency offering to get you reviews on your listing in exchange for free product is offering you violation points.
What happens if it does not work?+
You have spent three months finding out instead of twelve. Either side can end it after month six on thirty days' notice. What holds us to the work is not a percentage, it is the band: we only bill for creators who published, so a month where we stop finding people who post is a month where our invoice falls. The output commitments are in the contract in plain language, not on this page as a promise.
Who owns the creator relationships?+
Creators we source and onboard stay our relationship for twelve months after we stop working together. Creators you brought are yours. It is in the contract in plain language.
Can we just do this in-house?+
Above a certain scale you should. A full-time creator manager, a part-time logistics coordinator, tooling and a warehouse relationship is four to five thousand a month before anyone posts anything. Our band at that size is comparable, so the question is whether you want to hire and manage that team or rent it built. Where the maths clearly favours us is under about £25,000 a month in creator GMV, where you cannot justify the headcount, and again above £100,000, where our share of your GMV drops below 6% and no percentage-based agency will match that.
We sell in France. Does the influencer law stop us using creators?+
No. Food supplements are not banned from influencer promotion in France, which is a common misreading. What the law does is make the creator personally subject to the EU health-claims regulation, and make the brand, the creator and the agency jointly liable for what gets said. Written contracts are mandatory above €1,000 per creator per year, and gifted product counts toward that threshold. It is workable. It is just not workable improvised.
Do you run the paid media too?+
Separately, and only once the organic creator content has told us which videos are worth putting money behind. Scaling a creative that has not proven itself organically is how brands burn budget on this platform.