TikTok Employed Amazon Employees to Launch Store, Then Pivoted Again to China

“At all times day 1” is one in every of six core cultural ideas at TikTok. The slogan, meant to encourage agility and urgency, would possibly sound acquainted. It was coined by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Enterprise ideas aren’t the one factor TikTok has taken from Amazon.

When TikTok formally launched its e-commerce platform Store within the US in 2023, it went on a hiring spree, poaching dozens of Amazon staffers to work in its Bellevue, Washington, places of work, situated just a few blocks from some Amazon places of work. By the tip of 2024, TikTok had 1,700 workers there, based on town’s estimates.

So many TikTok Store workers got here from Amazon that its early workers conferences typically felt like Amazon alumni reunions, present and former staffers informed Enterprise Insider.

“It was Amazon left, proper, and middle,” stated one worker who got here from Amazon. One other ex-Amazonian estimated that 75% of their 2023 TikTok Store orientation group had beforehand labored on the e-commerce large.

Amazon confirmed up in operations, too. TikTok workforce members routinely shared insights about Amazon’s enterprise methods, typically strolling by way of paperwork taken straight from their former employer, two present staffers and one former TikTok staffer stated. And identical to at Amazon, workers crafted narrative memos to share merchandise or concepts and allotted devoted time for folks to learn them. Some tried to infuse TikTok with different Amazon methods like buyer obsession or single-person possession of initiatives from begin to end.

TikTok did not need to be precisely like Amazon — its secret sauce was its social app with in style movies and an influencer community. Nevertheless it actually needed Amazon’s model companions, and to copy the shopper purchasing expertise that had turned Amazon right into a $2 trillion behemoth.

Amazon controls about 40% of the overall US e-commerce market, which might cross $100 billion in 2026, based on EMARKETER. If TikTok might peel away even a small proportion of consumers, the chance could be enormous.

In some methods, TikTok by no means absolutely embraced a local-first method to the US market. Regardless of hiring so many individuals within the US, its key e-commerce leaders continued to largely direct the enterprise from China and Singapore.

Then, final yr, the US workforce started to fall wanting its objectives. Chinese language management at ByteDance, TikTok’s proprietor, started stripping some US executives’ autonomy by way of modifications to their reporting buildings. A parade of US workforce managers left the corporate, and of their place, TikTok’s father or mother firm put in new leaders who weren’t tapped into the Amazon playbook.

Gone are the times of draining data from America’s most iconic e-commerce retailer. TikTok Store leaders are centered on a special North Star: its Chinese language sister app, Douyin.

The modifications on the Store workforce mirror a broader shift inside TikTok, which, even because it seeks an American purchaser, has given extra strategic energy to leaders from China and Singapore.

Some TikTok insiders really feel the shift was inevitable.

ByteDance leaders “weren’t prepared to take heed to what methods labored for Amazon that have been related for TikTok,” a former Store staffer who labored with sellers stated. They stated leaders had a fixation on livestream promoting — an enormous gross sales driver in China that didn’t translate as efficiently to the US market.

Management needed “US illustration and expertise, however they did not need to take a US technique,” this individual continued.

“It was a continuing wrestle between ‘copy Amazon’ and ‘copy Douyin,'” a second former Store employee stated.

TikTok and Amazon didn’t present touch upon this story.

How TikTok copied Amazon

In 2023, TikTok recruited Nicolas Le Bourgeois, a nine-year Amazon veteran, to run TikTok Store’s US operations. Different Amazonians quickly joined TikTok to spice up gross sales in key product classes and workers roles like vendor relationships, belief and security, governance, operations, and logistics.

Like Amazon, TikTok launched its personal “Fulfilled by TikTok” enterprise in 2023. It pushed sellers to ship merchandise to US prospects sooner and established six US warehouses by October 2024, Le Bourgeois informed BI final yr.

Amazon wasn’t the one firm the place TikTok Store sourced expertise, however it was an enormous focus.

The corporate employed individuals who had relationships with “US manufacturers, heritage manufacturers, family names, as a result of they needed us to principally persuade these manufacturers to get on platform,” the previous staffer who labored with sellers stated.

Some workforce members studied Amazon’s product pages, its checkout course of, and different core parts of its purchasing expertise.

By early 2024, TikTok gave the impression to be making progress. Regardless of some customers grumbling about seeing too many e-commerce movies, it was making strides in key metrics like buyer retention. Some manufacturers have been reporting seven-figure hauls from TikTok Store livestreams.

However executives at ByteDance weren’t pleased.

The app’s gross sales have been minuscule in comparison with Douyin, a dominant participant in China that drives a whole lot of billions in annual gross sales there. Bob Kang, ByteDance’s e-commerce chief, known as out the US workforce for lacking 2024 objectives in a February 2025 all-hands.

The corporate was battling recruiting these “family title” manufacturers in some product classes, and as an alternative discovering much more success with smaller sellers, typically based mostly out of China.

ByteDance management started eradicating energy from native US leaders in 2024, present and former staffers stated.

Then got here a sequence of restructurings, two rounds of layoffs, and review-cycle exits over the primary half of 2025. Lots of the early ex-Amazon employees exited, changed by executives with experience engaged on Douyin.

In April, Le Bourgeois was moved beneath former Douyin govt Mu Qing, now not reporting on to Kang. The subsequent month, Le Bourgeois left the corporate, based on an inner memo considered by BI.

Le Bourgeois didn’t reply to a request for remark.

With Le Bourgeois gone, one staffer stated it is grow to be more durable for US workers to speak with ByteDance management.

TikTok Store’s US playbook is locked in on Douyin, not Amazon

ByteDance leaders are actually betting TikTok Store’s future on leaders with Douyin experience.

Douyin’s e-commerce enterprise is a crown jewel for ByteDance, and replicating its methods within the US and different markets might repay huge if the remainder of the world follows Chinese language shoppers in embracing social purchasing.

As TikTok Store expands into further markets, it is operating many operations centrally out of China and Singapore.

In April, the corporate closely restructured its moderation workforce in Latin America to present management to Chinese language and Singaporean leaders somewhat than native managers, based on an inner memo considered by BI.

In Could, it flew Chinese language staffers to São Paulo to assist the rollout of TikTok Store in Brazil.

The corporate’s swing again to its Chinese language roots within the US could appear counterintuitive, as TikTok’s ties to China prompted a 2024 US regulation that requires it to divest from its proprietor. However TikTok doesn’t seem like beneath imminent hazard of shutting down; Trump has prolonged its divestment deadline 3 times since January. And TikTok could quickly separate its US customers right into a country-specific app, The Info reported.

The street forward for TikTok Store, because it faces enterprise and political obstacles, would require embodying the “at all times day 1” agility the corporate lists as a core precept.

After months of management modifications, TikTok Store is grappling with unstable gross sales in 2025 amid Trump’s tariffs on China and the elimination of a key import exemption, BI beforehand reported. Whereas weekly order quantity slumped in Could in comparison with April after tariffs went into impact, the corporate wrote in a weblog put up final month that platform gross sales have been up 120% year-over-year for the primary two weeks of June.

ByteDance is betting it will probably meet its e-commerce ambitions by leaning closely on the experience that made Douyin a frontrunner in China. Some insiders say this might threat lacking the US market nuances that native e-commerce employees would possibly extra simply spot.

In some ways, they by no means dedicated to an area US technique, the third staffer stated. “It has at all times been ‘rebuild Douyin’ for the western market.”