When Lauren Wyman felt crushed below the load of her company finance job in 2019, she discovered solace in launching a small goth and different clothes enterprise.

She initially made Fb and Instagram accounts for her store, Darkish Mom Clothes, however generated solely $5,000 to $6,000 in gross sales the primary yr. Wyman, 32, joined TikTok at first of the pandemic, launched new merchandise and posted a few movies that went viral. In 2022, she grossed $217,000.

“Part of what folks have carried out on this app is created their very own slice of the American dream that’s preached a lot about,” mentioned Wyman, who’s primarily based in Arizona, “whether or not it’s opening a small enterprise or people who find themselves not dealing with homelessness, people who find themselves in a position to retire, creators who at the moment are allowed to pursue their inventive pursuits.”

Now, creators fear the platform may be taken away from them. TikTok Chief Government Shou Zi Chew testified in entrance of lawmakers Thursday, making an attempt to persuade them that TikTok isn’t a nationwide safety risk. However he was largely unsuccessful in making the case that TikTok was out of the attain of Chinese language affect, observers say.

The Biden administration has not too long ago elevated efforts to pressure a sale of TikTok by its proprietor ByteDance, which is a Chinese language firm topic to Chinese language legislation — the identical factor Trump sought to do in 2020 with a TikTok ban that was blocked by federal courts. On March 15, the Committee on International Funding in america reportedly gave ByteDance an ultimatum: Promote TikTok or face a ban in america.

A current invoice launched within the Senate that might allow the Biden administration to ban TikTok has bipartisan help.

An outright ban of the app could be a devastating blow to most of the small companies which have turned to TikTok to achieve potential prospects as an alternative of shelling out for extra conventional and dear types of advertising.

Kellis Landrum, co-founder of Los Angeles advertising company True North Social, mentioned Fb and Instagram are “pay-to-play” platforms that don’t give as a lot of a return on funding.

“TikTok presents the broadest natural attain of any of the channels proper now,” Landrum mentioned. “If you happen to’re very profitable on TikTok, that’s in all probability most of what you’re specializing in as a result of [as] a small enterprise, you possibly can’t afford to assault advertising on a bunch of various fronts on the similar time.”

Elyse Burns, who runs a stationery and residential items design firm she launched in school in 2015, mentioned she’s seen a direct correlation between her TikTok movies and gross sales. After posting a video that includes a cargo of day planners that bought 2.9 million views in June 2022, she bought greater than 2,000 day planners in two days.

“I can take a look at my gross sales and see like that month, I had a viral TikTok,” Burns mentioned.

Final yr, she did $1 million in gross sales via her web site, which receives site visitors from TikTok and Instagram. She devotes 4 hours a day to these two platforms however has since expanded to doing wholesale and opening a storefront in Durham, N.C., to diversify her income. By means of her enterprise, which she now runs full time, she’s been in a position to repay most of her scholar loans and buy a home.

Christina Ha skilled the same phenomenon along with her New York cat cafe and rescue group, Meow Parlour. In late 2020, she began posting movies of her retired dad and mom interacting with a few of her foster kittens.

When she posted a video about her dad and mom stitching cat beds to help her rescue work, her viewers clamored to purchase them. She raised $20,000 in a single week.

“It was insane and type of surprising,” Ha mentioned. “Once I look again on the video, it in all probability wasn’t my best work.”

A video she posted this month captioned, “A day within the lifetime of my 76-year-old dad,” bought 10.2 million views — and one other $30,000 in cat mattress gross sales. She’s additionally acquired a flurry of tourists to Meow Parlour who’ve signed as much as foster and undertake cats and turn out to be month-to-month donors to the nonprofit.

“TikTok is so, so, so superb. The group is extraordinarily supportive in a approach I’ve not discovered on different social media platforms,” Ha mentioned.

Even companies reminiscent of rubbish can cleansing and carpet restore have discovered audiences on TikTok.

Josh Nolan, who runs Carpet Restore Guys within the San Francisco Bay Space, mentioned he joined TikTok after practically 20 years of doing carpet restore after a technician informed him he wanted to get on social media. The outcomes had been astounding.

When he began shifting content material that he posted on Instagram and Fb to TikTok, they had been “simply going via the roof within the numbers,” Nolan mentioned.

Nolan nonetheless makes use of Yelp and Google AdWords to usher in enterprise, however he hears from prospects on a regular basis that they’ve watched TikTok or YouTube movies of him doing carpet repairs, he mentioned. He now has greater than 850,000 followers on the app and makes some extra earnings via model sponsorships.

“I’m not off the truck but. I’m nonetheless on the job on my knees fixing carpets, nevertheless it’s been good aspect cash,” Nolan mentioned. “It’s paid for some holidays for my household, and it’s simply actually an thrilling factor for somebody who by no means checked out himself as like a social media content material creator. I’m only a blue-collar contractor. However but you’ve bought this useful resource right here at your disposal.”

Final fall, TikTok partnered with American Categorical on its #ShopSmall Accelerator program to assist small companies throughout the vacation procuring season. Per week after the Senate invoice to offer the federal authorities the facility to ban the app was launched, TikTok launched an initiative highlighting small-business entrepreneurs who’ve discovered explosive success on the platform, permitting many to stop their day jobs.

That’s what Wyman hopes to do, however the uncertainty of TikTok now provides her pause.

“Desirous to take the leap but additionally being scared, that you just go from … having over 125,000 followers [TikTok and Instagram combined] all the way down to having solely 17,000 [on Instagram], that’s a big danger to take,” she mentioned.

As a part of the corporate’s marketing campaign to alter lawmakers’ minds, TikTok paid for a bunch of TikTokers to journey to Washington forward of Chew’s testimony to protest the potential ban of their beloved app. Chew himself posted a TikTok interesting to the lots a number of days earlier than his testimony.

“I can let you know with out query that the following technology of Black enterprise house owners are going to return from the TikTok platform,” mentioned Baedri Nichole, a bakery proprietor from Columbus, Ohio, who was a part of the TikTok-organized information convention. “If you happen to ban TikTok, then you definitely put in danger placing a cap on the ambitions of a complete technology of wealth creators.”

With out entry to TikTok, small-business house owners say they might in all probability focus their efforts on Instagram, the place they already cross-post content material from TikTok. However many are lukewarm concerning the Meta-owned platform.

“Instagram hasn’t actually carried out a lot for me as a creator or a small enterprise,” Wyman mentioned. “I’ve used their instruments, I’ve tried their advertisements. … The platforms are nowhere close to the identical by way of their viewers, their engagement.”