Amid debate in Washington over whether or not TikTok must be banned if its Chinese language proprietor doesn’t promote it, one group is watching with specific curiosity: the various manufacturers — notably within the magnificence, skincare, style, and well being and wellness industries — which have used the video app to spice up their gross sales.

Youthforia, a make-up model with greater than 185,000 followers on TikTok, is considering shifting extra advertising and marketing to different platforms, like YouTube and Instagram. Underlining, which makes the favored model Nailboo, deliberate to make use of TikTok to launch a product with a serious retailer in August and is now questioning if it must change course. And BeautyStat, which sells skincare merchandise on TikTok Store, can’t even fathom the thought of the platform’s disappearing.

TikTok is “simply too massive, particularly in magnificence and in sure industries, I really feel, for it to vanish,” stated Yaso Murray, BeautyStat’s chief advertising and marketing officer.

Corporations and creators have identified for years that TikTok may very well be in danger. However these fears appear extra actual now that the Home has handed a invoice that might ban TikTok in the USA until its proprietor, ByteDance, bought it. (Since that vote final week, the invoice’s progress has slowed within the Senate.)

Some lawmakers in Washington assume TikTok is a platform for spying by the Chinese language authorities. Mother and father fume that it’s rotting their kids’s brains. However numerous corporations — massive and small — credit score TikTok and its band of influencers for getting their merchandise in entrance of potential prospects, particularly younger ones.

Retailers, whether or not Sephora, Walmart, Goal or Amazon, have additionally been massive beneficiaries of TikTok, stated Razvan Romanescu, chief govt and co-founder of Underlining and 10PM Curfew, a agency that connects content material creators with manufacturers.

“If one thing goes viral on TikTok, they promote out,” Mr. Romanescu stated. “So I really feel like the entire ecosystem is pushed by the discoverability that TikTok offered.”

For some manufacturers, TikTok has turn out to be an integral piece of promoting technique and gross sales development. That’s partly as a result of the brief movies are simply digestible by shoppers and partly as a result of advertising and marketing on the platform is comparatively cheap for smaller manufacturers. TikTok Store, which began final yr and permits buyers to purchase merchandise straight on the app, has turn out to be notably widespread amongst magnificence and style manufacturers.

“Pre-Covid, the sweetness class was fairly flat, perhaps rising a few proportion factors annually,” stated Anna Mayo, a vp of magnificence and private care at NIQ, a analysis agency. However through the pandemic, when shoppers had extra time on their arms and Zoom calls grew to become extra widespread, TikTok magnificence and skincare movies exploded.

“Since then, the sweetness business has been all about development and hasn’t slowed down,” Ms. Mayo stated. “TikTok is a giant driver of that development.”

New merchandise or clothes could be highlighted by people who, in contrast to film stars or fashions, really feel extra relatable to viewers. The short how-to movies can present one of the simplest ways to combine and match spring sweaters and denims or the order during which to use toner, serums, moisturizers and sunscreen in a morning skincare routine. Some folks say they go to TikTok earlier than Google for purchasing.

“The primary video was a make-up tutorial, exhibiting you how one can flawlessly cowl zits utilizing three merchandise,” stated Mikayla Nogueira, a 25-year-old influencer who began making TikTok movies 4 years in the past. “In simply 60 seconds, you realized a brand new ability.”

That was when Ms. Nogueira had time on her arms after her college shut down courses and Ulta Magnificence, the place she labored, closed its shops due to the pandemic. Right now, she has 15.5 million followers on TikTok and works often with magnificence and skincare manufacturers.

Whereas bigger corporations can spend advertising and marketing {dollars} throughout quite a lot of websites, TikTok gives a extra inexpensive promoting channel than platforms like Google and Meta, which owns Instagram.

“For a direct-to-consumer enterprise like ours, the platform may be very distinctive,” stated Nadya Okamoto, who began posting TikTok movies in regards to the natural menstrual merchandise of her firm, August, in the summertime of 2021.

First, TikTok’s “For You” feed is continually placing August’s movies in entrance of latest shoppers, not ones who’ve chosen to comply with the model on different social media platforms like Instagram. Second, the platform permits Ms. Okamoto to be an in-house chief content material creator.

“Different manufacturers are spending a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars} every month on promoting, and we’re spending subsequent to nothing,” she stated.

Requested a couple of attainable TikTok ban, Fiona Co Chan, the chief govt and a co-founder of Youthforia, stated, “I don’t know that something would fill the outlet the identical manner.”

TikTok permits Frida to speak about its child and postpartum merchandise in a manner that different promoting and social media platforms may even see as taboo, stated Chelsea Hirschhorn, the corporate’s founder. The model was a relative latecomer as an lively person of the app — ramping up its posts beginning a couple of yr in the past — however has about 123,000 followers and has had a number of movies go viral.

Nonetheless, Ms. Hirschhorn stated, there are reputable considerations about TikTok’s going away or altering not directly, and Frida isn’t overly reliant on the app. It has discovered how one can promote each in conventional boards (it’s now bought in 4,000 Walmart shops in the USA) and in additional inventive methods (sponsoring Jason Kelce’s pregnant spouse, Kylie, on the Tremendous Bowl when his Philadelphia Eagles performed within the recreation final yr).

“I believe it’s actually necessary that manufacturers have a bulletproof, strong advertising and marketing plan in quite a lot of media channels, each conventional and rising, so as to climate any potential problem,” Ms. Hirschhorn stated.

Whereas some corporations work on contingency plans for brand spanking new merchandise, others are watching and hoping legislators gained’t ban the platform.

At BeautyStat, Ms. Murray stated she was “attempting to not get too alarmed by every little thing that’s occurring as a result of I believe quite a lot of manufacturers would abruptly expertise a giant gap of their gross sales.” She added, “It might be very damaging.”