On Friday, the official Supreme Court trial that will decide the fate of TikTok in the U.S. begins. The ongoing saga has had ups and downs, including President-elect Donald Trump calling for the ban initially and now vowing to halt it.
Experts are divided on whether the ban will actually go into effect, leaving both creators and the brands who have come to rely on the platform’s viral power uncertain about TikTok’s future.
One such brand is Collars & Co. The three-year-old brand came off the ground hot thanks to a TikTok video created by founder Justin Baer in 2021 at his daughter’s behest. The video, in which Baer shows off the starched collar polos the brand specializes in, went viral and immediately began driving sales. That led to multiple appearances on “Shark Tank,” $1 million in startup funding from Mark Cuban, a physical store in Chicago and a million units sold to over 400,000 customers by the end of 2024.
Baer said that losing out on access to the 160,000 followers his brand has earned on TikTok will be a major annoyance, though not a crippling blow to the brand. TikTok had the biggest impact on Collars & Co.’s success when the brand was just starting.
“At our current scale, having a video go viral on TikTok isn’t as material as it once was,” Baer said. “For a smaller brand, it has much more value.”
TikTok has been noted for its ability to launch both brands and individual creators into stardom practically overnight thanks to its powerful, if opaque, algorithm. Numerous brands have told Glossy over the years that blowing up on TikTok is a gift for new brands but also something that’s impossible to predict or plan for. A common strategy has been to simply post a lot and hope that one or more videos take off.
But that’s changing, Baer said. On both TikTok and its competitors like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, the amount of time and effort needed to consistently produce videos that take off with the audience is increasing.
“There are so many more creators and people posting that it’s harder to break through,” Baer said. “You used to be able to do one post a day and have one take off per week. Now I think you have to double that to see the same results.”
TikTok’s overall effectiveness for brands has been slowing over the last few quarters. Monthly follower growth for established accounts has dropped from 5% in mid-2023 to 3% at the end of 2024. Overall user growth on the platform, meanwhile, dropped from a 20% increase in 2022 to a 9% increase last year.
“We are using lots of different marketing channels, so [a ban] won’t have the biggest material effect on our revenue, at least in a way that’s immediate and trackable,” Baer said. “But losing access to fans stinks. I’m hoping the ban doesn’t go through and we can find a resolution.”
