John Lawson of PTM – Fulfillment by TikTok Would be a Positive for Creators Looking to Sell Merch

One on One Interviews

Ecommerce expert John “ColderIce” Lawson and I recently transitioned our Watching Amazon show/podcast into Pass the Mic. The new name doesn’t mean we’ve grown tired of, well, watching Amazon, as we still plan to do plenty of that with all the things the company is into. But by rebranding it as PTM it allows us to broaden the topics and companies we can dive into, and of course TikTok is a great example of that. In fact, there have been a few recent reports of TikTok potentially following in Amazon’s footsteps by building out their own fulfillment centers and capabilities in order to support the growing digital commerce of creators using their video platform. And though there haven’t been any formal announcements that this is happening, it got us to thinking if TikTok could really pull this off. And if they did what would be the potential impact for creators and small retailers trying to reach the billion-plus monthly visitors to the platform. Or why would TikTok fare better than Shopify who tried to build their fulfillment capabilities only to fail fast. John and I went round and round on this one, as the thought of the fastest growing video platform taking on such a huge infrastructure project is intriguing. And we probably came away with more questions than answers.