In its first year, Spotlight Media has become one of TikTok Shop’s top three partner agencies, introducing established brands to effective social selling strategies. Co-founder Sam Habibi and his team have built more than a marketing agency—they achieve measurable results through a proven social commerce approach that benefits both brands and content creators.

From TikTok Creator to Agency Founder

When COVID-19 emerged, Sam had just completed high school and started creating TikTok content. 

His initial sneaker-focused posts led to unexpected opportunities: “I was posting content about sneakers and grew that account to around 30,000 followers. There was just an influx of people DMing me asking to buy the stuff I posted about.”

Observing China’s surge in live shopping during the pandemic sparked Sam’s interest in social commerce potential. 

“When Covid happened in China, live shopping took off,” he explains. “Similar to how Netflix became a thing in the U.S., where people were just watching videos of movies all the time, in China, it was live streams and live shopping. So they were already ahead, and we knew the U.S. market was also bound for a change.”

After testing various approaches, including UGC creation and influencer marketing, Spotlight Media found its opportunity with the launch of TikTok Shop. 

“We have a very close working relationship with TikTok, and our goal is to bring on as many brands as possible to the platform and help them succeed,” Sam says.

Addressing Influencer Marketing’s Cost Challenges

Spotlight Media tackles a core issue in traditional influencer marketing: unsustainable pricing. 

“All these huge brands paid creators thousands of dollars for videos. So they’ve created this bubble where every creator expected thousands of dollars,” Sam explains. “I have screenshots of people with 10,000 followers asking for five grand for a video.”

These inflated rates made influencer partnerships impossible for smaller brands. The company tried performance-based payment but struggled with tracking sales impact. “One of the big challenges was attribution,” Sam notes. “A campaign could get 10 million views, and the client would ask, ‘How much sales did this generate?’ And I couldn’t answer them because attribution wasn’t a thing.”

TikTok Shop provided the solution through direct sales tracking and simplified purchasing. “Link in bios and comments, and all these things are just so much friction for consumers,” Sam explains. “That’s right around when TikTok Shop launched. And we were like, ‘Oh my God, this is the answer.'”

Comprehensive TikTok Shop Services

Spotlight Media manages every aspect of a brand’s TikTok Shop presence, highlighting sustainable creator partnerships.

“We’re a full end-to-end stop for brands for TikTok Shop,” Sam details. “Many brands want to do TikTok Shop but don’t know anything about it. We don’t just offer one part of it like the videos or the ads; we offer the whole thing.”

Their services include:

1. Shop Management: “Making sure that the products are listed correctly, working on pricing strategy, PDP optimization, violations, all the shop-related things, and signing up for campaigns,” Sam explains.
   
2. Creator Partnerships: “We work with many affiliates, establishing those relationships with creators, making content guidelines, and ensuring high-quality content,” says Sam. “One edge we have is that, early on, we realized that the rate at which brands grow on TikTok Shop is way faster than that of creators. So creators will be a bottleneck, and creators will be in high demand.”
   
3. Advertising Management: “Once we have that content, we get the content from creators, get the spark codes, i.e., the whitelisting feature on TikTok Shop, and manage their media buying side,” Sam details.
   
4. Live Commerce Studio: “We have a live studio here in L.A., so we offer live stream services where we have a host that comes on and talks about the product,” says Sam.
   
5. Custom Technology: The company develops its optimization tools. “We have engineers on our team who create tools, whether it’s for automating creator outreach, analyzing creators, or video performance. Many AI models we’ve developed help us explore creators and match the right creators with the right brands.”
   
6. Strategic Brand Selection: Spotlight Media carefully chooses its partners. “We only work with brands that we fully believe in their success on TikTok Shop,” Sam emphasizes. “Just because you can be on TikTok Shop doesn’t mean you have to be. Most of the clients are, or almost all of them are, big outside of TikTok Shop. They’re already big on Amazon or Shopify.”

Proven Success Stories

Spotlight Media’s comprehensive approach has delivered measurable results across multiple product categories and price points, and several brands have showcased the effectiveness of their methodology.

Their work with gummy brand Grüns exemplifies their ability to build success from the ground up. “We started Grüns from $0 and scaled them to over 30,000 units sold,” Sam reveals, adding that this achievement came through careful creator selection, targeted advertising, and strategic product positioning on the platform.

As the leading TikTok/Amazon jewelry brand, Pavoi needed to maintain its market position while building a presence on TikTok Shop. Through Spotlight Media’s guidance, it successfully transferred its business model to the platform, maintaining brand consistency while adapting to the unique requirements of social commerce.

According to Sam, BRĒZ presents the most striking example of rapid scaling, achieving “over 36,000 units sold” from the initial launch. “We work with hundreds of affiliates and get a lot of content for them,” Sam explains, describing their quantity-focused strategy. 

Quality is equally crucial: “Once we find the good-quality creators for these brands, we foster relationships with them,” he adds.

The Fix, a skincare brand, illustrates how systematic affiliate management can transform sales patterns. Before partnering with Spotlight Media, Sam revealed that approximately 30% of their sales came through affiliates. Through targeted content guidelines and strategic creator relationships, this figure doubled. 

Key Industry Challenges

Spotlight Media identifies several crucial factors for success:

1. Product Compatibility: “Not every product’s gonna do well on TikTok Shop,” Sam cautions. “Your product needs to be content-friendly. People need to be able to make interesting content out of it.”
   
2. Creator Availability: “The rate at which brands are growing on TikTok shop is way faster than creators,” Sam notes. This creates intense competition for quality creators.
   
3. Commission Structures: “If you’re offering 10% and a bigger brand is offering 30-40%, why would a creator work with you?” Sam asks. “Because there’s opportunity cost for them.”
   

Social Commerce Tomorrow

Sam sees significant potential in social commerce’s growth. “There’s no blueprint for it right now,” he says. “We’re literally in the forefront of something that hasn’t been done before, especially in the United States.”

The shift from search to discovery shopping marks a fundamental change. “Think about it – instead of searching for the best or cutest shirt for girls, if you search for it on TikTok, you get content about it. You see it in action versus on other platforms where it’s just images or super branded stuff that feels fake.”

This change creates new opportunities for creators. “Twenty years ago, it was through movies, and then it became through influencers. Now, any random person can pick up their phone and become an affiliate for a brand,” Sam explains. “It’s unlocked a whole new group of people to become creators.”

“TikTok Shop has proved that social commerce works, that you can combine that idea of commerce and entertainment, and I think what comes next will be even crazier,” Sam concludes. “Once YouTube and Instagram start their shops or another pure shopping platform emerges… it’ll fully transform how brands and consumers interact.”