Podean snaps up Social Commerce Club to focus on social shopping, TikTok Shop

Creator-led shopping and younger buyers are making shopping via social media platforms like TikTok Shop a big deal.

Podean—a marketplace agency that works with merchants across platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Target—has acquired Social Commerce Club, an agency that specializes in helping brands sell on TikTok Shop.

Social Commerce Club is a specialized agency and TikTok Shop Platinum Partner that helps brands build and scale their presence on the platform. The agency handles creator-led sales and runs a creator network that connects brands with the right influencers to drive sales.

“By combining this social expertise with our global marketplace pedigree, we are providing our clients with an unmatched ability to not just drive TikTok Shop sales but leverage that impact across other e-commerce channels including Amazon and their own website sales,” Travis Johnson, CEO of Podean, said in a statement.

In April, Podean acquired Amerge, an EU agency that offers advertising services to merchants selling on Amazon in Europe.

Spin the flywheel: Speaking about the rise of TikTok Shop, Ryan Craver, co-founder and chief strategy and AI officer at Podean, told Retail Brew that better fulfillment, more creators telling authentic stories about products, and a stronger product selection are all factors in the success of the platform.

“They now provide fulfillment via what’s called Fulfillment by TikTok, which is two to three days versus historically the fulfillment time periods were typically six-plus days,” Craver said. “The second thing is generally a customer is impacted more by a content creator than they are by general reviews and general searching.”

More than half of social buyers (51%) in the US will shop on TikTok this year, per eMarketer’s forecast for 2026. “Growth is concentrating on platforms and features that convert discovery into purchases,” eMarketer noted in its forecast.

TikTok Shop is reportedly recruiting bigger brands under a new initiative called Project Horizon.