When Brandon Hurst first decided to sell his plants on TikTok Live in 2023, the 32-year-old Sylmar resident didn’t know what to expect. He said he thought he could sell at least 30 plants, but instead he could sell 250 plants.
Now, three years later, the internet creator who goes by Brandon the Plant Guy sells up to 5,000 plants a week, operates out of a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse in Sylmar and has a staff of 13. He owes much of this success to the exposure he gained on TikTok.
“If it wasn’t for TikTok, I would be unemployed,” Hurst said. “I’d finish the job and go back to the desk job I had before. I was already on that path, that’s where we were headed. And then TikTok really turned that around.”
Hurst is one of 920,000 California-based businesses using the social media platform to reach new customers and grow their brands, according to new data from consulting firm PF Global.
According to a PF Global report commissioned by TikTok, TikTok helped generate $12 billion in advertising and product sales for these businesses in 2025 and supported 52,000 jobs in the state.
Nationwide last year, economic activity on TikTok contributed $81 billion to approximately 8.5 million U.S. businesses, the report said.
The increase in activity reflects a growing trend towards online commerce, as more small businesses and consumers turn to social media platforms such as TikTok to buy and sell products.
“We’re enabling American culture, American creators, and American businesses to reach a worldwide audience,” Nicole Nason, TikTok’s head of U.S. public policy, said in a presentation Wednesday morning.
The new report comes as TikTok is increasingly keen to tout its economic impact as a newly formed US joint venture. In January, the company was taken over by three managing investors: Silver Lake, Oracle and Emirati investment company MGX each held a 15% stake, while ByteDance held 19.9% of the investments. The move comes after TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance came under pressure to divest ownership of the app’s US operations due to security concerns or face a nationwide ban.
Last month, TikTok also settled a $400 million lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, ending a 2024 lawsuit alleging the company violated federal children’s privacy laws.
TikTok, which operates its U.S. headquarters in Culver City, where it employs several hundred workers, is known mostly for its viral, short-form vertical videos. But over the years, the platform has become a hub for curated viral content and a central part of many businesses’ marketing strategies.
The app also has features like TikTok Live, where businesses can host live shopping events, and TikTok Shop, which serves as a direct-to-consumer online marketplace.
For its research, PF Global surveyed more than 11,000 adults and 5,000 businesses in the United States. The firm also conducted five case studies with small businesses and TikTok creators in the U.S. and interviewed more than 600 people across the country. The dataset combined survey data with government statistics, industry research and TikTok’s own internal data.
PF Global recently published a similar economic report for the UK and is working on reports for TikTok and 10 other European countries.
Neil Ross, partner at PF Global, said a common global theme is that TikTok users are more likely to see something on the platform and go out and do it.
“People all over the world are using this as a sort of digital front door to figure out where to go, what to shop, what experiences to have,” Ross said.
The US report states that 27 million Americans “visited an independent store, cafe or restaurant for the first time after seeing it on the platform.”
The app’s roots date back to 2014, when an app called Musical.ly was launched in Shanghai. In 2016, Chinese technology company ByteDance launched a similar platform called Douyin in China.
As the apps grew in popularity, ByteDance realized their potential. In 2017, it acquired Musical.ly and combined all these platforms into one platform called TikTok. Over the next few years, the app began its rapid rise by attracting users with a specially crafted algorithm and viral trends. Today, 200 million Americans use TikTok every month, according to PF Global.
“TikTok powers real economic impact across the United States on a daily basis, helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, reach new customers, and create jobs across the country,” TikTok CEO Adam Presser said in a statement.