Best Buy will bring nearly 10,000 products to TikTok Shop starting in late October, the retailer announced this week, making it one of the first big-box retailers on the platform. Sephora joined earlier this month. Ulta launched in March.

None of these are coincidences. They're the output of a funded recruitment program TikTok has been running all year, and the target list is explicitly brands already doing volume on Amazon and Shopify.

What Project Horizon Actually Pays For

TikTok recruited roughly 100 ecommerce agencies and tasked each with onboarding brands generating at least $10 million in annual sales on other platforms. The incentive structure is specific: an agency that recruits at least 30 brands whose combined TikTok Shop sales reach $50 million by the end of 2026 receives a percentage of that sales volume.

TikTok managers reportedly told agencies that Project Horizon is the number one priority for TikTok Shop in 2026, ahead of creator content and ad formats.

The program isn't public. It runs through selected agency partners, which is why most sellers have never heard of it. Participating brands receive dedicated account management, platform protection, and support resources unavailable through standard onboarding.

The Repositioning TikTok Is Buying

TikTok's rationale is that attracting brands with proven track records repositions TikTok Shop away from being perceived as a Temu-like destination for cheap goods and toward a place where people buy the same products they'd buy on Amazon or Walmart.

Katya Constantine, CEO of agency Digishopgirl Media, put it directly: “They're trying to position themselves more toward a mainstream channel like an Amazon versus how people consider Temu.”

Samsung, Ralph Lauren, and Disney joined in 2025. Best Buy, Sephora, and Ulta followed this year.

The Numbers Behind the Push

TikTok Shop is projected to reach $23.41 billion in US retail ecommerce sales this year, a 48% jump year over year. That would put it ahead of the US ecommerce businesses of Target, Costco, Best Buy, and Kroger.

Circana projects the platform could grow from roughly 1% of US retail sales today to 10% by 2028.

Meanwhile, 70% of US social commerce shoppers made a purchase on TikTok in the past year, the highest share of any social platform, according to an April Bazaarvoice and eMarketer survey.

What This Costs Smaller Sellers

TikTok Shop's appeal for independent brands has been the absence of gatekeeping. A creator could turn an unknown product into a hit without a retail buyer approving anything first. That dynamic made the platform an incubator for brands challenging established players.

Project Horizon imports those established players deliberately, with account management and support that independent sellers don't receive.

The competitive pressure lands in two places. Creator partnerships get more expensive as brands with real budgets compete for the same talent. And the categories where enterprise brands concentrate, electronics, beauty, apparel, become harder to break into on content quality alone.

Best Buy's initial assortment targets small appliances, headphones, cameras, laptops, and accessories, categories where independent electronics sellers have been building audiences for two years.

What to Watch

One agency source noted that elevated Project Horizon benefits are tied to the 2026 onboarding window, with support levels expected to decline once TikTok reaches enterprise coverage. If accurate, the recruitment push has a timeline, and the competitive intensity it creates may stabilize after it closes.

The more useful signal for smaller sellers is whether creator economics shift. If you're paying affiliate commissions or seeding product, track your cost per creator partnership over the next two quarters. Enterprise brands entering with dedicated budgets tend to move that number before they move anything else.