<figure><img src="https://i.insider.com/6aeb832a9270da3cc66681cb?format=jpeg" height="1500" width="2000" alt="Blurred person walks past a large red and black TikTok logo on an interior wall."><figcaption><p class="copyright">Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Web Summit Qatar via Getty Images; BI</p></figcaption></figure><ul class="summary-list"><li>TikTok Shop's US operations are primarily run by executives from China, a leaked org chart reveals.</li><li>The company's shift away from local US leaders has led to some friction, insiders say.</li><li>ByteDance sold much of its stake in the US division of TikTok, but kept a full grip on its e-commerce business.</li></ul><p>Earlier this year, the e-commerce team at TikTok announced a policy change that sent some of its sellers into a frenzy.</p><p>The company told all US merchants they needed to switch to TikTok Shop's in-house fulfillment and shipping program by the end of March. They could no longer send out their products independently and would have to pay TikTok's service fee.</p><p>The mandate drew backlash, with some sellers threatening to leave the platform, a Shop agency partner said. The company scrapped the proposed policy in February.</p><p>Company insiders say the incident speaks to how leadership within TikTok Shop in the US has changed over the last few years. TikTok has elevated executives with backgrounds in Chinese e-commerce — many of whom are now based in the US — and shed American e-commerce leaders through layoffs or voluntary exits. TikTok Shop's US operations are now largely led by staffers who were previously or are currently based in China, according to an org chart viewed by Business Insider, conversations with company insiders, and a review of executives' verified LinkedIn accounts.</p><p>TikTok Shop is ByteDance's bet on social shopping, a new form of e-commerce in which consumers buy products through influencer videos or livestreams. The platform offers everything from phone chargers to houseplants, enlisting content creators to help sell goods in exchange for a commission.</p><p>The e-commerce platform has gained market share in the US, capturing about 2% of total <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-us-spend-is-larger-than-target-costco-data-2026-8">online retail spend</a> in July, up from about 1.2% a year ago, according to Consumer Edge, a customer-intelligence firm that analyses US credit and debit card transactions. At the same time, the company now has fewer leaders with US e-commerce experience to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-gmv-max-september-shop-ads-big-brand-pushback-2025-8">flag potential issues</a>, more than a dozen current and former staffers said.</p><p>TikTok Shop's operations team is overseen by Mu Qing, a former e-commerce executive for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Mu, who goes by Mason, reports to Bob Kang, ByteDance's e-commerce lead. Six out of the seven US product category leaders who report to Mu previously worked in China at ByteDance or other companies. The person overseeing TikTok's US Shop creator team previously ran Douyin's creator team.</p><p>A TikTok spokesperson said its Shop US leadership team "has remained largely unchanged for more than a year, and the entire organization is focused on helping American businesses of all sizes grow and succeed on the platform."</p><p>They pointed to a May and June survey the company commissioned from PF Global, which found that 85% of businesses using TikTok Shop said it had increased sales and revenue, while 81% said it had helped them reach new customers they couldn't access via a physical or online store.</p><figure><img src="https://i.insider.com/67e4295063d72727e1984ad9?format=jpeg" height="5504" width="8256" alt="A TikTok Shop booth at the China Cross-Border E-Commerce Trade Fair in Fuzhou, Fujian Province of China."><figcaption>A TikTok Shop booth at the China Cross-Border E-Commerce Trade Fair.<p class="copyright">Wang Dongming/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images</p></figcaption></figure><p>TikTok's increased reliance on Chinese leaders in the US arrives after Congress and two presidents spent more than half a decade pushing its owner, ByteDance, to sell its US business, fearing its parent could be compelled by the Chinese government to change its algorithm or hand over access to US user data. In January, <a target="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/read-tiktok-ceo-memo-closing-a-deal-avoid-a-ban-2026-1">ByteDance sold off</a> a large chunk of TikTok US to a consortium of investors to comply with a divestment law. It passed along oversight to those investors of parts of its operations, such as data management, but did not <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-splitting-us-staff-entities-divestment-ecommerce-tt-commerce-global-2026-1">relinquish control</a> of its US e-commerce or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-insiders-say-chinese-leaders-tightening-grip-on-the-us-2025-4">advertising businesses</a>.</p><p>Having leadership with connections in the Chinese market has helped the company grow revenue in the US. Some of TikTok's executives have brought seller and agency relationships from the country, which have helped boost US sales on TikTok Shop. Many of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-employees-say-us-ecommerce-is-slumping-amid-tariff-uncertainty-2025-5">Shop's foreign sellers</a> are based in China, though they often set up entities in the US. Still, company insiders said the changing of the guard has led to some strategy missteps when local nuances are lost.</p><p>"Leadership from China is used to consumers or sellers adjusting quickly, but in the US, customers have alternatives, and if they don't like an experience they will not usually stick around," said one former Shop staffer who worked on TikTok's shipping strategy.</p><h2 id="b8239032-897f-4eea-ade2-8176c2a8262b" data-toc-id="b8239032-897f-4eea-ade2-8176c2a8262b">TikTok's evolving US structure</h2><p>Organizational shake-ups within TikTok that have unseated local leaders haven't been confined to TikTok Shop's operations team. Last year, the company reorganized its global e-commerce <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-restructures-before-brazil-ecommerce-launch-2025-4">governance and experience team</a>, handing greater oversight of new markets like Latin America to executives from China and Singapore. In March 2025, it replaced its top US advertising leader, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-ad-executive-blake-chandlee-stepping-down-read-memo-2025-3">Blake Chandlee</a>, with Will Liu, known in China as Liu Xiaobing, an executive who worked on monetization products for ByteDance's Chinese apps and TikTok. In April, North America advertising exec <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-top-north-america-ad-exec-khartoon-weiss-leaving-2026-4">Khartoon Weiss</a>, who had served as Chandlee's on-the-ground replacement, also left the company.</p><p>Companies that want to expand into a new market often do so because they believe they have a competitive advantage they can replicate in a foreign country, said Z. John Zhang, a Wharton professor and founding director of its China Center.</p><p>"This means that you do have to bring your own people in to implement whatever is working in your own home country," he said.</p><p>He added that these leaders often make assumptions about a foreign market based on experience in their home one. That can lead to strategic mistakes, he said.</p><div id="1794238397730" data-styles="default-width" data-embed-type="custom" data-script="https://tbimedia.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/bistudios/_00/dev_edit/graphics/org/chart/org-chart-TiktokAmazon/index.js" class="insider-raw-embed" data-type="embed"><script type="module" crossorigin="" src="https://tbimedia.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/bistudios/_00/dev_edit/graphics/org/chart/org-chart-TiktokAmazon/index.js"></script>
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</div><h2 id="885315fa-1f48-4a67-97bf-90afefdb3acc" data-toc-id="885315fa-1f48-4a67-97bf-90afefdb3acc">TikTok hired Amazon talent to kick off Shop</h2><p>TikTok's US e-commerce operations team wasn't always led by Chinese executives.</p><p>In 2023, it went on a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-hired-amazon-staff-for-shop-pivots-back-to-china-2025-7">hiring spree from Amazon</a> and other US companies as it prepared to get its e-commerce business off the ground.</p><p>Among its early recruits were Nicolas Le Bourgeois, a nine-year Amazon veteran, and Marni Levine, a former Meta and eBay executive, who were brought on to help run US operations. Some product category executives came from Amazon, too, like food and beverage head Cameron Gould-Saltman.</p><p>Enlisting Amazonians to help navigate the US market was strategic, as Amazon is the country's dominant player, controlling about 35% of US online retail spend in Consumer Edge's July analysis.</p><p>Hiring local experts when entering a new market is a common strategy among international firms, Zhang said.</p><p>"You rely a little bit more on the locals, but hold onto the more technical and sophisticated jobs for your own home country and executives," Zhang said.</p><p>In 2024, ByteDance's e-commerce executives pushed the US team to try to replicate strategies that had worked well on Douyin, such as live shopping. It issued a companywide training program for livestream commerce, encouraging brands to adopt live selling and asking TikTok employees to try selling products on camera.</p><p>In the Chinese market, live commerce drives hundreds of billions of dollars in annual sales. It's much more niche in the US, where it's expected to drive just under $20 billion in sales this year, according to a forecast from EMARKETER, Business Insider's sister company.</p><p>"They wanted 'Live' to be the thing like it is in Asia, but organizationally it was the big push, and then they moved everything back," said one former Shop staffer who worked with partners on their live selling strategies and was laid off last year.</p><p>Top leadership "eventually got smart to this not being something they could brute force," they said.</p><figure><img src="https://i.insider.com/6924dae5e1a9cbb014dee2d0?format=jpeg" height="2647" width="3968" alt="Electronics retailer Newegg was an early adopter of TikTok Shop."><figcaption>Electronics retailer Newegg was part of an early set of brands running livestreams on TikTok Shop.<p class="copyright">Business Wire/AP</p></figcaption></figure><p>"Being in China and having a successful model that works in that market, they tried to just apply it in the American market," said another former staffer who worked with TikTok Shop creators.</p><h2 id="12133864-c1a5-4305-b8af-cef9ddf8c1ad" data-toc-id="12133864-c1a5-4305-b8af-cef9ddf8c1ad">Top leadership became disappointed with US growth</h2><p>In early 2025, ByteDance leadership told staffers it was unhappy with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-leadership-said-us-ecommerce-business-is-falling-short-2025-3">TikTok Shop's US performance</a>. Through a series of performance review cycles, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-is-taking-power-away-from-top-us-shopping-exec-2025-4">team reorgs</a>, and layoffs, it lost many of its US operations leaders, including Le Bourgeois.</p><p>As local leaders exited, the company in May 2025 appointed a US staffer, Patrick Nommensen, to a new role as "external ambassador to represent US TikTok Shop in external engagements," per a company memo sent by Mu and viewed by Business Insider. Nommensen serves as the local face of the business externally.</p><p>Shop has continued to gain traction as more Americans get acclimated to buying in the social feed. In December, TikTok said it crossed $500 million in product sales during the <a target="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-shop-crossed-500-million-in-us-sales-black-friday-2025-12">four-day holiday stretch</a> from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, for example.</p><p>Internally, current and former TikTok Shop staffers say the shift from US to Chinese leadership has changed office culture in e-commerce hubs like Seattle, Washington.</p><p>Three insiders felt that elements of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/996-work-culture-silicon-valley-burnout-ai-researchers-2026-2">"996 work culture,"</a> a workplace philosophy popularized in China that encourages staffers to work 12-hour days and on weekends, had ramped up at TikTok in the US.</p><p>The workplace mindset has shifted, a current Shop staffer said.</p><p>"There's people who are hungrier, used to the long hours, more prepared for the chaos of moving quickly," they said. "That's something that I battle with."</p><div class="read-original">Read the original article on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-org-chart-reveals-how-us-e-commerce-team-run-2026-11">Business Insider</a></div>
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