On TikTok Shop, a brand can open its products to every TikTok Shop creator. Some of the people selling them may be ones it never picked.
This is called open collaboration. TikTok's seller guide says it “allows sellers to make their products visible for promotion to all TikTok Shop creators.”
Creators who join recommend the product in their videos and LIVE streams, and get paid when viewers buy. Each one describes it in their own words.
By contrast, target collaboration lets sellers “invite certain creators to promote specific products on their behalf.”
Open collaboration has an approval setting. TikTok tells sellers they have “the option to turn on require approval mode so only approved creators can participate.” It is something the brand has to turn on.
TikTok's affiliate page puts it this way: “Let all affiliate creators discover and promote your products through open collaboration.” That reach also means a brand may not know who all of its creators are. When creator videos about a brand reach shoppers without anyone at the brand seeing them first, we call that Dark Reach.
Two questions for your team. Are your products in open collaboration, with approval on or off? And how many of the creators selling them did someone at the brand pick?