How Talent Agencies Are Secretly Turning Creators Into Retail Powerhouses—And Why It Matters
Ever wonder how a TikTok creator with a modest 150,000 followers can out-sell mega influencers with millions? Meet Lexi Rosenstein, a beauty creator who’s flipping the script—selling over half a million products through TikTok Shop and pulling in hundreds of thousands each month. It’s no longer just about follower count or likes; creators are now hustling like savvy retailers, blending content with commerce to build legit businesses. Talent agencies, once sidelining affiliate marketing as “small potatoes,” are diving headfirst into this new goldmine, prepping creators for massive shopping events like Prime Day, where the stakes—and paychecks—are soaring. This shift signals more than a trend; it’s a seismic change in how online influence translates into dollars — transforming creators into bona fide entrepreneurs and marketing dynamos. Curious how this new creator economy works and what it means for the future of influencer marketing? Let’s unpack the hustle behind the headlines. LEARN MORE
Lexi Rosenstein, a New Jersey-based beauty creator, has around 150,000 followers on TikTok, a fraction of the audience commanded by many of social media’s biggest stars. Yet she has sold more than 500,000 products through TikTok Shop, achieving an average monthly gross merchandise value of $300,000-$600,000, making her one of the platform’s top sellers. She works with dozens of brands, maintains storefronts across multiple platforms and spends much of her time thinking about what products will resonate with shoppers.
That kind of business was once unusual in the creator world. Influencers were primarily judged by audience size, engagement rates and the sponsorship deals they could attract. Today, a growing number of creators are building businesses around affiliate commissions, storefronts and social commerce. As a result, talent agencies are increasingly helping clients set up online storefronts, prepare for major sales events and show brands hard evidence that their audiences spend money.
The change reflects how much money creators are now making from selling things. Affiliate marketing, creator storefronts and social commerce platforms have given creators more ways to earn revenue directly from product sales. Passive income streams from product and merchandise sales combined with affiliate marketing account for 21.2% of total creator income, according to a January survey of 1,000 U.S.-based creators conducted by The Influencer Marketing Factory, an influencer marketing and talent agency.
Amanda Marzolf, a partner and co-head of the beauty, fashion and lifestyle department at Underscore Talent, a talent management company, said affiliate marketing felt like “small potatoes” inside her agency until about a year and a half ago. Now, it is a core piece of the strategy she gives her clients. Her agency hired someone from creator commerce company LTK specifically to manage the affiliate side of creators’ businesses, and about 80% of its roster — which spans between 100 and 200 creators — now has an Amazon storefront. If someone does not have one, Marzolf said, she advises them to get one. Not having one, she said, “unqualifies them for certain brand deals.”
Tentpole shopping events like Amazon Prime Day, which kicked off on Tuesday and runs for four days through Friday, have become “the Super Bowl” for many creators, Marzolf said.
The playbook her team runs ahead of Prime Day illustrates how detailed Underscore’s retail coaching has become. Starting one to two months before the event, Marzolf’s team uses regular one-on-ones to help clients think through which products to spotlight, which brands to tag organically on social media and how to match their content to seasonal trends. Before Prime Day, she pulls together a list of brands that spent with Underscore during the last Prime Day period, sends it to creators, and encourages them to start making themed content featuring the brands they genuinely use and like well ahead of the sale window.
For many of her beauty, fashion and lifestyle creators, Prime Day has become one of the biggest revenue opportunities of the year. During a typical Prime Day window, Marzolf said, her agency handles more than 50 brand deals, generating six‑ and even seven‑figure offers in total for clients.
Strong Prime Day performance can translate into longer, more lucrative brand partnerships. For example, a dermatologist on Underscore’s roster converted so well during past Prime Day events that the agency secured a 12‑month deal with a K‑beauty brand, with monthly deliverables concentrated around Prime Day and other key tentpole moments. A year-long contract is unusually long in a space where many influencer deals last only a few weeks or a couple of months, Marzolf said.
“We were able to get that longer deal because we were able to show analytics from his previous Amazon days,” she said.
At the same time, Underscore is careful to keep the emphasis on commerce from overwhelming creators’ identities. “We don’t want them to just become these robotic numbers people,” Marzolf said.
Damian Skoczylas, co-founder and president of talent management company Reign Maker, said his team coaches creators specifically on frequency — how often to post affiliate content — because of the risk of posting too much retail-focused content.
“You can’t pummel your audience with products,” he said. “There’s some sort of mix that they need to find.”
When a creator on his roster launched a pajama line, Reign Maker advised on pricing and supplier quality and then used sales data from the launch to pitch the creator to brands.
“We pull that data back when we’re out actively pitching her to brands to show she does convert, and she does move product,” he said.
The increasing emphasis on conversion data is changing how brands evaluate and compensate creators. Marzolf said she now regularly uses affiliate performance data to push back on lowball offers.
“If they come in with a lowball offer, we can show some of this data, and then, poof, we have a better offer,” she said.
Michelle York, a Southern California creator who left her corporate job in 2024 to create content full-time, had been posting beauty and lifestyle videos on TikTok since 2020. But it wasn’t until she started selling products through TikTok Shop in 2023 that major brands began to take notice.
One of her breakthrough moments came when she spotted a discounted Tarte beauty bundle on TikTok Shop. Sitting with her hair wrapped in a towel and no makeup on, York filmed a video explaining why the bundle was such a good value. The post took off, helping make her one of Tarte’s top-performing affiliates on the platform. Tarte was the third-largest brand on TikTok Shop in 2025, generating more than $80 million in sales, according to e-commerce analytics firm Charm.io.
The success caught the attention of Tarte, which York said likely would not have worked with her based on follower count alone. At the time, she had fewer than 200,000 followers. More brands soon followed, and what began as a side income eventually grew large enough to replace her corporate salary.
The infrastructure supporting creator commerce has expanded rapidly over the past year. Platforms like ShopMy and LTK increasingly provide brands and creators with detailed sales and performance data. Meanwhile, retailers including Sephora have launched creator storefront programs of their own. The changes have given talent managers new tools to measure which creators actually drive purchases. There are also startups like District, which let creators set up their own live shopping platforms.
Rosenstein’s role increasingly resembles that of a retailer rather than a traditional influencer. She has created more than 20 product bundles in her TikTok Shop showcase, sometimes persuading brands to package products together based on her own assessment of what customers are most likely to buy.
“Brands have come out with products that I’m like, ‘Listen, this is great, but let’s bundle it with this, because when you layer the two products together, I think it’s a more powerful product story,’” she said.
Rosenstein’s process requires many of the same decisions that retailers make, from product selection to merchandising and pricing strategies. She said she often uses sales data and customer feedback to help shape how she presents products to shoppers.
As Rosenstein put it, “I feel like I’m an extension of the marketing team.”
