How two schoolmates rake in £6million a year by turning TikTok into a goldmine

GoPlaces launched in 2024 with a broad e-commerce remit: helping brands sell across multiple digital marketplaces, TikTok Shop being just one of them. That changed after the business partners took a research trip to China.

Mr Jacobs said: "We got to see in person the power of social commerce and how engrained into commerce, how people shop in China, and our eyes were really opened to the opportunity.

"We were seeing brands from LVMH and Hermès all the way through to more consumer brands, the kind you'd find on supermarket shelves, running live shopping events 24 hours a day across multiple social commerce platforms, and the numbers were significant."

The conclusion Mr Jacobs drew was simple but significant: China was not an outlier but a preview of how business will be done for years to come.

"This is not unique to Chinese social commerce or South East Asia. They are actually just far ahead in comparison to the Western markets."

That was the moment, he says, when the decision was made to go all in. "That's where we made the switch to go all in on TikTok Shop and really focus all of our efforts into the channel.

The friends grew up in north London, met at school over a shared love of football, and eventually shared a flat in their final year at university.

Both went on to work in e-commerce before founding GoPlaces together, a partnership that, by Mr Jacobs' account, has been one of the business's quiet strengths.

"It's probably not a possibility for a lot of friendships to go into a working relationship. But we've been fortunate that from the very beginning, we've been very clear that our friendship supersedes everything, while also being completely honest that work is work.

"We have to be prepared to have very frank conversations when we disagree, and neither of us ever takes that personally. We know that we both have the best interests of the company at heart."

The other side of that closeness has been just as valuable: "Building a business is obviously high stress. Every day is a rollercoaster.

"Having someone that you have complete trust in, but also that you can have a laugh with in those moments when it's needed. I've found that a moment of real relief and something really enjoyable."

Two years in, GoPlaces is working with an impressively varied roster: Samsung, Mars, Lola's Cupcakes, McCormick, PepsiCo. For Jacobs, the scale of the TikTok Shop opportunity is increasingly self-evident to brands — even if many are still figuring out how to capitalise on it.

"In a world where attention spans are becoming increasingly limited and conventional forms of media are losing their grip, you now have an opportunity to reach basically one in two people in the country who are active monthly on TikTok and are spending on average over 100 minutes a day on the app, shopping and interacting with content."

He argues The Shop element is the real differentiator: "It is the only true seamless content-to-checkout platform that exists in e-commerce. W

"When you see a brand ad on a Meta page, you click the link and it takes you to a brand's website. There is friction there. Whereas with TikTok, you can be watching content and in two clicks, you could have checked out and the product can arrive.

"People go onto the app to be entertained and then they stumble across pieces of interesting content that they engage with. For brands focussed on customer acquisition, there is no better place for that exact goal."

Recently, GoPlaces secured a significant investment boom to take the business to the next level: America. From July, the company will launch in Europe through the German market, before rolling out across the continent.

The US is next — supporting enterprise clients including McCormick, PepsiCo and others already on the books. Social commerce in the UK is projected to be worth £100 billion by 2030, according to Market Intelligence.

For a business that didn't exist two years ago and is already turning over £6m, the timing looks propitious.

Jacobs is clear-eyed about where GoPlaces needs to get to. "We want to partner with the world's best brands across the UK, Europe and the US on TikTok Shop — delivering the best experience, the best technology, analytics and AI tools, and obviously the best performance for those clients. If we do that, then we would have capitalised on what is a massive opportunity."

But the vision stretches beyond a single platform: "Our view is that TikTok Shop today is probably the only real relevant social commerce platform for brands in the UK — but that's going to rapidly change, and we're here to support clients on a number of new platforms as they come down the line before 2030. That's really our goal and our vision."