Will JonesNo audience. No platform data. No existing playbook. Kaiyue An, Head of Growth at Greenwood MCN, took an unknown brand from zero TikTok presence to over 100 million impressions and $10 million in sales — and built the methodology to do it again.
Kaiyue An does not look like the typical TikTok growth operator. She speaks in structured arguments, defaults to first principles, and when she describes a campaign, it sounds more like a strategic briefing than a marketing pitch. That is not an affectation — it is her background. She came from strategy consulting, spent years doing deep-dive market research across the retail sector, and only moved into social commerce after she had studied it long enough to be certain of what she was seeing.
What she was seeing was a structural shift. Traditional retail’s grip on consumer attention was loosening. Content platforms were becoming the primary discovery channel for a new generation of shoppers. And most brands had no idea how to respond. She did.
The Bet
In 2018, Kaiyue An came to the United States for her undergraduate degree in finance. In 2021, she entered UCLA for a graduate degree in econometrics, putting down roots in Los Angeles. During her consulting years, she specialized in the retail sector — studying industries from the inside out, mapping competitive dynamics, and developing an instinct for where markets were heading before the consensus caught up.
“In consulting, I worked on a lot of retail and e-commerce cases,” she says. “What I kept seeing was that people who could connect content, data, and consumer behavior were extremely rare. Most people’s backgrounds only let them see one side. I wanted to be someone who understood all of it.” That conviction led her to join Greenwood MCN as Head of Growth — a calculated move, not an impulsive one.
The Cold Start
In March 2024, she took on a Mexican snack brand with poor Amazon performance and zero TikTok presence. No consumer awareness, no platform data, no localized playbook. She rebuilt the brand’s entire go-to-market architecture from scratch — leading market strategy, store operations, creator content systems, inventory forecasting, new product development, and both online and offline activations. She stayed inside the work until the system ran on its own.
Two years later: a category leader on TikTok Shop, 100 million impressions, $10 million in revenue.
“The hardest part of a cold start is the judgment,” she says. “You’re making consequential decisions with no data. You form the best hypothesis you can, move fast, and learn faster.”
When There Is No Playbook
A second engagement pushed those instincts further. A globally recognized conglomerate brand — premium price point, strict cross-channel pricing policies, limited product samples. Discount-driven conversion was off the table. The affiliate creator model was off the table. Every standard TikTok growth lever was unavailable.
Kaiyue An built around every constraint. She assembled an in-house production team from scratch, personally handling scripting, shooting, and editing. She then orchestrated a Black Friday and Cyber Monday live stream with one of the most recognized influencers in the United States. Four months later: top ten stores in the brand’s secondary TikTok Shop category. Pricing intact. Brand equity untouched.
“Constraints just tell you where the standard answer doesn’t work,” she says. “I prefer these projects. They force real thinking.”
The Infrastructure
Alongside her brand work, Kaiyue An spent two years building something with longer-term value: a creator ecosystem of over 20,000 influencers, spanning beauty, consumer electronics, and health food, from micro-creators to nationally recognized names. Purpose-built systems for vetting, onboarding, activation, and feedback. It did not exist before she built it.
“A lot of people treat creator marketing as a resource to consume,” she says. “I treat it as an ecosystem to cultivate. The matching precision — right creator, right brand, right moment — is where the real advantage lives.”
What’s Next
Her current focus beyond Greenwood MCN: AI-generated video and its implications for brand content at scale. She sees most brands engaging with AI at the cost-cutting layer and missing the larger opportunity — when high-quality, brand-consistent video can be produced at scale, the economics of TikTok content change structurally.
“I got into TikTok before most brands understood what it was going to become,” she says. “I want to understand AI video at the same depth, before the consensus catches up. That is exactly the kind of thinking consulting trained me to do.” In Los Angeles, that kind of early clarity tends to compound.
About: Kaiyue An is Head of Growth and Marketing at Greenwood MCN, based in Los Angeles. She holds a graduate degree in econometrics from UCLA and an undergraduate degree in finance, with a background in retail-focused strategy consulting. She specializes in TikTok Shop brand growth, creator ecosystem development, and cross-platform commerce strategy.