“We've done over $20 million in revenue for brands through the app. Prior to that, it was pretty difficult to drive revenue. Now, we’re the biggest TikTok agency in the US. The app definitely helped to get us there.”
Two months after launching their Glide app, Social Army became the number one TikTok Shop Agency in the US. Social commerce is a fast-moving, high-volume industry. Co-Founders Stan van Eyk and Jasper Knitel knew they needed a solution that could scale with them. Glide was that solution.
“It went super, super quick, and we're still doing very well,” said Stan. “In the beginning, we might have had 800 products on there. Now, we have 35,000. Without the app, we wouldn't be where we are right now.”
To build their apps, Stan partnered with Mohamed Swellam (known as Mo), founder of Glide agency Geeky Air. “We launched the first version of our app within two weeks of finding Mo,” said Stan, “and we just started to grow really quickly.”
They now have 4,000 creators logging in daily, 3 million rows of data in Glide, and multiple new apps in production. “They have viral videos, viral products, and the top-achieving creators on TikTok shop in the app,” said Mo. Previously, they were generating $2 million a month for their partnered brands. After launching the app, that number exploded to $20 million a month.
“It's always about building something that scales and building it very fast. The only app that could do that was Glide. Now, I honestly don't see myself using anything else.”
Replacing un-scalable Google Sheets with the Creators App
“The biggest problem that we had when we first started was scalability,” explained Mo, “because there are hundreds of thousands of products available on TikTok Shop, and we have 4,000 creators that need to access those products.” In response to this challenge, he built a Glide app that allowed them to scale to more than 15x bigger than they were before without even increasing their headcount.
Previously, Social Army was tracking products, creators, and commissions in Google Sheets. That wasn’t workable at the scale they needed to actually bring in the revenue they wanted. “Try and get 4,000 creators to open a Google Sheet! That is impossible,” said Mo. “ If you've ever tried opening a Google Sheet on your phone, it's like this big, you know?”
The first app he built for them was a very simple affiliate marketing tool. It just showed the products and the commission the creator would earn if they sold each one. However, the ease of use of this app made it possible for their partners to sell a lot more products. They now had the flexibility to view product images, get sales details, and calculate commissions from their phone. “You have an image, you have nice colors, you have the full capability of the CSS component,” said Mo.
Solving critical problems using AI and custom software
Quickly after launching, they started expanding their use of the app, adding AI capabilities to it like the ability to generate hooks for videos so that influencers could more effectively drive traffic to their products. This helped more of their creator partners go viral and sell more products.
“And we are doing all of that in record time,” added Mo. “If they want a new feature, it usually takes us a day to build. And it's not a day on Glide, it's a day to build the functionality on the back end, whether it's an API or a query in Postgres. Once that's done, it takes me 10 minutes to put it on Glide.”
When I first started with Social Army, I was only working with the founder. By the time we built their first app we started thinking, why don't we build an app for the admin team? Why don't we build an app for the B2B team? Now, Glide has become the go-to solution whenever they have a problem internally.”
Glide enables Social Army to scale and adapt
“We're in an industry that's changing day to day, and Glide allows us to move very quickly and adapt quickly whenever changes are coming.”
“I would personally recommend that every company start off with no code and see where it leads,” said Stan.
Mo sees Glide as a tool for creating better systems for the businesses he partners with. “I think if you are a business owner and you're not creating apps that solve your internal team's problems, you are investing in the wrong places,” he explains. “There is no business, no matter how big or small, that would not benefit from a system. You need to think, how can Glide help you?”
About Social Army
Stan van Eyk and Jasper Knitel are recognized authorities in the emerging field of social commerce, a sector where they've consistently delivered award-winning results. Despite being based outside the U.S., they have made a significant impact on the American market, helping U.S. brands over $20 million in revenue and creators much more. So what is social commerce?
Social commerce is the integration of e-commerce into social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. It enables users to:
- -Discover products through engaging content
- -Purchase directly within the app
- -Explore reviews, comments, and influencer recommendations—all without leaving the platform
Stan and Jasper’s work sits at the cutting edge of this fast-growing industry, blending content, community, and commerce to drive measurable business outcomes for U.S. companies.