Role Overview
Clients don’t hire you to “find trending products.” They hire you to identify high-potential products that are strategically aligned with their business goals—products with demand, margin, and a viable supply chain. You’re not just feeding the pipeline; you’re shaping the direction of the store. When done right, your work gives the client a selling edge: faster traction, better profits, less guesswork. When done wrong, the cost shows up in wasted ad budgets, stalled operations, and sunk investments.
This role is not about chasing fads or stacking a list of “winning” products recycled from public tools. It’s about applying commercial judgment. Clients expect you to filter beyond surface hype—to verify trends, assess competition, and evaluate actual product-market fit for TikTok Shop and Private Label strategies. You are accountable for surfacing offers that move, not just products that look promising. At this level, weak calls cost real money—strong calls unlock growth. That’s the line.
Standards You Must Meet
• Your picks must reflect research, not guesswork — expect clients to ask how each product aligns with platform trends, margins, and brand strategy.
• They’ll judge your work by real traction — if the product doesn’t convert fast or scale cleanly, it wasn’t a smart recommendation.
• Expectation is clear — you should flag saturation risks early and avoid products already overexposed on TikTok Shop.
• A good product without sourcing is a bad call — clients expect you to pre-verify supply chain viability before greenlighting anything.
• You’re not hired to suggest what’s “moving” — you’re trusted to find what will move next, before the window closes.
• Fast validation matters — clients will watch how efficiently you analyze trends, test hypotheses, and narrow to launch-ready choices.
• They lose confidence fast if you recycle generic product lists or send links without proving fit, margin, and competitive advantage.
• Final judgment? It’s always on ROI — clients trust that your research improves outcomes, not just output.
What You’ll Be Doing
• Monitor TikTok-native signals to detect emerging product trends ahead of saturation.
• Validate shortlists by confirming market demand, profit margins, and competitive gaps using multi-platform data.
• Pre-screen suppliers for MOQ, production lead time, fulfillment readiness, and pricing before any product recommendation.
• Eliminate products with duplicate listings, overused creative angles, or weak platform alignment.
• Deliver clear briefs per product idea, covering sourcing viability, pricing logic, buyer intent, and go-to-market fit.
• Use automation tools to streamline recurring research tasks like data collation, supplier tracking, or trend sorting.
• Vet each product against brand strategy and flag any pick that may confuse positioning or dilute catalog focus.
• Reassess past product calls that underperformed to extract learnings, adjust criteria, and improve future selections.
What You’ll Hand Over
• A short-list of 2–3 launch-ready product picks, each backed by margin potential, supplier fit, and TikTok Shop traction.
• Product research briefs detailing pricing strategy, platform competition, sourcing options, and sales projections.
• A supplier validation sheet with vetted contact info, MOQ, fulfillment timelines, and cost comparisons.
• A saturation risk check report showing trend timelines, TikTok listing volume, and market entry window.
• A clear pass/fail summary for any previously tested products, with learnings and revised recommendations.
Tools You’ll Need to Use
• TikTok Creative Center – Critical for tracking viral trend data and analyzing product performance directly on-platform.
• AliExpress – A staple source for competitor scanning, supplier options, and gauging product demand for private label.
• Alibaba – Essential for supplier sourcing, cost benchmarking, and evaluating product viability for scale.
• Amazon Best Sellers and Movers & Shakers – Trusted for validating product potential and identifying cross-platform trends.
• Shopify Product Research Tools (e.g., Koala Inspector) – Used for analyzing winning stores and reverse-engineering product strategies.
• TikTok Search & Discovery Page – Key for monitoring organic product traction, real-time demand, and creator partnerships.
• Google Trends – Supports broader demand tracking and seasonal opportunity mapping beyond TikTok data.
Why Work Smarter
As a Product Research Expert, you don’t need to be a full automation engineer—but if you can’t automate repetitive steps like data entry, file handling, or supplier tracking, your client is wasting time and money. The expectation is shifting: clients assume basic task automation is being handled, even if they don’t say it outright.
OES sets this as a professional standard because the market already demands it. If you’re serious about staying valuable in the Private Label and TikTok Shop space, automation isn’t “nice to have”—it’s baseline.
Why Your Work Matters
Right now, the biggest threats facing TikTok Shop and Private Label sellers aren’t traffic or tools—they’re bad product calls. One wrong pick wastes thousands in ads, clogs fulfillment, and stalls the entire store. Clients don’t have margin for miscues. They’re operating in fast, high-stakes cycles, and every product you recommend either accelerates momentum—or costs them both confidence and capital. This isn’t just upstream work; it sets the tone for every downstream result.
That’s why this role is locked in as core, not optional. Clients are expecting faster validations, smarter sourcing moves, and tighter alignment to both brand direction and platform shifts. If your research is sharp, they scale. If it’s lazy or late, they lose ground fast. At OES, we treat product research not as guesswork or grunt work—but as a strategic function that directly drives profitability. Execution here carries real weight, and that weight lands squarely on your decisions.
What We Expect From You
As a Product Research Expert at the Specialist tier, you are expected to think and operate like the profit strategist of your TikTok Shop + Private Label team. You don’t chase products — you qualify them. You understand the velocity and volatility of TikTok marketplaces, and you apply disciplined judgment to filter out hype from true opportunity. You’re responsible for feeding your team winning products that are legally clean, financially sound, highly researchable, and strategically aligned with the client’s goals. You don’t guess — you back every decision with data, compliance checks, and commercial logic.
We are looking for someone who meets the risk of product selection with full accountability. You track trends early, local supplier data closely, and platform rules precisely — because your errors cost real money, and your wins drive client margin. You work fast, but never sloppy. Your picks shape the brand’s identity and determine daily ad spend, stock movement, and customer experience. If you operate like your research is the foundation of someone else’s business, you belong here.
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$530 – $1,590
OES salary standards reflect real market benchmarks, tier and experience level, ensuring fair pay for VAs and realistic expectations for clients.
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