About Hand Picked Nursery
Hand Picked Nursery is a family-owned garden center and ecommerce brand specializing in live plants, berry bushes, fruit trees, flower bulbs, and gardening supplies.
As Hand Picked Nursery expanded into TikTok Shop, the team saw a major opportunity to introduce their gardening products to a new audience through creator-led commerce. However, building an affiliate program in an emerging category came with unique challenges.
The Challenge
Unlike categories with thousands of established creators already producing product content, gardening was still relatively new on TikTok. Finding creators who genuinely matched the brand and were likely to drive results required significant manual effort.
Before Cruva, the team relied on manually searching TikTok, identifying potential creators, and sending cold outreach one by one. While this approach worked on a smaller scale, it became difficult to maintain as Hand Picked Nursery looked to grow their affiliate program.
“We would have to find creators on the platform and do cold outreach. This worked on a small scale, but it became apparent early that this was not a sustainable way to scale our affiliate efforts and retain affiliate creators.”
Brennen Elboeck, COO, Hand Picked Nursery
For Marissa, the challenge was finding the right creators in a niche category. Searching for gardening and plant creators often surfaced AI-generated accounts instead of authentic creators who could showcase the products effectively.
“I spent hours trying to find ‘garden’ and ‘plant’ creators, only to find top-performing creators that were AI. It was exhausting and wasted our time from optimizing our TikTok page and account only to see zero affiliate results due to no one ticking all the boxes we needed.”
Marissa Farmer, E-commerce Specialist, Hand Picked Nursery
As the team explored ways to grow their affiliate channel, the biggest challenge became clear: they needed a way to discover qualified creators, manage outreach, and build momentum without relying on a process that required constant manual work.
“It just really wasn’t possible without a lot of manual labor to scale our affiliate without Cruva.”
Brennen Elboeck, COO, Hand Picked Nursery
The Solution
Hand Picked Nursery needed a more scalable way to find the right creators, build relationships at scale, and create a repeatable affiliate process on TikTok Shop.
Cruva helped the team move beyond manual creator research and build a structured workflow for creator discovery, outreach, and engagement. Within the first few weeks, Hand Picked Nursery was able to identify thousands of relevant creators, launch outreach campaigns, and build a stronger base for their affiliate program.
One of the biggest early wins came from creator discovery. Instead of spending hours searching through TikTok manually, the team could quickly identify creators who were a strong fit for their products and reach out to them at scale.
“Early wins came from the ability to find thousands of creators that would do well with our brand and product. From there, we were guided on creating high conversion messages to send in mass.”
Brennen Elboeck, COO, Hand Picked Nursery
Once creators were onboarded, Cruva helped Hand Picked Nursery build more structured ways to engage and motivate them. Leaderboard campaigns gave affiliates clear performance goals, while creator challenges helped motivate participation and encourage consistent content creation.
These campaigns also helped the team build a stronger sense of community with their creators. Instead of tracking progress manually through spreadsheets, the team could manage campaigns, monitor performance, and keep creators engaged through a more structured process.
“The campaigns really added to our ability to establish rapport with our creators and further create a community feel between the creators working with us and us.”
Brennen Elboeck, COO, Hand Picked Nursery
As a seasonal business, Hand Picked Nursery also needed to adapt their creator strategy as products, seasons, and customer interests changed. Cruva's creator briefs gave the team a flexible way to update product recommendations and content guidance without rebuilding their affiliate workflow from scratch.
The platform was also supported by hands-on strategic guidance. Cruva's onboarding and customer success team helped Hand Picked Nursery develop their campaigns, refine outreach, and make strategic decisions around their creator program, not just learn how to use the software.
“Calls weren’t just a tutorial; they were strategy calls as well; even more so after initial setup.”
Brennen Elboeck, COO, Hand Picked Nursery
The Results
Once Hand Picked Nursery had a repeatable process to find and activate creators, the team was able to build momentum quickly. What started as a small affiliate effort grew into a significant TikTok Shop revenue channel, particularly during the brand’s busiest selling period.
The team’s first Creator Challenge delivered strong results. Between April 1 and April 30, 22 affiliates participated, 160 creator videos were published, and the campaign generated $49,064.85 in affiliate-attributed GMV. The four top-performing creators from the campaign continued to rank among the brand’s strongest affiliates.
That translated into rapid growth on TikTok Shop.
Before Cruva, Hand Picked Nursery generated $2,807 in TikTok Shop gross revenue in March. After launching with Cruva, revenue increased to $73,527 in April and $104,052 in May.
During peak season, the brand also reached several major milestones on TikTok Shop:
- Ranked #1 among bestselling live plants on TikTok by revenue.
- Had two additional products rank among the top 10 bestselling live plants.
- Generated 3.8 million product views in their top-selling month.
- Ranked #45 among sellers in the Home Improvement category by revenue on their top sales day.
“The creator briefs and ability to do all of this at scale was the game changer. We saved lots of hours and headaches.”
Brennen Elboeck, COO, Hand Picked Nursery
