The American companies, along with President Trump, are under the impression that U.S. companies will have a majority controlling interest in the business. Meanwhile, current owner ByteDance has communicated its intention to hold onto 80 percent of the resulting TikTok Global organization. The Beijing-based company went so far as to describe it as its U.S. subsidiary — which doesn’t little to ease the Trump administration’s stated concerns about national security.

The other wrinkle is that Chinese media, which often communicates sentiments out of Beijing, sees the bid as “unpalatable,” calling it a “dirty” deal in recent coverage.

However things play out on the world stage, sources inside TikTok tell WWD that its business strategy — including recent moves to court apparel brands — hasn’t shifted to any sort of emergency mode yet. It remains unchanged, at least for now.

That makes some sense. Preemptively preparing for doom could further undercut the business, which has been growing in popularity among the fashion crowd over the past year.

The platform made a splash this spring, offering plenty of content during Fashion Week then and leading up to its first coordinated Fashion Month now, this month. In between, it has collaborated with brands from IreneIsGood to Levi’s.

Such efforts have been less about an iron-clad strategy, or calculated pursuit of fashion, than an organic movement arising from its community. “We don’t have to define our own strategy. Users really do that for us,” they said. “So we can go into our app and see every day what users are interested in, what they’re talking about, what’s trending. And then we can actually align our strategy with where we’re seeing those trends happen.”

As for whether the trends, or even the user base itself, dissipates or how the shifts in TikTok’s potential ownership may pan out, no one can say, not even inside the business. That’s not uncommon with multinational companies that have leadership and divisions straddling domestic and overseas interests and cultures.

Among rank-and-file TikTok employees in the U.S., if anyone believes the worst is yet to come, it doesn’t seem to be apparent day-to-day activities. Representatives are continuing to court brands, as others train them on how to produce TikTokable content. This month even saw the introduction of a new marketing partner program, TikTok for Business.

It’s a brand of optimism that may either speak to a deep trust in TikTok leadership’s ability to pull off a deal, or a mass denial of the app’s potential demise. But now that Pappas herself has mapped out what the latter could look like, it could get harder to ignore shifts that could lie ahead.

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