The first thing they probably did was to buy followers so as to attract newbie into the project and afterwards device strategies in place to get organic followers that will add up to the already bought followers to add up in building a robust community first of all before looking at the engagement angle.
For a platform that offers some certain products and that's looking for an audience shouldn't even consider the idea of buying followers because it doesn't add any value to the product because is a big waste of time having thousands of unreal followers who cannot even have a glimpse of what there product is all about, social media has made it very easy in getting followers for those who want it and is funny that most platforms use it as a marketing strategy in getting those followers in other to get the attention of users, since they no that most people consider the number of flowers such platform has before they can consider coming in but there is nothing as good as doing a genuine marketing because any followers you would have is somebody that would add value to your products.