Live selling is a real and very large channel in China, and it is the one most often misunderstood by foreign brands, because what is reported is the peak and what decides the peak is invisible. A session is closer to a television shopping production than to a social media post: it has a script, a rehearsal, a pricing structure, a logistics plan and a customer-service load that arrives all at once.
What has to exist before the session
- Stock, physically in China, in the right quantity. Selling out in four minutes and disappointing everyone is a worse outcome than not running the session.
- A price that survives the discount. Live commerce runs on exclusive pricing, and that price becomes the reference price everywhere afterwards.
- Customer service ready for a spike, in Chinese, within hours.
- A return process, because return rates in this channel are materially higher than in ordinary e-commerce and they are part of the economics, not an accident.
What it is good for
Products that are visual, demonstrable and quick to judge, for a brand that already has some recognition and can absorb a volume spike. It is a volume and awareness channel, not a way to build a brand from nothing — the audience is there for the host and the price, and a brand nobody knows converts poorly however good the session is.
The honest arithmetic
Host fee, platform commission, the exclusive discount, the return rate and the logistics. Run those numbers before the session rather than after, and set the objective explicitly: if it is awareness, a session can lose money and still be worth it; if it is meant to be profitable, the arithmetic has to work at the discounted price with returns included.
For most foreign B2B and industrial companies this channel is simply not the right one, and there is no shame in saying so. It belongs to consumer categories with volume and visual appeal.