Western brands entering Asia
You're launching in Asia. You don't know who actually moves product there.
You will spend the launch budget on channels. In this part of the world a handful of people you have never met — hosts, group chats, resellers, fandoms — decide whether the product actually moves, and none of them are on the media plan. We go and find who moves your category in mainland China, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, which of them will refuse you and why, and whether your own team can actually keep it going. You get a ranked list and a costed first ninety days — then we build it with you, and we stop when your team can run it. Whatever we open, you keep — we don't sit in the middle of it.
China · Hong Kong · Southeast Asia
Find it, build it, hand it over
English / Mandarin
For brands whose home playbook stops working here.
Consumer, beauty, and lifestyle brands planning a China or Southeast Asia launch. You have a product that works at home, and you need to know who carries a brand here before you commit the budget. The platforms are different. So are the payment rails, the logistics and the way people decide to buy. And the people who actually move product are not the ones selling media. If you already have distribution and just need a campaign, that's a different job. This is for the launch itself.
Find out who moves the category before you spend on it.
Step one
Find where the growth actually is
We read the category from the inside and name who actually moves product: who people already listen to, who will work with you, who will refuse you and why. You get the named list, the reasoning, the refusals, an honest read on whether your own team can actually keep it going, and what the first ninety days should cost. Agreed scope, English or Mandarin.
Step two
We hand it over
If the read says go, we build the launch with your team — and stop when they can run it without us. Read how the hand-over works.
Sequencing
Platforms in the right order
Discovery, conversion, and marketplace channels get built in sequence, so the storefront opens after demand exists, never before. Category and stage decide which platform leads.
Bilingual by default
Both languages, both cultures
Decisions land the same way on a factory floor and in a Western head office. That's the core of cross-border operations, and it's how we run every engagement.
Going the other way? Western market entry for Asian brands →
Market entry consultant vs distributor: which you need →
What cross-border operations means →
What an operations audit covers →
Why Western brands fail in China →
Douyin vs TikTok Shop, explained →
Tmall vs JD.com for foreign brands →
China market entry consultant vs agency →
A live hub, the market itself, a room at the end, and one email ninety days later.
Before we start
The scope is agreed and it does not move
What we will look at and what you get are settled in writing before day one, and the scope does not move. No change orders.
Day one
A live bilingual hub
No waiting weeks for a deck. A link in English and Chinese, filling up as the work happens — every name, every reason, as we find them. Yours as an archive afterwards.
While we are in
We go where the category actually is
Inside the group chats, the live rooms and the reseller networks that carry your category here. Read as members read them, not scraped from a follower export.
The readout
A room, not an email
Ninety minutes with you and whoever owns the launch. The list is presented and argued with, in both languages, including the names we are telling you not to go near.
When we are done
Your data leaves when we do
Working files deleted within seven days, with a written compliance letter for the record. In-jurisdiction under PIPL.
Day ninety
One email
The plan has a date against every item. Ninety days on, we send one email asking which of them actually moved — including the ones that didn't. It is the last thing you get from us, and it is not a sales call.
Common questions.
Why do so many Western brands fail in China?
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The failure usually isn't the marketing. It's the operating model. Brands transplant the org chart, pricing, and channel plan that worked at home and expect them to hold in a market with different platforms, payment rails, and buying behaviour. By the time a campaign underperforms, the real problem is upstream: the business was set up to run the way it ran back home, not the way it needs to run here.
How long does market entry into China actually take?
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Plan in phases, not in a single launch date. A pilot to prove demand and settle the operating basics can move quickly; a platform launch and the build behind it takes longer; scaling is its own phase again. We keep the first phase short and tightly scoped on purpose, so you learn what's true before you commit budget to the phases that cost real money.
How do I know if my brand is ready for Asia?
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Readiness is a go, pause, or pivot decision, not a yes to everyone. The honest test is whether the product has a clear reason to win against local incumbents, whether the margin survives local channel and logistics costs, and whether someone will own the market day to day. If those answers are thin, entering faster just spends money faster. Our first project is built to give you that read before you scale.
Should we set up a local entity or start with cross-border e-commerce?
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For most first-time entrants, the cross-border e-commerce and bonded-warehouse route lets you test demand with less setup, lower risk, and no local entity, though at the cost of some margin and control. A local entity gives you more control and better economics once volume justifies it. It's a staged decision: pilot through the lighter model, then set up locally when the numbers say the market is real.
Can we pilot before committing a full budget?
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Yes, and we'd usually push you to. Most engagements start with a short, scoped read so you can see how the work goes and what the market is really telling you. If the pilot says go, we build the launch with your team and hand it over. If it says pause or pivot, you've saved the far larger cost of scaling something that wasn't ready.
Which platform should we launch on first — Tmall, JD, or Douyin?
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It depends on your category and where trust gets built for it. Beauty and lifestyle tend to lead with discovery and content platforms before a marketplace storefront; authenticity-sensitive and electronics categories often lean toward JD; Douyin and TikTok Shop reward brands set up to feed a creator-and-content supply chain. The point isn't picking one channel. It's sequencing them so the storefront opens after demand exists, not before.
The people who carry a launch are booked before you brief the agency.
Asia's selling calendar is fixed and public — 618 in June, Double 11 in November. The hosts, group owners and resellers who move product commit their slots well ahead of it. The date doesn't move because you got to it late.
01 · You arrive inside the window
By October the calendar is already spoken for
The people you needed are committed to someone else in your category. What's left is whoever nobody else booked, at the peak rate, chosen on a follower count because there was no time to check anything else.
02 · You buy the channel instead
Media spend stands in for the introduction
You pay for reach you can measure and access you can't. The launch happens, the numbers read thin, and the following year starts from exactly the same place — because nothing you paid for was a relationship you kept.
None of that is a catastrophe. It is a launch paying retail for the one part it should have owned. Why the deadline is earlier than you think.
Most people selling growth sell one method.
An agency sells media. A consultancy sells a deck. A growth hire sells the playbook from their last company. We have found growth in a factory, in an online community, and in a product that hadn't launched — and the answer was different every time. Here it is a market you haven't sold in yet.
A PR or comms agency
They work the media layer. We work the one underneath it.
Real relationships with journalists and editors, quick to start, measured in impressions. The access is theirs, and it leaves when they do. That is the right call for a launch moment, a crisis, or earned press back home. It is the wrong one if the question is who actually moves the product in this market.
A consulting study
They hand you a deck. We stay and build it.
A management consultancy brings depth and board credibility, and hands you a deck at the end of the quarter. That is the right call for a restructure that runs top to bottom. It is the wrong one when what you need is the thing built, not described — we stay and build it, and we stop when your team can run it.