China E-Commerce Agency for Brands (Shanghai)

Not as your main channel, but it still helps. A standalone site cannot be your primary store because the ICP Commercial License needed to run one is capped at 50% foreign ownership, so most foreign brands route sales through marketplace flagship stores instead. What your own site does well is SEO visibility and a sense of legitimacy when a Chinese shopper checks whether your brand is real before buying on Tmall or Douyin.

Depends on your goal. Tmall still holds 44-50% of major online beauty GMV and remains the trust-building choice for a first official flagship store, especially for CBEC entry. Douyin overtook Tmall as the top GMV driver for beauty in 2025 through live commerce, but growth there slowed sharply by early 2026, down 1.13% year-on-year in February, a sign the platform is maturing rather than still exploding. Most brands we work with launch a Tmall store for credibility and run Douyin live commerce for volume, rather than picking one over the other.

The big one: once a brand's annual CBEC sales exceed RMB 1 million on a platform, regulators now expect general trade-level compliance, not the lighter CBEC filing most new entrants used before. Special-use products, sunscreen, hair dye, anti-hair-loss, whitening, now need NMPA registration past that threshold. Only products on the official 26-category positive list can use CBEC at all. A new customs rule, GACC Decree No. 284, takes effect December 1, 2026 and formalizes risk-based inspection for cosmetics imports, so expect more consistent enforcement, not less.

Two separate ICP registrations exist: an ICP Filing for non-commercial sites, and the ICP Commercial License for any site that sells goods, takes payment or carries ads. Foreign companies cannot apply directly. You need an onshore vehicle, a WFOE, a joint venture, or a partner, before China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will even accept the application, and the commercial license itself is capped at 50% foreign ownership. Processing typically takes two to three months, and in 2026 a content-moderation plan and a PIPL-aligned privacy policy are standard checklist items, not optional extras.

Xiaohongshu drives discovery, not transactions: about 300 million monthly users research a product there before buying it on Tmall, Douyin, JD or Pinduoduo. If you are invisible on Xiaohongshu, shoppers land on your store with zero context. Live commerce is where volume comes from, China's live commerce market is on track to pass USD 1 trillion in 2026, led by Douyin and Kuaishou. The brands that win combine both: XHS content to build the intent, live commerce to close it.

It is not optional. Mobile accounts for over 65% of online sales in China, and live commerce spend per buyer there is the highest in the world, previously benchmarked around USD 1,550 per year per active buyer. A store that is not built mobile-first, with fast load times and a livestream-ready product page, is competing at a structural disadvantage before a single ad runs.

Two, mainly. First, compliance: the RMB 1 million CBEC threshold and the 26-category positive list mean brands can no longer treat cross-border as a permanent loophole around registration. Second, platform dependency risk: Temu's US daily users fell roughly 48% within two months in 2025 after the US ended a tariff exemption, a reminder that policy shifts outside China can hit a cross-border brand's traffic overnight. Brands need a local partner who tracks both sides of that risk, Chinese regulation and the platform's own policy shifts.

Tmall's requirements and budget threshold are high, and we generally do not recommend it as a first move for smaller brands. Xiaohongshu, Douyin's shop features, and Pinduoduo's cross-border channel (0 commission, 0 deductions on many listings) are more accessible starting points, and they lean into social commerce, letting a smaller brand build a reputation before committing to a full Tmall flagship build-out.