I keep seeing the same mistake. A brand looks at China, sees a billion shoppers, picks an agency off a list, and six months later the store is live and nobody cares.
China is not a bigger version of your home market. People do not start on Google. They scroll. They watch a girl in Chengdu put cream on her face for twelve minutes. They ask a group chat if the bottle is fake. Then they buy, sometimes at 1am, and they want it tomorrow.
If that already sounds tiring, good. It is.
The shops they actually use
Tmall is still the “real brand” store. Tmall Global if you are coming in from outside and you do not want a full local company yet. JD if you sell anything with a plug, a motor, or a “don’t send me a copy” problem. Douyin if you need people to notice you this month. Xiaohongshu if beauty or lifestyle is the job, because that app is where trust gets built before money moves. WeChat is the boring one that ends up mattering: mini programs, member groups, the buyers you can message again.
Kuaishou sits under Douyin for a lot of foreign teams. Ignore it only if you have already decided you only want first-tier cities.
Offline is not separate. Pop-up, counter, same-day, membership card. Shoppers do not file those in different folders.
What goes wrong
Ads on Tmall cost more than the slide deck said. A flagship store is table stakes and it does not save you.
Feeds replaced search. Your beautiful product page is useless if nobody lands on it.
Paperwork. Labels, bonded warehouse, duties, a certificate you did not know existed. I have seen launches sit in a warehouse because of a sticker.
You cannot just translate the site. The live script, the refund fight, the way a page looks on a cheap Android phone in a tier-3 city: that is the work.
Local brands are faster than your legal team. They will copy the mechanic and undercut the price while you are still approving a banner.
So people hire a China agency. Fine. Just do not hire the wrong shape of company.
Baozun
Big Shanghai shop, around since 2007, listed. They run the unsexy pile: store, ads, warehouse, CS, tech. They also took on brand management. Gap in China is the example everyone quotes.
If you are a heavy brand with money and you want one group to hold the whole mess, Baozun is the safe call. They have been a top Tmall service partner for years. They have people. They have boxes in warehouses.
You will pay for that. You may also get the “major brand” template. I have watched teams wake up with a store that looks like every other sports store on Tmall. Write the contract around repeat orders and members, not visits. If you care about WeChat groups, put WeChat in the SOW or it will slide.
Old GMV boasts from 2021 are not how you judge them now. Ask what they did for a brand like yours in the last four quarters.
Lily & Beauty (丽人丽妆)
Beauty people. Listed in Shanghai. Official stores, authorized stock, the whole “this is not a grey market stall” pitch. They have run shops for Sulwhasoo, Freeplus, Erno Laszlo, Avene, that crowd. A couple of years ago they were talking about ~200 stores.
If you sell cream, serum, makeup, they already know the Xiaohongshu to live room to Tmall hop. That path is half the job in beauty.
Ask them about lower-tier cities. Beauty money is not only Jing’an. And check who they still work with. They had a public fight with a Korean group. Partnerships move. Get a current list, not a 2019 press page.
Do not assume they will build your offline thing or a loyalty program unless you pay for it.
GMA
Smaller. Shanghai. Started in 2012 by a French guy and a Chinese guy, Olivier Vérot and Philip Qian. Tmall Partner. They talk to HQ in English, which sounds minor until you have sat on a call with an operator who only reports in screenshots.
They show up a lot next to wine, whisky, lifestyle, “we need a gift box before Chunjie.” They claim a mountain of brand launches. Every agency claims a mountain. Ask for one category close to yours and the actual results.
Good when you are not Gap. Good when you need someone who will test a Douyin hook next week instead of booking a quarterly workshop. Bad if you need a national warehouse web and 200 CS seats on day one. Some small shops love the campaign and get vague about stock and returns. Website marketingtochina.com
New brands still bleed cash on attention. If your only KPI is month-one GMV you will hate China.
Fangshi
I am going to be blunt. I cannot find a clean, well-known e-commerce agency under that name with a public book the way Baozun has a public book. Same two characters show up on a clothing firm, glasses, other companies.
What people usually mean with a name like that is a local operator. Tier-2, tier-3, cheap tests, live commerce, no luxury manners. Those shops exist. Some are good.
If that is your budget and your product, meet three of them. Walk the warehouse if you can. If all you get is a WeChat and a PDF with stock photos, no.
Luxury brands: do not hand your tone to a team that sells on price. You will feel it in six weeks.
KJT
Same problem. KJT.com was an old Shanghai cross-border mall. Other KJTs make sensors or phone parts. I would not hire “KJT the electronics agency” off a blog paragraph.
Electronics is still a real specialty. JD matters more. People want the live unbox, the comparison, the next-day van, the warranty that is not a paragraph in a footer. CCC and the rest of the alphabet will stop a shipment. Chinese gadget brands will knife the price.
Hire a team that already runs 3C or appliances on JD. Listen to how they talk about after-sales. If they talk like a beauty media shop, leave.
Who goes where
Huge brand, many lines, you want one throat to choke: Baozun.
Makeup and skin: Lily & Beauty.
New, mid-size, drinks, lifestyle, you need English and speed: GMA.
Local price and local tempo: a real local operator you have checked, not a name from an article.
Plugs and gadgets: a JD 3C team. Full stop.
If you only do five things
Know if you want cash this quarter or a name people remember in 2028. Those plans do not look the same.
Get cases in your category and your price. Fashion proof is not whisky proof.
Write who owns the store, the ads, the warehouse, the refunds. Verbal scope dies.
GMV is a vanity number if nobody comes back. Watch repeat, members, what a buyer costs, what they spend later.
Pick two platforms and do them. Tmall plus JD is one job. Douyin plus Xiaohongshu is another. Doing five at 20% effort is how stores rot.
And pay the agency in a way that cares about the second order. First-order bonuses create junk traffic. You already know that. You will forget it when the GMV chart looks pretty.
China will move product. It will also eat a sloppy partner and a sloppy brief at the same time. Pick the shop that matches the brand you have, not the brand on the moodboard.