Foreigners join China’s livestream sales army
Chinese companies crave bridgeheads for their goods overseas
Late at night, Lalo Lopez heads to a small Shanghai studio for a livestream, punting Chinese products from cycling shorts to vacuum cleaners to Spanish speakers around the world.
The 33-year-old Spaniard, who describes himself as an artist, DJ and YouTuber, is in the vanguard of the growing ranks of foreigners hired by mainland agencies to extend China’s livestream sales mania beyond its borders.
By some estimates, livestream shopping is a near $70 billion industry inside China, attracting influencers who scour markets and malls for items to peddle to live audiences via social media.
Once an obscure form of shopping, livestreaming is predicted to change the habits of global consumers, whose footfall has already headed from the high street to online marketplaces. Buoyed by the success of livestreams at home, Chinese companies crave bridgeheads for their goods overseas.
Enter hosts such as Lopez, who has lived in China for around nine years and was approached by Beijing-based marketing firm Linkone Interactive after it saw videos he posted on YouTube and Instagram.
“When I speak, I look at the product through my culture, through my experience,” said Lopez, whose streams can attract up to 15,000 viewers.
The medium allows him to answer viewers’ questions on everything from clothing and household appliances to gadgets in real-time, while entertaining them with trivia and flamboyant sales patter.
Chinese agencies training foreign are hosts now in
China and recruiting influencers abroad, in hopes of hooking onto a winning pattern.
Zhang Zhiguo, CEO of Linkone Interactive, said his firm has been training non-Chinese livestreaming hosts for nearly 2 years, as brands look to expand abroad.
It has around 50 influencers now — more than half of whom are based in China — targeting markets such as the US, France and Spain. Livestreaming has become a natural extension of online shopping.
Even Chinese state media has touted it as a means to alleviate poverty in rural areas where farmers can sell produce like tea online.