Going live? Why live commerce is still sluggish in SEA’s beauty market - KOL

Jeraldine Chan is the co-owner and lead key opinion leader (KOL) of MyBKKShop, which conducts live selling sessions on Facebook Live, concentrating mostly on women’s lifestyle products.

Founded two years ago, MyBKKShop has grown from a team of four to 20 that operate from both Singapore and Thailand. The platform organises live sessions from all over the world, from Japan to US.

Thailand is only the first step MyBKKShop. Chan hinted that the firm was eyeing an expansion to other countries in the SEA region.

The drive to expand was underpinned by Chan’s optimism about the advancement of live commerce in Singapore and the wider SEA region.

However, she noted that the live commerce space in the region was still in its nascent stage and lacked many advancements that could potentially hinder its growth in the region.

She highlighted the lack of an integrated system to help on the backend as a major hindrance as well as the lack of a sense of community which makes for a more vibrant landscape. Furthermore, every market is fragmented by the use of different platforms.

To find out more about Chan’s thoughts on the live commerce scene in SEA, check out our video above.

Beauty and live commerce

Chan, known as Queen J to her followers, first started out livestreaming from Bangkok, Thailand in 2020 when COVID-19 hit.

One of Chan’s greatest feats was emptying the shelves of a Moschino outlet worth over EUR100,000 in Serravalle, Italy during a livestream, which attracted attention from local Italian media.

While MyBKKShop got its start primarily in fashion, Chan has now expanded to selling a range of products, including beauty, food, household products, and supplements.

Social commerce has been billed as the future of online shopping and at the heart of it is livestreaming. A marriage of retail and entertainment, it is a channel brands beauty have explored but its potential has not yet been fully tapped.

Chan told CosmeticsDesign-Asia​ that beauty products and services perform exceptionally well on live commerce.

“You can keep selling bags and shoes, but there’s a limit to how many bags and shoes you can buy. But everyone wants to look good for themselves or their partner. Beauty is also very wide. It’s not just services, but products that come with it. There are so many things to target. Everyone has their own concerns and that’s why I feel that beauty is doing really well,” ​said Chan.

To sell cosmetics through live commerce, demonstration was key, she said.

“Live streaming is all about impulse buying. It can be an advantage and it can be a disadvantage. So, the way that we market on livestream, it has to be very different from how products are normally marketed on retail, or in their normal advertisements.”​

“When I sell makeup and cosmetics, I have to demonstrate, because want to show my customers how it looks like on me and how it gradually will look like on the customer.”​