Author｜Heng Zhi

Editor｜Liu Jingfeng

An increasing number of young people in Southeast Asia are starting to discover and embrace Chinese brands on TikTok Shop.

Fashion-loving girls in Singapore are now ordering hair curlers directly from China during live streams; young Malaysians are searching for luggage and massagers from China through short videos; and young Vietnamese couples are choosing niche Chinese brands for warm palace belts as their preferred gifts...

These shifts in consumer preferences all indicate a continuous rise in the recognition of Chinese brands among local youth.

For Chinese cross-border merchants, relying on the mature domestic supply chain and content-driven e-commerce strategies, the Southeast Asian market in 2026 continues to present new opportunities.

On one hand, with ongoing local consumption upgrades, young consumers favor high-quality, fashionable products, driving rapid growth in sales of high-ticket, non-essential categories. On the other hand, mature domestic e-commerce models such as in-house live streaming, influencer marketing, and content seeding can be directly replicated. Combined with a strong supply chain and platform capabilities, merchants can create scalable growth paths, continuously unlocking the potential for content-driven sales growth.

This trend is also validated by data. According to TikTok Shop Southeast Asia cross-border e-commerce data, platform GMV grew by 125% year-on-year in 2025, with continuous growth in major promotions, user scale, and content conversion: In major promotions, GMV during the 6.6 sale in the first half of last year increased by 123% year-on-year, while Double 11 in the second half saw a 230% increase, and Double 12 surged by 270%. In terms of user scale, TikTok's monthly active users in Southeast Asia now exceed 460 million, providing a solid traffic foundation for content-driven e-commerce. Content conversion effects have also strengthened, with GMV from short video sales in Malaysia's Ramadan promotion in March growing by 128% year-on-year, and live streaming sales GMV increasing by 104%.

Thus, in 2026, Chinese brands are finding new growth spaces in Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asian Consumers Are Also Pursuing Quality Products

The sound of order notifications dings incessantly, backend data soars, and packaging in the warehouse continues around the clock... This is the daily routine of Si Piao, a Chinese tissue brand, after entering the Southeast Asian market.

Leveraging its best-selling hanging tissue and a wealth of real-life product videos, Si Piao sold 34,000 units in a single day during TikTok Shop Southeast Asia's Double 11 cross-border promotion last year, becoming a phenomenal success in the Southeast Asian paper products sector.

In fact, Si Piao has been operating in China for 20 years. As domestic market growth peaked, it began using TikTok Shop as its primary platform, starting with Vietnam as a pilot, and relied on the platform's content-driven e-commerce logic to expand across Southeast Asia. Chen Qingtian, Si Piao's Director of International Trade, stated that its monthly sales in Southeast Asia have steadily risen from $3 million to $5 million, with 90% of sales driven by TikTok Shop's content-driven e-commerce.

And Si Piao is just one of many Chinese merchants achieving remarkable sales through TikTok Shop Southeast Asia cross-border e-commerce.

Si Piao's Hanging Tissue

Delving deeper into their success stories reveals new demands and characteristics emerging in the Southeast Asian cross-border market in 2026:

First, it is evident that the overall Southeast Asian market has ample growth potential, with significant room for improvement in e-commerce penetration compared to China.

The overall Southeast Asian market is expanding rapidly. According to IMF forecasts, Southeast Asia's economic growth rate will reach 4.3% in 2026, outpacing the global average of 3.1% by 1.2 percentage points and significantly leading the European and U.S. markets. In e-commerce, industry reports show that Southeast Asia's e-commerce platform GMV reached $157.6 billion in 2025, up 22.8% year-on-year, nearly tripling from 2020. The overall digital economy GMV has stably surpassed $300 billion, with annual growth maintained at 15%, with e-commerce being the primary driver of growth. Currently, e-commerce penetration in Southeast Asia stands at just 11%, compared to 25% in China, indicating at least a twofold potential for growth, providing a solid foundation for cross-border merchants' sales expansion.

Second, Southeast Asia is experiencing a consumption upgrade in recent years, with consumers shifting from "meeting basic needs" to "pursuing quality life."

Xiaoguangshe previously discovered during field visits to markets like Malaysia that while local young consumers are increasingly concerned about brand and product quality, many niche consumer categories are dominated by 1-2 international brands and 1-2 local family brands, with limited SKUs and relatively slow product updates. This indicates that the current supply of consumer goods in the region remains insufficient, with strong demand for many ordinary products.

TikTok Shop Southeast Asia cross-border e-commerce data further confirms this: GMV for massagers grew by over 10 times, with average order values increasing by 57% in three months; hair care appliances saw a 222% GMV increase; health supplements grew by 262%; and pet supplies by 235%. Even daily essentials like clothing and basic skincare achieved over 126% growth. Southeast Asian consumers are transitioning from "meeting basic needs" to "pursuing quality life," leaving ample room for domestic merchants to fill category gaps and brand opportunities.

This means that if Chinese merchants can offer more SKUs, better designs, relatively affordable prices, and convenient sales channels, consumers will be willing to pay.

The consumption upgrade in Southeast Asia resembles China's over the past decade. Taking Si Piao as an example, this 20-year-old domestic household goods brand found that its tissue quality far exceeded local standards upon entering the Southeast Asian market. Leveraging the quality advantages of mature domestic paper products, along with minor packaging adjustments and localized designs, Si Piao quickly adapted to consumer needs in different countries, rapidly expanding in Southeast Asia and achieving a 70% repurchase rate.

Third, with the accelerated penetration of social media, content-driven e-commerce has become a core consumption scenario for Southeast Asian users.

Industry authorities predict that content-driven e-commerce will cover 85% of the overall e-commerce market in Southeast Asia by 2026. Content platforms have become the primary consumption scenario for Southeast Asian users, with the path from "watching videos" to "being influenced" to "immediate purchasing" becoming mainstream. This is precisely where domestic merchants excel, and applying these strategies in Southeast Asia serves as the most effective growth engine.

Take Si Piao's flagship product, hanging tissue, as an example. Its strong visual appeal naturally suits content-driven e-commerce dissemination. Additionally, showcasing high-quality products through short videos aligns with the consumption habits and needs of Southeast Asian young consumers, driving long-term brand and sales growth.

As a result, unlike the exploration and anxiety of previous years, more merchants are recognizing these new opportunities and characteristics of Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce in 2026 and accelerating their entry. Data shows that the average order value of high-quality merchants on TikTok Shop Southeast Asia cross-border e-commerce has increased 1.2 times over two years, with 40% of merchants on the platform having domestic e-commerce backgrounds.

Chinese Merchants' Advantages in Going Global Precisely Meet Southeast Asia's Consumption Growth

Amid tremendous market opportunities, the advantages Chinese merchants have accumulated over the past are gradually coming to the fore.

These advantages concentrate on three major areas: supply chain, product reserves, and content-driven e-commerce operations:

First, China's complete supply chain and industrial cluster advantages help cross-border merchants ultimate (optimize) control over product costs, improve fulfillment efficiency, and build core competitiveness in cross-border business.

Taking Si Piao tissue as an example, the popularity of such everyday products in Southeast Asia relies on China's complete supply chain, with mature production capacity ensuring stable product quality.

Second, leveraging mature domestic production lines, a diverse range of product categories can be supplied to Southeast Asia, uncovering new consumption demands among local young consumers.

Referring to the success stories of many Southeast Asian cross-border merchants, the supply of various domestic new products has effectively tapped into new demands from Southeast Asian consumers. Moreover, with a complete supply chain, business opportunities abound.

For instance, Shenzhen-based massager brand ULucky focuses on warm palace belts. While such products are already highly commoditized and homogeneous in China's domestic e-commerce market, they remain a blue ocean in Southeast Asia.

ULucky's Niche Warm Palace Belt

As a new demand category, ULucky targeted cross-border opportunities, seizing occasions like Valentine's Day and International Women's Day to market to Southeast Asian men's gift-giving needs. Leveraging TikTok Shop's mature new product launch ecosystem, ULucky reached thousands of local creators, collaborated with hundreds of KOLs/KOCs, built localized live streaming studios, and precisely allocated traffic, capturing the top spot in Vietnam's warm palace belt category. With a small team and lean assets, ULucky achieved rapid new product scaling, becoming a successful model for launching high-priced niche products in Southeast Asia from scratch.

As Xu Mengqi, Head of TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce, said, "These quality supplies mean we're not just competing for existing market share in Southeast Asia but creating new growth with products unavailable elsewhere."

Third, at the operational level, domestic merchants possess first-mover experience: many have accumulated mature content-driven e-commerce experience in China, which they can apply to the Southeast Asian market, including live streaming processes, scene setups, influencer marketing tactics, and ad placements.

Merchants engaging in Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce generally agree: the more willing a store is to invest in content strategies and operations, the faster its growth.

Leveraging domestic experience, many merchants replicate China's mature short video and live streaming strategies, achieving overwhelming advantages:

Luggage export brand Bodiary Beioriji is a prime example. Its founder has eight years of experience in domestic live streaming e-commerce, specializing in influencer incubation and in-house live streaming operations.

Upon entering Southeast Asian cross-border business, Bodiary directly deployed its mature domestic live streaming team for in-house broadcasting, achieving over $20,000 in single-session sales in its first month. Later, participating in platform-wide promotions, single-session revenue surged to $400,000, with average order values rising from $200 to $300-$500.

Subsequently, they adopted a dual operation model of in-house live streaming and influencer partnerships: using in-house broadcasting for cold starts to attract influencers proactively, rapidly expanding influencer operations, which now surpass in-house broadcasting in scale.

Beioriji's Live Streaming Studio

By replicating China's mature live streaming model, Beioriji quickly covered multiple Southeast Asian markets: "We can simultaneously broadcast in five countries—Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam—reaching a wide consumer base," said Fu Hao, Beioriji's founder.

This year, many cross-border brands like Beioriji have localized domestic live streaming and influencer marketing strategies overseas, leveraging these tactics to capture the Southeast Asian cross-border market.

Platform Support Fuels Explosive Growth

In 2026, Southeast Asian cross-border e-commerce is heating up, with content-driven e-commerce experiencing surging demand. Meanwhile, China's mature supply chain is going global, precisely capturing Southeast Asia's emerging consumer market.

Riding this industry wave, major cross-border e-commerce platforms have transitioned from initial scale expansion to high-quality, omnichannel growth.

The 2026 TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce Annual Summit, held on May 22, attracted over 2.5 million merchants to watch.

Xu Mengqi, Head of TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce, stated at the event, "Cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia is not only fully established but its explosive growth continues to accelerate."

Xu Mengqi, Head of TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce

What truly supports this explosive "acceleration" is the platform's comprehensive breakthroughs in "promotion momentum, user scale, and content field conversion."

Thus, TikTok Shop Southeast Asia Cross-border E-commerce has set three core strategies for 2026: accelerating Chinese brands' global expansion, deepening omnichannel operational efficiency, and comprehensively upgrading platform infrastructure to drive cross-border business toward lightweight and standardized operations, further enhancing operational certainty.

Strategy 1: Accelerate Chinese Brands' Global Expansion, Enabling Quality Products to Take Root Faster in Southeast Asia.

The platform continues to increase support for mature leading brands and emerging brands, optimizing incentive systems for onboarding and reducing barriers for new brands' cold starts. It simultaneously opens up high-potential categories like second-hand luxury goods and jewelry, broadening growth avenues for merchants. Additionally, it iterates the entire chain system—from brand onboarding and logistics fulfillment to quality control and after-sales—to create a complete operating ecosystem for Chinese brands in Southeast Asia.

Strategy 2: Enhance Global Operations Efficiency to Simplify Business Management for Merchants.

To address the pain points of complex operations across multiple countries, the platform has launched features such as interconnected sales volume and reviews across multiple countries, interconnected customer service across multiple stores, and a unified data backend. Additionally, functions like one-click product listing across five countries, intelligent pricing, and multi-country shared inventory will be implemented to achieve interconnected product offerings. Meanwhile, merchants can leverage capabilities such as AI translation for short videos, real-time translation for live streams in minority languages, and cross-regional content distribution to break down barriers in cross-border content management, reduce content creation and cross-border operational costs, and achieve "create once, monetize across multiple countries."

Strategy 3: Accelerate Platform Infrastructure Upgrades to Ensure Secure Business Operations and Long-Term Stability for Merchants.

The platform continuously optimizes business rules to create a better operating environment. Simultaneously, it upgrades cross-border fulfillment processes, improves export tax exemptions and refunds, direct shipping of bulky items, and supporting services for border warehouses, achieving cost reduction and speed enhancement in logistics. By optimizing the post-sale return and exchange system, it enhances local consumer trust and repurchase rates, fostering long-term and steady business growth.

As the growth dividends of the Southeast Asian cross-border market continue to be released, now is an opportune time for merchants to enter and strategize. Both major merchants and the platform are optimistic about the growth potential of this market.

"In Southeast Asia, consumer demand for cross-border goods is increasing, and their willingness to spend is rising. The content-driven transaction model has been fully accepted by Southeast Asian consumers, and the explosive growth of our cross-border e-commerce is still accelerating," said Xu Mengqi.

The domestic and international operational logic of the TikTok Shop content e-commerce platform shares the same origins. TikTok Shop's cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia continuously improves its supporting policies to help merchants cultivate untapped local markets through formats such as short videos, influencer recommendations, and live streaming in real-world settings, successfully building brand awareness. It is an excellent choice for niche new products and mature brands to start their layout (layout) in the Southeast Asian market.

Capitalizing on immense supply and demand opportunities, TikTok Shop's cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia is helping merchants establish high-quality brand operation paths, achieving high-value, branded, and long-term go overseas (overseas expansion) growth.