(Yicai) Nov. 28 -- Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms and livestream agencies are busy with this year’s Black Friday sales season, collaborating with overseas influencers to garner more foreign buyers for their vendors.

Livestream e-commerce has not taken off abroad to the same degree as it has in China, but user habits are quickly being cultivated, especially around major sales events such as Black Friday, when livestreaming has already proven its ability to drive conversions, Zhang Zhouping, executive director of Bense Think Tank, told Yicai.

The overseas market for livestream e-commerce is set to boom and has huge growth potential, Zhang noted. The active deployment by platforms such as AliExpress and TikTok, along with the rapid progress of livestream agencies like Yowant, proves that overseas consumers are increasingly accepting the “content + e-commerce” model, he added.

Most players in the North American livestream sales market are Chinese, as they have developed a complete set of operational practices through fierce competition in the home market and are more competitive than local agencies that are new to the business, said Fu She, a merchandise planner at Hangzhou-based Yowant.

Yowant has set up an offline livestream base in Los Angeles and arranged 25 offline and 150 online events for Black Friday, many more than last year, Fu said. Many delivered sales results that exceeded expectations, he noted.

The number of influencers in the United Kingdom and the United States working with Yowant has increased to nearly 10,000 this year from over 4,000 last year, while the ranks of merchants in North America cooperating with Yowant has jumped to about 1,000 from over 100, Fu said.

Overseas brands are also eyeing sales growth from collaborating with content e-commerce platforms on livestream sales. For example, British high street retailer Marks & Spencer said earlier this month that it will begin livestream shopping events on TikTok Shop, allowing customers to see items worn or used live and interact directly with merchants.

For Black Friday, Alibaba Group Holding’s cross-border e-commerce platform AliExpress has arranged exclusive livestream sales for computer, communication, and consumer electronics, and outdoor sports brands such as Baseus, Xtep China, and Kailas, Yicai learned.

A technology evolves, such as virtual livestreams and localized operations, and as payment and logistics systems become more integrated and more brands enter the field, livestream sales aimed at overseas buyers are likely to become a standard e-commerce model, Zhang said.

With livestreaming an increasingly powerful sales tool abroad, a Chinese apparel and accessories seller with years of overseas experience told Yicai that TikTok’s e-commerce model, which tightly integrates content with shopping, has immense growth potential in Europe and the United States.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione