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Comeback king: China’s disgraced live-streaming ‘sales king’ sells in 12 hours what a Hong Kong mall sells in 12 months

  • Xinba, one of the biggest influencers on Chinese streaming platform Kuaishou, sold US$300 million worth of goods in a single session
  • The streamer became the subject of controversy last year after selling fake bird’s nest – an expensive Chinese delicacy

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After a 60-day ban for promoting fake bird’s nest on Kuaishou, Xinba returned on Saturday with a 12-hour, record-smashing session, pulling in US$300 million. Photo: Sina.com
Iris Deng
China’s disgraced “king of live-streaming sales” made a big comeback on Saturday when he sold more than US$300 million worth of goods in a single show lasting 12 hours, a record for streaming platform Kuaishou, showcasing the market potential of live-streaming e-commerce after growing in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kuaishou is Xinba’s live-streaming platform of choice and China’s second-most popular short-video site after ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. The session attracted four million viewers at its peak, and Xinba sold more than 16 million items across categories as diverse as shampoo and smartphones, according to social media data provider Bihu Kankan. Total gross merchandise volume (GMV) topped 2 billion yuan (US$305.7 million). Kuaishou did not officially publish the figure for the session, and sales numbers are neither audited nor count for returns and refunds.

The sales numbers are staggering for a host mired in controversy just a few months ago. In this single session, Xinba pulled in more money than Times Square shopping centre in Causeway Bay, one of the most high-profile locations for luxury goods in Hong Kong, made in all of 2020.

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Saturday’s show surpassed Xinba’s previous record of selling 1.45 billion yuan worth of products in a session last November, and it marks the biggest live-streaming sales session that Kuaishou has hosted.

This was also Xinba’s first show in nearly three months, after he came under fire late last year when Guangzhou’s market watchdog found that he had promoted fake bird’s nest – an expensive Chinese delicacy – made of sugar and water.

The regulator fined Xinba 900,000 yuan, and Kuaishou blocked the host in December from live-streaming for 60 days. Xinba issued an apology and offered buyers compensation up to three times the purchase amount, as required by the country’s consumer rights law.

Live-streaming e-commerce has become a highly competitive market in China, where the biggest online platforms and brands have piled in to offer consumers a more interactive online shopping experience, which has become increasingly important as more people stay home amid the pandemic.

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