On demand webinar

China Market Success in 2027: What New Partnership Models Need

Why stalled China sales are usually a structure problem, not a market one.

35 minutes·Presented by Dr Adam Knight, co-founder, YASO·September 2026

Maybe your China revenue went flat after a strong first year. Maybe you're growing but the margin isn't there. Maybe one SKU is carrying the entire business. Maybe you found your own product discounted somewhere you didn't authorise. Or maybe the honest answer is that you don't know, because the reporting arrives monthly, in a different format every time. Someone has almost certainly told you it's the market. This session is about what to check before you believe them.

• —The operating benchmarks nobody publishes and how yours compare
• —Four questions your partner should be able to answer without being asked

What you'll learn

• The five excuses brands are given for underperformance, and which ones hold up against the data
• The four partner-side failure modes: misaligned incentives, fragmented architecture, the visibility gap, and single-SKU dependency
• Where the category and platform opportunity actually sits in 2026
• Operating benchmarks you can hold your China business against — distribution mix, return rates by channel, SKU concentration, marketing efficiency
• The four questions to put to any partner, current or prospective
• Why exit terms are the most common point of failure in Chinese partnerships

Inside the session

• 01Five common excuses for underperformance00:00
• 02Four partner-side problems06:00
• 03Where the opportunity sits today13:00
• 04What good looks like — the benchmarks21:00
• 05Who to partner with, and how to exit29:00

There is almost no public benchmarking data for China operating performance. Platform reports give you GMV; consultancies don't publish operating numbers. So here is what we see across our own portfolio. Distribution and sub-distribution should account for no more than 20 to 30% of revenue — beyond that it isn't a channel mix, it's key dependency. Direct-to-consumer return rates should sit below 10%; influencer-driven sales run 15 to 20%, and anything above 30% is a flag for fake sales activity.

No more than 50% of sales should come from one or two hero SKUs — concentration that high is a structure problem wearing a market's clothes.

The full session covers all five excuses, the four partner-side failure modes, the benchmarks to hold your China business against, and how one brand did 50% of a full year's prior revenue in a single month after switching.

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