From daigou to official distribution in Australia: how a cross-border baby, toy or home brand moves to a local channel without losing its buyers

Think of your current sales as a photo negative. The shape of the business is there, but everything is reversed and hard to read: nobody in Australia holds the safety file, the warranty is written for another country, and the price changes with every reseller. Moving to an official channel is developing that negative into a print. The step wedge below runs from the darkest route to the clearest one.

Notice what does not change: the product. A cot made in the same factory is just as safe, or unsafe, whichever route it takes. What changes is whether an Australian business can show a test report against the mandatory standard, honour a warranty and take back a faulty item. Parents look for exactly those three things, and so do the retailers you will want later.

The daigou boom most people remember ran from Australia to China. A 2017 Nielsen report estimated that more than 40,000 people worked in Australia's daigou trade, and more than 1,000 daigou shops opened at the peak. Then two things happened. China's E-Commerce Law came into force on 1 January 2019 and required daigou to hold business licences and pay tax. And from 2020 travel stopped: Chinese visitors to Australia fell from 1.4 million in 2019 to 241,720 in the year to March 2023. AuMake, a listed chain of daigou stores, saw its share price fall from over 70 cents in 2017 to under one cent in 2023.

For a brand selling into Australia, the lesson is the reverse of the one Australian brands learned. When your product reaches Australian parents only through individuals, your sales depend on their travel, their tax position and their willingness to keep going. Platforms now ship from China to Australia directly, so the informal reseller has lost its main advantage. The space still open is the one nobody overseas can fill: a local business that stands behind the product.

A parallel import, or grey import, is a genuine product brought into Australia and sold without the brand's authorisation. Australian trade mark law has a specific defence for these: section 122A of the Trade Marks Act protects an importer who reasonably concludes the mark was applied with the owner's consent. A registered trade mark still matters, because it is what you use against counterfeits, but it will not stop genuine stock. What the law does is put the burden on whoever sells it. The ACCC says the seller of a parallel import must provide the repair, replacement or refund, and cannot send the buyer to the manufacturer.

This is the honest pitch to parents: buy the official version and someone in Australia answers the phone. Say it plainly on your listings, and register your trade mark early. IP Australia charges A$250 per class when you use its picklist, and registration takes at least seven months. The full first-year budget is in our cost checklist.

Consumer group CHOICE has bought children's products from marketplaces and tested them. The timer dials below show the share that failed in each round. These products came from many sellers, not from any one brand, but parents read the results as a warning about unbranded, untraceable goods in general.

CHOICE also surveyed 2,040 Australians in October 2025: 132 said they had bought an unsafe product from a discount online marketplace in the previous two years, linked to 480 dangerous incidents. Regulators are responding. On 1 September 2026 the ACCC said it supports clear obligations on online marketplaces and new general safety protections for all consumer goods, and that Treasury will lead work on mandatory injury reporting, stronger penalties and marketplace duties.

In a darkroom the order matters: skip the fixer and the print fades as soon as it meets the light. The same is true here. This is the order we use with consumer brands; the timings are our experience, not a statistic.

Two notes on money. Once an overseas business's GST-able sales to Australian consumers reach A$75,000 in 12 months, it has to register for GST; sales made through a marketplace that collects the GST don't count towards that threshold (see our cost checklist, and get tax advice). And the resellers you already have are an asset: the best of them can become authorised partners or group-buy organisers, as in our WeChat group buying guide. We usually announce the official channel to the Baby Island community first (10,000+ members), then support it with Chinese social media management. DAY Concept has helped 6 brands enter Australia. Talk to us about your move, or see our Australia market entry process and how we reach Asian-Australian consumers.

Questions about moving from daigou to official distribution in Australia