Launching in Australia: which sales channels to start with, from Xiaohongshu and WeChat groups to Amazon and retail stores

Picture a mum in Melbourne who needs a compact stroller. She will not see one ad and buy. She will meet your product on about five screens, and behind each screen is a different channel.

Two things follow. No single channel does the whole job, so a launch needs a few channels that hand over to each other. And the first screens are social, so that is where a launch starts. If nobody is talking about the stroller, nobody searches for it.

It is tempting to start where the most shoppers are. Look at the sizes first.

On Amazon your stroller sits beside hundreds of others, and a new listing has no reviews. In a community of ten thousand parents, a few dozen families who try it and post about it get noticed. Their posts become your first reviews, your first real photos and your first search results. So start in the small circle and work outwards: community, then a marketplace and your own site, then stores.

Mainstream apps matter too: 78% of Australian adults use Facebook and 71% use YouTube (ACMA, 2026). But paid reach works better once there are real reviews to point to. For the Chinese-speaking community in detail, read how to reach Asian consumers in Australia.

Read the grid by columns. For each job, choose one channel you can do well. A common first mix for a baby or home brand is the red dots: Xiaohongshu to be seen, a WeChat group or parents' community to be trusted, Amazon to be compared and bought, and your own website to bring people back. That is four channels with four different jobs. Stores join when you have something to show them.

TikTok is strong for being seen, but TikTok Shop had not launched in Australia as of March 2026 (Marketing-Interactive, 2026), so shoppers still leave the app to buy.

Channels charge in different ways, so compare them on one thing: what comes out of every A$100 a shopper pays.

On a marketplace you keep more of each sale, but you carry the stock, the delivery bill from step 04 and the cost of being found. In a store you keep less, but the store brings the shoppers. Either way, work back from the shelf price to check there is still a margin, as in step 01.

One more cost is easy to miss: platforms change. Wesfarmers closed its Catch marketplace in 2025, and Woolworths said the same year that it would shut MyDeal (The Nightly, 2025). Do not let one platform hold all your customers. Your own website and your own community list are the two things nobody can switch off.

For baby products the main specialist is Baby Bunting. It has 80 stores across Australia and New Zealand and made A$556.0 million in sales in its 2026 financial year (FY26). By its own estimate it holds about 20% of a A$1.8 billion market for hard goods such as prams, cots and car seats (Baby Bunting, 2026).

What this means for you: a store buyer has limited open shelf and will ask why your stroller deserves a place. Bring three things: reviews from local parents, your sales so far, and proof that the product meets the safety standard. Be ready for the buyer to ask for an exclusive colour or model. Some retailers also run an online marketplace for outside sellers. Ask about it, because it can be a first step before shelf space.

Two notes on week 2. First, the rule. If you pay a creator or give them a free product, the post must say so. In March 2026 an online retailer paid A$39,600 in penalties after the ACCC alleged it had told influencers not to disclose free products (ACCC, 2026). This is general information, not legal advice. Second, the saving. Samples are usually the best-value marketing you will buy.

Big sale days are noisy. That is why the community opens two days early: your first buyers and first reviews are in before the crowd arrives.

This is the launch we run through Baby Island, our community platform with 10,000+ members: samples and honest feedback first, then a community launch, then the wider channels. DAY Concept has helped 6 brands enter Australia, and Launch is step five of our six-step process. For the community side, see how we reach Asian-Australian consumers. Next in this series: step 06, what to watch after launch and when to scale.

Working on a launch date? Tell us your product and your timing.

Questions about launching in Australia