Hong Kong Shopping Festival helps brands read mainland tastes
HK01 · 1 SOURCESabout 2 hours ago6 MIN
Summary
Hong Kong brands are using the Hong Kong Shopping Festival as more than a sales event, treating it as a testing ground for mainland China consumer demand and digital marketing. Hung Fook Tong and Yummy House both said this year’s campaign helped them improve product positioning, broaden customer reach and lift online sales.
Key Points
- Hung Fook Tong, a 40-year-old brand that grew from a traditional herbal tea shop into a modern healthy food and beverage business, joined the Hong Kong Shopping Festival for a third straight year.
- The company focused this year on discount-month promotions, livestream selling and seeding on Xiaohongshu, while its sugarcane and imperatae drink and preserved salted kumquat products were picked by top mainland livestreamer Li Jiaqi.
- Hung Fook Tong said the two featured products helped drive sales to nearly triple from the same period last year, while livestreaming also gave the brand direct feedback on taste preferences and buying habits.
- General manager Audrey Poon Chi-nga (潘智雅) said repeated participation has raised mainland consumer awareness and trust, while helping the company build e-commerce capabilities and reach new customer groups through streamer partnerships.
- Local snack brand Yummy House, which has operated in Hong Kong for 25 years and offers more than 200 products, said orders and sales both doubled year on year after more than 10 livestream sessions with multiple hosts.
- Yummy House operations manager Ada Cheung Sau-yu (張秀瑜) said mainland consumers pay close attention to flavour, healthier ingredients and convenience, prompting the brand to develop a low-sugar wholewheat line for the market late last year.
- The Hong Kong Trade Development Council said it will expand the Hong Kong Shopping Festival to ASEAN from September 21 to 27, focusing first on Singapore and Malaysia before gradually covering other major Southeast Asian markets.
Why It Matters
For Hong Kong consumer brands, the event is emerging as a practical route to test products, refine messaging and build repeat recognition in mainland e-commerce channels rather than relying only on one-off promotions.
The extension into ASEAN also suggests the model is being used as a broader export platform for Hong Kong merchants seeking growth beyond the local market.