Context
A Belgian manufacturer of dietary supplements and nutraceuticals had built a solid position across Belgium, the Netherlands, and France — fourteen SKUs covering omega-3, vitamin complexes, probiotic blends, and sports nutrition, all certified to EU food supplement standards and sold through pharmacy chains, specialty health retailers, and a direct e-commerce channel. The board approved a China entry budget targeting Tmall Global sales within twelve months and appointed MAXAM Group to manage the entry end-to-end. What followed was twelve months of structured complexity that the company's initial internal assessment had significantly underestimated — not because any single element was insurmountable, but because the cumulative sequencing of regulatory, commercial, logistical, and marketing steps created dependencies and delays that only become visible from inside them.
Our Mission
Execute a complete cross-border e-commerce market entry into China — CBEC whitelist verification, SAMR filing, Chinese label compliance, bonded warehouse setup, Tmall Global store launch, and first sales — within the twelve-month timeline approved by the board, while protecting the brand's regulatory position and avoiding the failure modes that European nutraceutical entrants typically encounter at each stage.
Our Approach
MAXAM ran the entry as a sequenced programme across five interlocking workstreams. CBEC category confirmation: each of the fourteen SKUs was verified against the current cross-border whitelist; two SKUs (a probiotic-mineral combination and a high-dose vitamin D product) were deferred from launch pending formal categorisation, reducing the first-wave range to twelve. SAMR filing and label compliance: a claims mapping exercise across the twelve SKUs against China's closed list of 27 approved health functions — eight mapped cleanly, three required reformulation, one (a sports recovery product positioned around endurance) was relabelled with a generic nutritional statement; Chinese label artwork went through four revision rounds before approval, taking eleven weeks rather than the three the client had estimated. Bonded warehouse: a Hangzhou Cross-Border E-Commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone operator was selected for proximity to Alibaba's infrastructure and food-category track record; product pre-registration identified an incorrect customs classification on a liquid omega-3 SKU that would have triggered a customs irregularity review if discovered post-shipment, and was corrected with a licensed broker before the first pallets moved. Stock shipped in week thirty-eight, arriving Hangzhou in week forty-one, including verified cold chain for the temperature-sensitive probiotic range. Tmall Global store: brand authorisation surfaced an overlooked gap — the company's EU trademark was registered but its Chinese trademark was not. An accelerated Chinese trademark application was filed in parallel with store setup, with the store opening under preliminary brand authorisation. Product listings were rewritten in native Mandarin by category-fluent copywriters rather than translated from European materials. KOL activation: three campaigns with health and wellness micro-influencers (200,000–800,000 followers) on Xiaohongshu and Weibo were executed in weeks fifty to fifty-two, generating sufficient traffic to produce first sales in week fifty-one — the operational infrastructure complete and live within the twelve-month target.
Before & After Results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| China market presence | None | Tmall Global store live |
| SKUs through CBEC whitelist verification | 0 of 14 | 12 cleared (2 deferred) |
| SKUs compliant with Chinese 27-function claims framework | 0 | 12 |
| Time from board approval to first sale | Initial sketch: 3–6 months | 51 weeks |
"We assumed Tmall Global was the simplified version of selling into China. It is genuinely more accessible than general trade, but it is not simplified — it is a different complexity, sequenced. MAXAM walked us through claims mapping, customs classification, label compliance and trademark status in an order where each prerequisite unlocked the next. The twelve months were not a delay; they were the actual time the work takes when it is done properly."
Marketing Director
Marketing Director — Belgian Nutraceuticals Brand