Should a beauty and cosmetics store in Saudi Arabia try live selling?

Worth trying, on one condition: that buying happens inside the stream. A live session that ends with a link to a product page loses most of the audience at the moment they were most willing.

What trying it actually requires

Start with one seller, one hour, and a small number of items you hold in stock. The failure mode of a first attempt is a catalogue too wide to demonstrate and stock that runs out mid-session.

Live selling works where the product has to be seen moving, worn or demonstrated, and does little where it does not. For a beauty and cosmetics store in Saudi Arabia, the answer turns on one thing in particular: Beauty is bought again on a schedule — a serum runs out — so the second purchase is predictable in a way most categories are not.

What is different about Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is the largest ecommerce market in the region by some distance, and the most phone-dominated.

Cash on delivery remains common in Saudi Arabia, which changes the economics of every refused delivery.

What is different about a beauty and cosmetics store

The work is not the video. It is buying inside the video, because a link to a product page loses most of the audience.

Where a mobile app comes into it

A category bought monthly is the strongest case there is for an app: reordering in two taps rather than five.