Should a fashion 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 fashion store in Saudi Arabia, the answer turns on one thing in particular: Fashion carries the highest return rate in retail — sizing is guesswork on a screen — so the margin has to survive a third of the order coming back.

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 fashion 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

Repeat rates in fashion are strong once a customer trusts the sizing, which is exactly the behaviour an app is built for.