Why this database?

The problem we kept seeing

Every brand that lands in China asks the same question: who do we actually sell with?

Distributors, trading partners, importers, Tmall TPs, cross-border operators, regional wholesalers, category specialists. The list is long, the names change fast, and from outside China it all kind of looks the same.

It isn't. Over the last fifteen years we've watched too many brands sign with the wrong one. A distributor that looked great on paper, pitched beautifully in the meeting, then quietly sat on inventory for 18 months. A Tmall TP that promised flagship operations but had never actually run the category before (they didn't bring that up until month four). An importer with the warehouse and trucking all sorted, but no real ability to actually sell anything to anyone.

The cost is rarely just a bad year. It's lost shelf, burned listings, brand equity you have to rebuild from scratch, a China entry that more or less starts over. Two years gone. Honestly often more.

What we've been building

We're Beyond Border Group. We've been running as a marketing and eCommerce agency in China since 2010, working with brands across beauty, food and beverage, fashion, lifestyle, home, and wellness. Cross-border and domestic. Hundreds of brand projects, from first market test to full distribution rollout.

That work produced something we didn't really plan for: data. A lot of it.

Every distributor we vetted. Every TP we briefed. Every importer we sat down with. Every warehouse we walked through. Every category specialist we met in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, plus a fair number of second-tier cities most foreign brands never visit.

We recorded what they actually do, not what their deck says. The categories they're genuinely strong in. The channels they really move volume through. Their footprint, their team, their financials, the reputation they have with brands they've worked with before. The ones we'd recommend without thinking twice. The ones we'd warn you off. And the ones who only fit a very specific kind of profile and shouldn't really be considered for anything else.

That recorded knowledge, after a few years of trying to keep it in spreadsheets and Notion pages and people's heads, is what eventually became BeyondCompass.

Why a database, and not just a contact list

BeyondCompass is built around the questions that actually decide whether a partnership works. Cross-border or domestic? Tmall, JD, Douyin, or offline retail? Which categories do they really run, versus the ones listed on their website? What kind of volume can they handle, realistically? Do they take exclusivity? How do they pay, and how fast? And the one most brands skip: have we seen them succeed with a brand like yours, or fail with one?

That last question, in our experience, is usually the one that costs the most when it gets skipped over.

To be clear, the database doesn't make the decision for you, it shortens the list and makes sure the names on it are the right ones to be talking to in the first place.

Who it's for

International brands entering China for the first time, and brands already on the ground who are rebuilding their distribution because what they currently have isn't working out. Most of them are mid-sized to large, and almost all are in consumer categories where the right partner can move the business and the wrong one quietly stalls it for years.

If you're choosing your first Tmall TP, picking between cross-border and general trade, or trying to replace a distributor that just isn't performing, this is how we cut the process down significantly.

The promise

Shorter shortlists, and shortlists that are actually relevant. Partners we've met in person, visited on site, and in many cases worked alongside on real brand projects. Not names pulled off a trade show badge scan.

When we hand you three or four partners to talk to, they're the right three or four. Not thirty maybes you have to filter yourself.