DEV Community: Flowup Insights Team

Pick one product to push: score your SKUs from TikTok Shop data before you pitch a retailer

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 18:26:00 +0000

Working notes from the Flowup team for people who run e-commerce or trade marketing in Thailand. Not a repost of our site guides.

The usual way a brand picks its "hero" product is by looking at the bestseller list in its own TikTok Shop and taking the top line. That list ranks by units or revenue. It does not tell you which product makes money after fees, which one people come back for, or which one would survive on a convenience-store shelf. If you are about to put campaign budget, creator samples or a 7-Eleven pitch behind one product, a 30-minute scoring pass is worth doing first.

TikTok for Business makes the same point from the platform side: its advice for Thai brands before mega sales starts with enough stock and a clearly defined hero product (SME Thailand Club, Sep 2026).

What to export

From Seller Center, export the last 90 days of orders with SKU, unit price paid, discount, buyer ID (or hashed ID), ship-to province and order date. Add your own cost sheet: product cost, packaging and the fees you actually pay for each SKU's category. TikTok Shop Thailand lists the fee lines (category commission, payment fee, per-order infrastructure fee, Commerce Growth Fee, affiliate commission) in its Academy (fee overview); use your own settlement statements for the rates.

Five scores, 0 to 2 each

Profit per unit after fees. Average price paid minus product cost minus fees minus creator commission. 0 if negative, 1 if thin, 2 if there is room for a promotion. If you plan a 7-Eleven pitch, run the same calculation from the expected shelf price; our margin calculator does the store side.
Repeat rate. Share of buyers with a second order within 60 days. Rank your SKUs and score the top third 2, the middle 1, the bottom 0.
Demand outside one city. Count provinces that account for most orders. A product that only sells in one area is harder to argue for in a chain trial.
Shelf fit. A judgement call, not a data column: could a shopper decide in a few seconds at this price and pack size? If not, is a smaller pack possible?
Supply. Can you produce double the current volume within one reorder cycle?

A small script is enough. In pandas:

repeat = (orders.groupby(["sku", "buyer_id"]).order_date.nunique() > 1)
repeat_rate = repeat.groupby("sku").mean()
province_share = (orders.groupby(["sku", "province"]).size()
                  .groupby(level=0).apply(lambda s: s.nlargest(3).sum() / s.sum()))

A high province_share means orders are concentrated in the top three provinces. Concentration is fine for choosing where to start, but it is a weak argument for a nationwide listing.

How to read the total

8 to 10: a candidate hero product. Put the first round of creator samples and ads here.
5 to 7: keep it selling, but don't lead with it.
Any product with 0 on profit: fix price, pack or cost before spending anything on it, whatever else it scores.

The cut-offs are examples. Adjust them to your category.

Common mistakes

Scoring on GMV. Revenue rewards expensive items and deep discounts. Profit per unit and repeat rate tell you more.
Mixing campaign weeks into the baseline. Exclude 11.11, 12.12 and payday spikes when computing repeat rate, or compare like with like.
Treating followers as demand. Creator reach explains some sales, but the score should describe the product, not the creator who happened to post it.

What this does not do

It ranks your products. It does not forecast sales, and it does not replace a test. Once you have picked one, the next step is a short round of creator videos across three or four content directions, then moving the best ones into ads.

Do not approve marketing support as a listing condition until it has a per-store daily target

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:24:04 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team wrote this for brand-side meetings where a distributor or importer will only take a 7-Eleven Thailand listing forward if the brand funds a marketing package. It is an approval method, not a rate card.

The request is often reasonable. A buyer wants a plan for the shelf, and a distributor does not want to spend political capital on a SKU the brand will not support. The problem is the package: a lump of "support" with a creator list, a promotion idea, and no statement of how many extra units, in how many stores, over how many days, that lump must produce. Until those numbers exist, you are not agreeing a listing condition. You are agreeing to write a cheque in order to keep a conversation alive.

Put the condition and the target on the same page

Write the amount you are being asked to fund, what it will actually buy (talent, media, a display, a discount you will underwrite), the stores that will have stock at the same time, and the days the activity will run. Divide the cost by the extra profit you keep on one additional unit, after the discount and the terms of the period. Then divide by stores and by days. That daily extra-unit figure is the target that belongs next to the "yes, we will fund this."

If that daily target is clearly above anything comparable stores have sold, the support is not a listing condition you should accept as-is. Shrink the package, shrink the store list, or refuse the condition and keep the listing conversation on terms that do not depend on an unreachable lift.

Do not accept "national awareness" as the success line for money that was demanded as a condition of listing. A listing condition has to be judged on whether the SKU sells in the stores it enters. Awareness that cannot be connected to those stores will not help you at the first range review.

Refuse a condition that is due before stock is real

Support that must be spent before stores are in stock, or before a listing is confirmed, is not support for the listing. It is a prepaid marketing programme with a hope attached. If the distributor needs to show a buyer a plan, you can agree the plan and the budget in principle, and release the spend when there is a store set and a date. Money that leaves the brand before that point is hard to get back if the listing slips.

Hypothetical example, for method only: 90,000 baht of extra support, 6 baht of extra profit per unit, 600 stores in stock, 21 days. That is 15,000 extra units, or about 1.2 extra units per store per day. If those stores currently sell 0.3 units a day, the condition is asking for a fourfold lift. That may be possible with a very strong offer; it is not something to approve by instinct. Use your own figures.

Open the sales per store per day, promotion stock and marketing break-even calculator and enter the support cost, extra profit per unit, stores and days. You will get the extra units the package must sell, including a per-store daily number. Defaults are hypothetical. Nothing you type is sent or stored.

If you approve it, write the stop rule beside the condition

The same note should say how you will tell whether the extra units appeared, and what you will stop funding if they did not. A comparison against stores that had stock but not the activity, or against the weeks before it, is enough. If no one can describe that comparison, you are not ready to make the spend a condition of the listing.

You can still want the listing, and still refuse a badly sized package. Those are separate decisions. Mixing them is how a brand buys an expensive condition and still walks into the stores with no usable target.

Flowup Insights Team · approval note for marketing support tied to a 7-Eleven listing

Compare two Thai distributor offers on the stores they already reach, not on a promised store count

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:24:00 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team wrote this comparison note for brands and importers who have two or more Thailand distributors in front of them, each talking about 7-Eleven coverage. It is a scoring method, not a ranking of named companies.

A promised store count is the least useful number in a first meeting. Anyone can say "we can take you national." The useful number is how many 7-Eleven stores that distributor already serves in your category, with products that are actually on the shelf, and how those products sell. A partner who already reaches a smaller, relevant set of stores, and can show sell-out, is usually a safer first listing than a partner who promises the whole chain and cannot show a comparable SKU.

Ask for evidence of current reach, not of future access

Request a short, anonymised picture of similar products they already supply: category, rough store count actually in stock, and a recent sell-out rate, even if it is given as a range. You do not need customer names. You need to see that the company already does the job you are hiring them for. If they can only talk about other modern-trade chains, or about general trade, they may still be useful, but they have not yet shown 7-Eleven reach.

Ask how they get a new SKU in front of the category buyer, and how long that has taken on recent listings. There is no public buyer inbox for 7-Eleven Thailand. Most new products are pitched through distributors who already supply the chain, or they are introduced at a trade show. A partner who cannot describe their actual path is asking you to trust a promise.

Score terms with the same weight as coverage

Coverage without a term sheet you can live with is not a win. Put the offers on one page: consignment or outright purchase, who pays listing and promotion costs, how stock-outs and returns are handled, suggested retail price, minimums, and how either side exits if targets are missed. A wider store promise that pushes you onto consignment you cannot fund, or onto an exclusive term you cannot leave, is not the better offer.

Look at whether they have sold products like yours, not only at how many stores they mention. A drinks distributor and a chilled-food distributor are not interchangeable, even if both "work with 7-Eleven."

The roles a distributor usually takes in the chain, and the points to lock before you grant master rights, are set out in Getting Into 7-Eleven Thailand: How to Find a Distributor and Negotiate a Master Distributor Deal. Use that guide as the reference page; use this note when you have two offers on the table.

Discount a slide that leads with the chain's total store number

The operator of 7-Eleven Thailand reported 16,284 stores at the end of June 2026, in its Q2 2026 results filing via SET. That is the size of the chain, not the size of your first listing, and not the size of any distributor's current coverage. If an offer opens with that figure, ask them to replace it with the stores they already serve in your category, and with a first-listing set they would actually propose.

If one offer cannot produce evidence of current reach, and the other can, do not average the two with a "they have more ambition." Ambition is not coverage. Pick the partner who can show the work, or keep looking.

Flowup Insights Team · comparison note for 7-Eleven Thailand distributor offers

Split a first-year Thailand budget into three stages, not one enter-7-Eleven envelope

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:18:54 +0000

This planning note is from the Flowup Insights Team for Chinese and other imported brands, and for the distributors who help them, when a first-year Thailand budget is being approved as a single lump. It is a staging method, not a quote.

A lump called "enter 7-Eleven" usually mixes three jobs that do not happen at the same time: becoming legal and costed to sell, proving and sharpening demand on TikTok Shop, and funding the listing plus the work that keeps a SKU moving once it is on the shelf. When those jobs share one envelope, the listing fees arrive before the demand evidence is ready, or the media spend runs out before the stores have stock. Approve the year as three stages, with a decision gate between them.

Stage one is compliance, margin and small tests, not a launch

The first money should finish the licences and Thai-language labels that apply to the product, produce a margin working from a realistic shelf price, and identify a distributor or importer you may actually want to work with. Alongside that, run small content and offer tests on TikTok Shop so you learn which selling points Thai shoppers respond to. The output of stage one is not a store count. It is a decision: enter this year, enter with this partner, or wait.

If the residual after channel costs cannot carry the product, stop here and redesign. Spending stage-two money will not fix a cost structure that already fails on paper.

Stage two spends on what already sold, and builds the pitch

Only after you have selling points that worked, put more budget behind that content and turn the results, plus the compliance file and the margin working, into a 7-Eleven pitch. This is also the stage where you negotiate who pays listing and promotion costs, with those costs already visible on a per-unit basis. A consultant's commonly cited range is that listing, rebates and markdowns together can reach 30 to 40 percent of retail price; that is an estimate, not a tariff, and you should replace it with the offer in front of you.

Do not pull stage-three promotion money forward in order to make the pitch look more aggressive. A buyer is more persuaded by proof of demand and a plan for the shelf than by a large, unallocated marketing number.

Stage three follows store sales, it does not precede them

After a listing, the promotion budget should follow sell-out in stores that actually have stock. Content can send people to 7-Eleven, but it cannot rescue a SKU that is missing, unreadable on the shelf, or priced outside the set it sits in. Review units per store per day on a short cycle, and only then decide whether to widen spend, change the creative, or cut.

The three-stage split, and why the two tracks should be planned together, is laid out in First Year in Thailand: How to Split Budget Between TikTok and 7-Eleven. Open that guide when you are writing the annual plan; this note is the version to use when someone proposes one combined envelope.

Put a gate in the calendar, not only in the slide

Give each stage a review date and a short list of things that must exist before the next release of funds: documents, a margin sheet with your numbers, a partner decision, and, later, sell-out rather than sell-in. If a gate is missed, the leftover budget stays unspent. It should not automatically roll into media in order to "use the year."

A first-year plan that cannot be cut at a gate is not a plan. It is a commitment to spend, whatever the evidence says.

Flowup Insights Team · staging note for a first-year Thailand budget

Decide whether a 7-Eleven pitch is ready, or whether you still only have a TikTok Shop story

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:18:50 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team wrote this go/no-go note for brands and importers who are doing well on TikTok Shop Thailand and have started talking about a 7-Eleven listing. It is a readiness check, not a pitch template.

Online sales are useful evidence that Thai shoppers will buy the product. They are not, on their own, a listing file. A buyer is being asked to give you a shelf slot in a chain where same-store growth is tight and slow SKUs get replaced. If your pack, your margin, your compliance, and your after-listing plan are still unbuilt, a strong TikTok Shop story will get you a polite meeting and then a delay. Decide, in writing, whether you are ready to pitch, or whether the next month should be spent finishing the file.

Four questions the room should answer with documents, not with confidence

First, can the product legally be sold in this pack in Thailand, with the licences and Thai-language labelling that apply to it, and with a barcode and a shelf life a national chain will accept? If those items are still "in progress," you do not have a pitch. You have a project plan.

Second, does the shelf price you need survive a walk through real stores, and does the residual after trade shares and channel costs still cover your landed cost? A price that works in a TikTok Shop cart can be too high, or too promotional, for a convenience shelf. Cost it from the shelf backwards before you book the buyer conversation.

Third, who will import, hold, deliver to the distribution centre, and replenish? Brands rarely walk into 7-Eleven Thailand as the supplier of record. If you do not yet have a distributor or importer who already serves the chain, or a clear path to one, the pitch is early.

Fourth, what happens in the first months on the shelf? A buyer wants to know how shoppers will learn that the product is in 7-Eleven, and how you will keep stock. A folder of TikTok results answers demand. It does not answer those two operational questions.

Do not treat a bestseller rank as a substitute for that file

A TikTok Shop rank can move quickly and can depend on a pack size, a price, or a live format you cannot copy in a store. Take the selling points that actually converted, and test whether they still make sense on a small pack in a short shopper glance. If the online hero is a large bundle, or a price that only works on a campaign day, you may need a store-specific pack before you pitch, not after.

If any of the four questions is still open, the honest decision is to delay the pitch and finish the missing piece. That is slower than booking a meeting while excitement is high, and it wastes fewer meetings.

The process, the usual timeline, and the cost categories to plan for are set out in How to Get a Product Into 7-Eleven Thailand. Open that guide when you are building the file; this note is the go/no-go you should run before anyone books the buyer.

If you are ready, keep the TikTok evidence in its proper place

When the four questions have documents behind them, the online results belong in the pitch as demand proof, alongside a simple after-listing plan and a margin working that uses your own offer, not a generic percentage. Do not lead with a national store count you have not been offered. Lead with the category, the pack, the price, the proof, and who will keep the shelf full.

If the room cannot produce those pages, do not invent a pitch date to create momentum. Momentum on an incomplete file is how a brand spends a quarter waiting for a meeting that was never going to end in a listing.

Flowup Insights Team · go/no-go note for a first 7-Eleven Thailand pitch

Ask who runs the first eight weeks of sell-through before you sign a master with marketing

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:13:46 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team wrote this for brands that are comparing Thailand "master distributors with marketing" as if that phrase were a single product. It is a due-diligence note, not a directory of partners.

The offer usually bundles two things that should be priced and scoped separately: the right and the operations to sell into 7-Eleven, and some form of marketing. The second word is doing a lot of unexamined work. Marketing can mean a content calendar, a creator budget you still have to fund, a few posts at listing, or a weekly sell-through routine that starts the week the stock lands. If you sign for the first three and thought you were buying the fourth, the first eight weeks after listing will be quiet, and quiet is expensive on a new SKU.

Ask for a week-by-week plan, not a capability list

Before you grant master rights, ask the candidate to write the first eight weeks after a listing as a sequence. Who checks that stores actually have stock? Who briefs creators so that the video points at 7-Eleven, not only at a cart? Who reads sell-out, at what frequency, and who decides to change the plan in week three? If the answer is a menu of services you may purchase later, you are being offered a distributor plus an optional agency, not a master with marketing already attached.

Write down who pays for media, samples, and talent. A partner can be genuinely capable and still expect those costs to sit with the brand. That is fine if it is explicit. It is not fine if the retainer was sold as "including marketing" and the first invoice is a media estimate you did not plan.

Look at evidence from work already done, in the same kind of chain

Ask for a past example in modern trade, preferably convenience, that shows what happened after listing: not campaign reach, but whether units per store per day moved, and what the partner changed when they did not. If the only evidence is TikTok Shop sales, you have evidence of online selling, which is useful, and you still do not have evidence of store sell-through. Do not let one stand in for the other.

If the partner cannot involve their sales team in the weekly review, the marketing work will float on top of a distribution relationship and will not reach replenishment, missing stores, or a buyer conversation. The first eight weeks are where that split becomes visible. It is cheaper to see it before you grant exclusivity than after.

A longer explanation of what "master distributor with marketing" can mean, and what to separate before you buy it, is in Finding a master distributor in Thailand that also does marketing. Use that page when you are comparing offers; use this note in the meeting where the phrase first appears.

If the eight-week plan cannot be written, narrow what you sign

You can still appoint a distributor to pitch and deliver, and hire marketing separately, or run the first tests yourself. That is often clearer than signing a bundled master that no one can describe week by week. If you do want one party to hold both jobs, make the first review date early, and make continued exclusivity depend on the sell-through work actually happening, not on a shipment landing.

A kickoff slide that says "we will support the brand after listing" is not a plan. Ask for the eight weeks in writing, or do not sign for marketing as part of the master.

Flowup Insights Team · due-diligence note for master-distributor offers that include marketing

Put 7-Eleven listing and promotion fees on a per-unit basis before you agree who pays them

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:13:40 +0000

This costing note comes from the Flowup Insights Team for brand and distributor conversations about 7-Eleven Thailand fees. It is not a fee schedule and it does not quote any retailer's actual rates.

The argument about who pays listing charges, rebates or a promotion often starts too early. Two parties can agree "the brand will pay the listing" and still have no idea whether the product can carry that fee. Until you spread the cost across the units you actually expect to sell, "who pays" is a political decision, not a commercial one. Do the per-unit working first. Then decide who can afford to hold which line.

Turn a lump fee into a cost per unit at more than one sales level

Take every lump you already know about — a listing charge, a display, a markdown fund, a first promotion — and divide it by the units you expect in the period those fees belong to. Use units you can defend, written as units per store per day times stores actually in stock times days. Do this at a low, mid and high daily rate. The same fee that looks like a small percentage at the high rate can wipe out the brand's residual at the low rate.

Keep these fees separate from the store's ongoing share of the price and from the distributor's share. Those percentages are not the same thing as a one-off listing or a promotion fund, and if you roll them into one "channel cost" you can no longer see which lever you are arguing about.

Hypothetical figures, for method only: a 120,000 baht listing-related lump, spread over 800 stores selling 0.4 units a day for 180 days, is about 2.1 baht a unit. At 0.2 units a day the same lump is about 4.2 baht a unit. If your residual after trade shares is already thin, that difference decides whether the listing is viable. Replace the figures with your own before you use them.

Then, and only then, talk about who holds the line

Once you can see the cost per unit, the "who pays" conversation has a floor. If the residual cannot carry the fee at a realistic sales level, it does not matter which logo is on the invoice: the listing is under-costed. In that case the work is to change the pack, the price, the width of the first listing, or the timing, not to push the same lump onto the other party.

If the residual can carry it, you can negotiate who pays, and you can also negotiate a split, or payment against a sell-out review rather than against a shipment. A distributor who will fund a fee because they already reach the category, or a brand who will fund it because they need the listing as proof, are both coherent positions — after the unit economics are visible.

Open the 7-Eleven Thailand margin calculator (work back from the shelf price) and enter the retail price, the shares, and a marketing or fee amount per unit at the volume you expect. You will see whether a landed cost still leaves profit. Defaults are hypothetical examples. Nothing you type is sent or stored.

Do not sign a "we will settle later" fee clause

A clause that says the parties will agree promotion costs later is a clause that will be settled under time pressure, usually just before a buyer meeting. Put at least a method in the agreement: which fees are known, how new fees will be approved, and how they will be spread per unit for the purpose of deciding whether to proceed. If a new lump appears and the residual no longer works, either side should be able to pause the listing rather than absorb a silent loss.

If you cannot yet estimate volume, you are not ready to agree the fee, and you are not ready to agree who pays it. Get a volume hypothesis on paper first.

Flowup Insights Team · costing note for 7-Eleven Thailand listing fees

Grant Thailand exclusivity only after a trial with an exit you can actually use

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:08:34 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team wrote this for brands and importers who are being asked to grant exclusive Thailand rights in order to get a 7-Eleven pitch. It is a contract-meeting note, not legal advice and not a reprint of a long guide.

Exclusivity is often presented as the price of seriousness: the distributor will only invest in a listing if no one else can sell the brand in Thailand. That can be a fair trade. It is a bad trade if the exclusive term starts on signature, runs for a year or more, and the only exit is a vague "review" that you cannot trigger with numbers. You are then locked to a partner before you have seen whether they can get the meeting, keep stock, or move units.

Make the trial the default, and exclusivity the later step

Ask for a defined trial: a period, a territory or channel scope, a short list of tasks the distributor will complete, and the numbers you will both look at. Typical trial tasks are not slogans. They are things like completing the documents needed for a pitch, nominating the buyer meeting, agreeing who pays which fees, and reporting sell-out if a limited listing is already possible.

During the trial, keep the right to talk to another distributor if agreed milestones are missed. If the other party will not accept that, they are asking you to grant the end-state of a relationship at the start of it. You can still proceed, but you should know that is what you are buying.

Do not grant "all channels in Thailand" because the first conversation was about 7-Eleven. TikTok Shop, other modern trade, and general trade can be scoped separately. A partner who is the right route into 7-Eleven may not be the right operator of your online shop. Write the channels down.

An exit clause is useless if you cannot fire it

A minimum-order target is not an exit. It is a sales hope unless the contract says what happens, and when, if the target is missed. Write the review date, the numbers that will be used (sell-out preferred to sell-in), who must produce those numbers, and the notice that ends or narrows the exclusive rights. If the only remedy is "the parties will discuss in good faith," you do not have an exit. You have another meeting.

The same page should also say who pays listing and promotion costs, how stock-outs and returns are handled, and what suggested retail price means in practice. Those points belong in the agreement whether or not exclusivity is on the table. Exclusivity just makes a missing point more expensive, because you cannot walk to the next distributor without a fight.

A practical walkthrough of what a distributor actually does in the 7-Eleven chain, and what to lock before you grant master rights, is in Getting Into 7-Eleven Thailand: How to Find a Distributor and Negotiate a Master Distributor Deal. Open that guide when you are drafting the term sheet; this note is only about not granting exclusivity too early.

Do not trade a silent first year for a long exclusive

If a distributor wants three years of exclusivity and will not accept a review after a first listing window, the offer is asking you to bet the market on unproven execution. Shorten the exclusive term, narrow the channel, or add an automatic step-down to non-exclusive if the agreed numbers are missed. A partner who can do the work will still have a reason to do it. A partner who needs a long exclusive in order to start has told you where the risk sits.

If you cannot get a trial or a usable exit, you can still work with that distributor on a non-exclusive basis for a first pitch. That is slower, and sometimes it is the safer path.

Flowup Insights Team · contract note for Thailand exclusivity decisions

Choose a 7-Eleven and TikTok Shop partner by the work they will run, not by the slide

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:08:30 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team put this together as a selection note for brands and importers who have to pick a company to run TikTok Shop work alongside 7-Eleven Thailand sales. It is a meeting method, not a vendor brochure.

Most first meetings look the same. You see a case slide, a creator roster, and a claim that the partner "covers both online and the store." That sentence is doing too much work. TikTok Shop growth, in-store sell-through, and the job of sending viewers to a 7-Eleven shelf are three different kinds of work. A partner that is strong at one of them is not automatically strong at the other two. Choose by the work you actually need in the next two quarters, and by who will do that work week by week.

Write the job before you write the shortlist

Start with your situation, in one sentence you would be willing to put in a contract. Your TikTok Shop is live but flat. The SKU is already in 7-Eleven and selling slowly. You want viewers to buy at the store, or you want a TikTok seller to be ready for a listing. Each of those is a different brief. If you cannot write the sentence, you are not ready to compare partners, because they will all appear to fit a vague "growth" request.

Then ask what they will run in the first eight weeks, in named activities: which tests, which store set, which weekly numbers, who talks to the distributor, who briefs creators. A slide that only lists capabilities is not an answer. You want a sequence you can hold them to.

Separate a channel operator from a slide translator

A useful partner can already show, on other brands, how they read sell-out, how they keep stock and content in the same week, and how they change the plan when a test fails. A less useful partner mainly translates your existing hopes into a more polished deck for the next meeting with a distributor or a buyer. The second kind can still have a fluent Chinese-speaking account team, or a long creator list, and still leave the store line untouched.

Ask who owns the conversation with the distributor or importer, and who owns the weekly review. If both are "the client, with our support," you are buying advice, not a partner who will run the work. That can be the right buy, but then price it as advice, not as an end-to-end growth retainer.

Do not treat a Chinese-speaking service as proof that 7-Eleven work is included. Language makes the meetings easier. It does not put a product on a shelf or lift units per store per day.

Score two or three offers on the same page

Put the offers next to each other on four points: the exact job they accept, the weekly numbers they will report, the people who will do the work (not the people who sold it), and how either side can stop if the first weeks do not produce the evidence you agreed. Leave price until those four lines are filled. A cheaper partner who cannot name the store-side work will cost you a quarter.

If one offer is strong on TikTok Shop and silent on stores, and you need both, do not paper over the gap with a "phase two." Either add a second, named party for the store line, or narrow the brief until it matches what they will actually run.

A longer set of questions, written for the same decision, is in Choosing a company that runs TikTok together with 7-Eleven sales. Open it when you are scoring offers; this note is the version to use before the first shortlist meeting.

If no offer can describe the next eight weeks in concrete work, keep the search open. Signing a partner so that the project "has an owner" is how brands spend a quarter without getting closer to a listing, or without moving a listed SKU.

Flowup Insights Team · selection note for TikTok and 7-Eleven Thailand partners

Decide how much promotion stock to commit before you agree the store count

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:03:24 +0000

This method note is from the Flowup Insights Team for people who have to commit inventory to a 7-Eleven Thailand promotion. It is not a warehousing manual and it is not a copy of a site explainer.

The meeting often starts with a store count and a date range, and only later asks how many cartons to move. That order hides the real commitment. Once you agree the width of the promotion, you have also agreed to put a large amount of stock into stores or into a buffer that will be hard to unwind if shoppers do not pick the product up. Agree the stock figure in the same meeting as the store list, or do not sign the store list.

Build the stock number from a daily rate, not from a round carton total

Start with a daily sales rate you are willing to defend for stores that will actually have the offer and the stock. That rate should come from recent sell-out in comparable stores, not from a hoped-for lift written on a slide. Multiply by the number of participating stores, by the number of days the offer will truly run, and by a safety margin you can explain. Then convert to cartons so the warehouse and the distributor are looking at the same quantity.

A rounded "two cartons a store" figure feels tidy and is usually wrong. A store that sells half a unit a day and a store that sells three units a day should not receive the same promotional pile. If you only have a chain average, say so, and treat the stock plan as a hypothesis you will revise after the first week, not as a shipment you cannot touch.

Use stores that will be in stock, not stores that were approved on paper. A promotion that is booked for a thousand stores and stocked in six hundred is not a thousand-store promotion. It is a six-hundred-store promotion with a gap that will show up as missed volume and as out-of-stocks in the stores you told the buyer you would cover.

Keep sell-in and sell-out on two lines

The stock you ship into the chain is not the stock shoppers buy. If you only watch shipments, a large promotional receipt can look like success in week one and like a near-expiry problem six weeks later. Write both numbers on the approval page: units to prepare, and the daily sell-out you need in order for that stock to move before it becomes a return or a markdown.

If the implied daily sell-out is clearly above anything those stores have done, shrink the store list or shorten the days before you commit the cartons. Adding a bigger safety margin on top of an unreachable daily rate does not make the plan safer. It makes the leftover stock larger.

Hypothetical example, for method only: 800 stores, a target of 0.8 units per store per day, 14 promotion days and a 20 percent safety margin is about 10,752 units. If that pack is 12 units a carton, that is 896 cartons. Replace every figure with your own before you use the result. Do not adopt the example as a target.

Open the sales per store per day, promotion stock and marketing break-even calculator and type your store count, daily target, days and pack size. The same page also turns a marketing budget into the extra units you must sell. Defaults are hypothetical. Nothing you type is sent or stored.

Write down what happens to leftover stock

An approval is incomplete if it only names the outbound quantity. Add one line for who holds leftover units, how long you will leave them on shelf after the offer ends, and who pays for a markdown if they do not move. Without that line, you have agreed a shipment, not a promotion.

If you cannot yet name a daily rate with any evidence, do not book a wide store list "to be stocked later." Book a smaller, measurable set of stores, move a stock quantity those stores can actually sell, and only then discuss a wider second wave.

Flowup Insights Team · method note for promotion stock commitments in 7-Eleven Thailand

Cost a 7-Eleven Thailand listing from the shelf price before you approve the first-year budget

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 07:03:20 +0000

The Flowup Insights Team wrote this as a costing note for brand, importer and distributor meetings that have to approve a first-year 7-Eleven Thailand budget. It is a working method, not a reprint of a longer guide.

A first-year budget often starts with a landed cost, a hoped-for brand margin, and a retail price that is whatever is left. In a convenience store that order is backwards. The shopper compares your pack with the packs beside it, not with your spreadsheet. If the shelf price you need is already above the range people recognise, the rest of the budget is a plan for a product that will not be picked up.

Start from a price the shelf can actually hold

Walk several stores in the same category and write down the prices of the packs next to the slot you want. Convert them to a price per unit of weight or volume so a larger pack does not look cheaper than it is. The price you take into the costing is the one a shopper would still pay without a long explanation on the pack. If you can only defend a higher price with a story that takes more than a few seconds, you do not yet have a shelf price. You have a wish.

Only then work backwards. Take off VAT, the store share, the distributor share, and the channel costs that will actually sit on this SKU — listing, rebate, markdown, distribution. Then take off the marketing you expect to spend per unit in the first year. What remains is the highest landed cost at which the listing still makes money. If your real cost is above that number, the decision is not "add a little marketing." It is to change the pack, the price, or the plan to enter this year.

Default figures on any public calculator are hypothetical examples. They are not the rates of a retailer or a distributor. Use the numbers in your own offer.

Do not approve a year of fees on a single optimistic volume

Listing and related fees only look small once you spread them across a year's units. At a low sales rate the same fee is expensive per unit, and the line that looked profitable on the kickoff slide turns into a monthly cash drain. Before you approve the budget, cost the same shelf price at three sales levels: a quiet store, a mid store, and a busy store, each written as units per store per day. If the listing only works at the busy level, you do not have a budget. You have a bet.

A Thai channel consultant, Subpayanunt, has warned that a gross margin below 50 percent often turns into a loss once hidden modern-trade costs are added. That is a consultant's rule of thumb, not a figure 7-Eleven publishes, and store shares vary by category. Recalculate with the offer in front of you.

Imported brands should include freight, duty, the importer, Thai-language labels, and time spent sitting in transit. Leaving those out makes the cost look safer than it is.

Open the 7-Eleven Thailand margin calculator (work back from the shelf price) and enter your own retail price, shares and landed cost. You will see the highest cost you can afford, plus profit per unit and per month at the volume you type. Nothing you type is sent or stored.

Write the decision as a yes, a redesign, or a delay

If the residual covers your cost and a modest profit at a sales level you have actually seen, the first-year budget can move to cash timing: fees and stock usually go out before sell-out is steady. If it only covers the cost at a heroic sales level, redesign the pack or the price before you book a pitch. If you do not yet have a shelf price you can defend, delay the listing budget rather than approving a number you will have to defend later with more promotion.

A budget meeting that cannot show this working should not approve the listing line. It can still approve work that gets you a real offer and a real shelf-price check.

Flowup Insights Team · costing note for first-year 7-Eleven Thailand budgets

Build a first-round TikTok creator budget in Thailand from angles and videos, not from a headcount

Flowup Insights Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 06:53:15 +0000

This is a method note from the Flowup Insights Team for teams setting a first Thailand creator budget, especially when some of the sales need to happen in 7-Eleven. It is not a rate card, and not a copy of a Flowup article.

There is no single figure that works for every product. A first-round budget is not there to hit a sales target on day one. It is there to answer which content angle actually sells. "How many creators do we need?" inflates the number without producing that answer. Ten people repeating one script still teach you only one approach; the roster size is not the test.

Build the total from the test, then cut angles rather than evidence

Write the first-round total as: the number of genuinely different angles, times the number of videos per angle, times your average cost per video, plus an ad budget to boost only the videos that pass a bar you set in advance, plus samples and shipping.

An angle is a different approach, such as the problem the product solves, a before-and-after, or a comparison with what people use now. Swapping the creator while repeating the same script is not a new angle. Videos per angle must be enough that you are not judging from one post.

If the total is larger than you can spend, cut the number of angles. Do not cut videos per angle down to one or two, or you will not be able to conclude anything.

A hypothetical build, only to show the shape, not as a market rate: four angles, six videos each (24 videos), 3,000 baht per video as an assumption (72,000), 60,000 baht to boost videos that pass the bar, 8,000 baht for samples and shipping, first-round total 140,000 baht. All of those figures are invented for the arithmetic. Put your own costs in.

Define "seeing results" before the first video goes out

Decide what round one must answer: which angle has the strongest path to a product page or to a store visit, which angle has the lower cost per order, and — if 7-Eleven sell-out is a goal — whether sales moved in areas that had stock, compared with areas that did not. Views alone are not a result for this round.

The fuller formula, the warning against cutting evidence, and the way to judge round one are in How much budget do TikTok creators need to sell a product in Thailand?. Open that page and replace every assumed figure with yours before you approve a number.

If the budget you were sent is a creator count multiplied by an average fee, send it back. Ask for angles, videos per angle, and a boost pot that is not spread evenly.

Flowup Insights Team · a how-to for first-round creator budgets aimed at Thai shoppers and store sell-out