Vietnamese mothers livestream supermarket runs to prove imported formula is genuine

Well-off Vietnamese parents distrusted the safety and authenticity of locally sold baby formula, and banker Ly Le of Quang Binh wanted a small trial pack of a foreign brand that was not sold domestically. The answer was the hàng xách tay ('carry-on') trade, named for the era when foreign goods arrived in the luggage of shopkeepers' relatives and flight attendants — too small and costly to scale. From around 2014–2015 the trade reopened as Facebook shops run mostly by young mothers on maternity leave, selling imported formula, cosmetics and supplements to other mothers.

The core trick is proving the milk is genuinely hand-picked. Owners livestream their supermarket runs — one streamer cleared an Asda shelf in London on camera while telling a curious stranger the haul was 'a gift for some baby'. Buyers like Le vet shops forensically: posted receipts can be doctored, and simultaneous announcements of the same brand with the same expiry date across shops signal a mass sea shipment, not hand-picking. Sea-freighted milk is widely believed (without evidence) to arrive damp and degraded, so small air-freighted batches carry the quality claim.

The arrangement works well enough to sustain a parallel economy: Facebook holds about 10% of Vietnam's e-commerce market per Decision Lab, and an 800g hand-picked packet sells for around 800,000 dong ($34.40) — nearly double UK retail. What customers buy, as researcher Giang Nguyen-Thu put it, is 'exclusive treatment that will ease your insecurity, at least psychologically'. Le's own vetting checklist: reputation, follower count, reviews, and above all the ability to buy in real time via livestream from an owner with a friend or relative overseas doing the picking.

Livestream the actual supermarket purchase: live video proves hand-picked authenticity that fakeable receipts cannot, and doubles as the shopfront.

Imported formula is a trust good: parents fear counterfeits and mishandling, and receipts or expiry-date photos posted online are easy to doctor.

A livestream of the actual purchase is synchronous and uneditable, so it functions as proof of hand-picking — and as content that builds the shop's audience at the same time.

Flying small batches by air cargo in about a week preserves the fresh, hand-carried quality claim that months-long sea containers cannot.

Running the trade from maternity leave keeps overhead near zero, so the near-double markup pays for trust work, not logistics.

When documents can be faked, live performance becomes the cheapest proof of authenticity — and the proof itself can be the storefront.

As of the May 2022 article the trade had run since 2014–2015. The featured shop owner — four years in business, based in Nghe An province — spoke anonymously because the work essentially amounts to smuggling, and refused to name her supermarkets; Rest of World pinned her streams to London by cross-referencing her video and photo posts. Buyers keep escalating their own trust work: Le eventually bypassed shops altogether, recruiting students in Japan, South Korea, Russia and Australia she met through acquaintances to hand-pick and ship products to her.