Gucci Joins Alibaba's Tmall Luxury Pavilion, Booming High-end Brands Across China

Gucci joins e-commerce giants of China, Alibaba’s Tmall as part of an association to bring products by the global luxury brand to over 750 million Chinese consumers. Their very first flagship store is to primarily include Gucci’s fashion collection.

The strategic partnership with Alibaba has been made as an effort to make global luxury products more accessible to the Chinese luxury market.

Aside from the fashion store, Gucci is all set to launch its beauty flagship store on the e-commerce platform around February 2021, making the full range of Gucci make-up and fragrances available.

Tmall Luxury Pavilion features over 200 brands and stands as a sole e-commerce platform on such a huge scale to provide domestic and international brands across beauty, luxury cars, apparel and more to the Chinese market.

In 2017 Gucci launched its Chinese website, representing its longstanding presence and strong digital ecosystem in China.

President and CEO of Gucci, Marco Bizzarri explains Gucci’s approach and how the brand introduced a digital ecosystem across the world first to make its presence stronger. Hence, this new initiation comes as the next step as part of the strategy, to bring an efficient e-commerce experience to Chinese customers through this partnership with Alibaba’s Tmall Luxury Pavilion.

Due to the pandemic and impending travel restrictions, a majority of Chinese customers were making luxury goods purchases domestically through local brands.

The global luxury market shrunk by 23% but China’s domestic market value grew by nearly 20% in 2020, according to reports by the Tmall Luxury Division.

This growth in rate is predicted to reach nearly 48% by the end of the year, resulting in China doubling its growth in the global luxury market this year.

With customers slowly moving towards the digital spheres, global brands have come together and incorporated integral digital strategies as part of their business to ensure a strong connection with customers and growth across all segments.