Tmall, the B2C marketplace of the Alibaba group of the world-famous entrepreneur Jack Ma, has established itself in recent years as China's best-known platform for the sale of luxury goods.
In 2017 alone Tmall managed to increase the value of transactions on its platform by 43%, reaching a share of the online B2C market in China of over 60%. In the fourth quarter of 2017, in fact, the value of this market segment amounted to over 180 billion dollars.
The platform's ability to attract consumers, together with the ever-growing expansion of e-commerce in China, meant that on Singles’ Day 2017 alone (11 November) transactions worth 25.9 billion dollars were made on Tmall.
These results were achieved thanks to the Alibaba group's far-sighted strategies, in particular the attention paid to major international brands and the appeal it exerts on them. In recent years, in fact, many brands have opened their own e-shop on the platform in order to have greater visibility and a stronger presence in the Chinese market.
Burberry, for example, was one of the first major brands to open a shop on Tmall, followed by other major international brands such as Nike, Sharp, Adidas, New Balance, Estée Lauder, Armani, Philips, Lancôme, etc.
During the Tmall Beauty Awards event, held in Shanghai on 4 March 2018, the platform's managers explained that, thanks to the valuable partnership with Estée Lauder and Lancôme, the two top brands will be able to generate sales on Tmall of over 1 billion RMB (approx. 158 million dollars).
Among the initiatives that have made Tmall increasingly important in the fashion world is the sponsorship of New York Fashion Week, which led to the organisation of a day dedicated to Chinese brands (China Day). The four brands that took part in the event were Li Ning, Peacebird, Chenpeng and CLOT. Needless to say, most of the garments presented during China Day would be available within a few days on Tmall.
The initiatives proposed by Tmall to support the brands on its platform were devised by the Alibaba group to create an ever closer bond with brands, also given the emergence of new players in the e-commerce and online payments segment.
One of the main competitors to have emerged in recent years is the social network WeChat, which can be thought of in Western terms as a combination of WhatsApp, Facebook, eBay and PayPal. The platform is owned by the Tencent group (Alibaba's main rival in China), which in recent years has launched a payment system called WeChat Pay.
Several brands have chosen to open their own official e-shop on WeChat to take advantage of its fame in China and its market of 890 million users. These include Coach (which closed its shop on Tmall), Cartier, Longchamp and Montblanc.
However, the Chinese hi-tech giants are not aiming only to promote top Western brands in China. Another of their goals is to expand progressively into the West in the retail market, targeting the market shares already held by major Western players such as eBay and Amazon. In the coming years, we will see whether this strategy succeeds and whether the global market will be redrawn by the extreme dynamism of Alibaba and Tencent.