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Alibaba

Alibaba woos luxury brands with promise to remove discounted products

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

August 12, 2014 | 2 min read

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is hoping to add a new roster of luxury brands to its Tmall website with the promise that it will remove all unauthorised sellers of their products if they open an official store.

Burberry, and Estee Lauder are just some of the high-end brands to recently open up storefronts on the Tmall, one of China’s biggest online stores, following assurance from Alibaba that it would crack down on vendors posting heavily discounted and unverified products, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Luxury brands have been tentative to open stores on the marketplace site, which has around 70,000 vendors, worried that doing so could be harmful to their image.

The new strategy comes as Alibaba prepares to list on the New York Stock Exchange, which will make it the largest Chinese company to list in the United States.

The e-commerce giant, which handles over 80 per cent of online retail transactions in China, signed an agreement with the UK government last December to say it would remove any unverified UK products if the official brands opened up a Tmall shop front.

According to a study run for The Wall Street Journal by e-commerce analysis firm YipitData, more than 50 unauthorised vendors were selling Burberry products before it opened its Tmall store. All the goods were removed around the time the luxury fashion house opened its official store.

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