Gucci finally launches on Alibaba in time for its Christmas push
Gucci has inked a deal with Alibaba to bring its fashion and beauty flagship online experiences onto the Tmall platform.
Gucci and Alibaba’s Tmall come together in China
Companies across categories are deploying their marketing acumen to stitch up collaborations and partnerships in the aftermath of the pandemic. The leading Italian luxury fashion brand Gucci has announced a partnership with Alibaba’s dedicated platform Tmall luxury pavilion to put their combined might together and work towards increasing the footprint of the world’s leading luxury and premium brands.
The Gucci game plan
- To benefit from the festive cheer, the first Gucci flagship store will open on the Tmall luxury pavilion this month itself.
- Gucci’s fashion collections, including leather goods, ready to wear, accessories, watches and jewellery will be available to the platform.
- The activity ties up with a major festive campaign for Gucci, which includes a film directed by Akinola Davies Jr.
- This would be followed by Gucci’s beauty flagship store that will open in February 2021 and would give consumers access to experience the company’s expansive world of beauty. The beauty flagship will be operated by Coty, Gucci’s license partner and one of the world’s largest beauty companies.
Why the two retails giants decided to collaborate
This announcement marks a substantial way forward for the luxury fashion brand and helps build its digital footprint in a market where it has been active for many years.
Gucci had launched its Chinese website in 2017 and on the back of that also developed a dedicated strategy ensuring a leading presence on all of China’s most important social media platforms.
From an e-commerce perspective, however, Gucci had been reticent to sell across some Chinese platforms until it felt comfortable that actions against counterfeit sellers were strong enough.
- Talking about the expanded strategic partnership between the Italian luxury fashion brand and the leading B2C marketplace from Alibaba Group, Marco Bizzarri, president and CEO of Gucci said, “Gucci has strategically invested in and cultivated a ‘digital first’ approach globally, including the establishment of a dedicated Chinese digital ecosystem over the past years. This announcement represents the next step in this strategy as we provide our customers in China with an authorized, customized e-commerce experience on the Tmall Luxury Pavilion in partnership with Alibaba."
- As per Michael Evans, president of Alibaba Group, “Chinese consumers are fuelling the global luxury market and they expect an elevated, seamless, digitally-enabled experience. We look forward to working with the iconic brand Gucci to help them forge even greater success in the Chinese market by meeting the expectations of today’s digitally-native luxury consumers.”