Premier watch brand, Tag Heuer, has launched a flagship store on Tmall.com, becoming the fifth brand owned by luxury goods giant LVMH to set up shop on Alibaba. Other LVMH flagship stores on Tmall are cosmetics brands Make Up For Ever and Guerlain, beauty brands retailer SEPHORA and premium luggage brand Rimowa.
LVMH have a long and interesting history with marketplaces around the world, notably they had a multi-year spat with eBay over fakes being listed on the marketplace and this time last year were in the process of suing three Alibaba merchants convicted of selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton products on Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace.
LVMH’s Luis Vuitton label became one of the first international brands to join Alibaba’s Big Data Anti-Counterfeiting Alliance, an organization set up to share industry and technical know-how in order to combat the online sale of counterfeit goods.
More recently Alibaba themselves announced they would be suing counterfeiters selling on Taobao and it’s likely that this new zero tolerance of fake goods, not just on Alibaba but also on eBay and marketplaces around the world, is part of the reason that LVMH have changed their stance from hating marketplaces to embracing them.
At a Feb. 13 ceremony marking the opening of their Tmall store, Tag Heuer unveiled a pair of his-and-her watches, priced at $7,852 for both, as a special Valentine’s Day promotion in China.
