Swiss luxury group Richemont’s ecommerce platform Net-a-Porter announced the opening of a flagship store on the Tmall Luxury Pavilion, Alibaba Group’s dedicated channel for luxury and premium brands.
The move will see the high-end fashion ‘marketplace’ boasting more than 130 luxury and designer brands at launch ahead of the wider rollout. The selection will include brands including Balmain, Jimmy Choo, Tom Ford, Brunello Cucinelli, Isabel Marant and The Row, as well as many Richemont maisons, including Chloé, Cartier, Piaget, Montblanc and Van Cleef & Arpels.
The Tmall Pavilion store will feature exclusive capsule collections from Net-a-Porter and their menswear counterpart, Mr. Porter, and deliver customised brand pages, personalised content and recommendations and exclusive VIP rewards to shoppers.
The store launch marks the start of operations of Feng Mao, the joint venture that Alibaba and Yoox Net-a-Porter announced last October. As a part of the partnership, the ecommerce heavyweight will lend their resources and expertise in marketing, payments and technology infrastructure to the JV, while will Richemont leverage their strong relationships with leading luxury brands through their subsidiary, Yoox Net-a-Porter Group, the online luxury retailer that operates Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter. The JV is 51% owned by YNAP and 49% owned by Alibaba.
“The unveiling of the Net-a-Porter flagship store on Tmall Luxury Pavilion is an important first step in the development of our long-term partnership with Alibaba. Together, we seek to address the sophisticated needs of the Chinese luxury clientele and capture this unique growth opportunity.”
“This partnership will set new standards for the future of luxury online.”
– Jérôme Lambert, chief executive officer, Richemont.
YNAP chairman Federico Marchetti echoed Lambert, saying the partnership would redefine the way Chinese consumers shop for luxury.
“Net-a-Porter’s flagship store on Tmall Luxury Pavilion will become the online destination where luxury brands want to be in China, leveraging Net-a-Porter and Mr. Porter’s two decades of expertise and pioneering innovation.” “Chinese shoppers can explore a unique selection of the world’s most desirable brands carefully curated just for them, enhanced by unmatched personalized experience and exclusive products that cannot be found elsewhere.”
Jiang Fan, president of Taobao and Tmall, said that the Alibaba and Richemont partnership would deliver “an elevated, seamless, and rich luxury experience for Chinese consumers.”
“We are confident this flagship store opening is just the beginning of a long-term partnership that will benefit China’s luxury consumers and the world’s luxury brands who want to reach them,” he said.
