How Does Tmall Change The Way Of Luxury Fashion Brands Entering China?

5 years ago, luxury brands may also be confused about how to land in China.

Now, Tmall has become a port for these luxury brands to enter the Chinese market.

According to a recent survey by consulting firm L2, 26% of the world's luxury brands have entered Tmall's flagship store Tmall, which was 21% last year.

According to the Wall Street journal, luxury brands are more cautious about e-commerce and digitization, but luxury brands are more willing to cooperate with Alibaba than Amazon.

HSBC surveyed 2000 luxury consumers and found that 65% of Chinese consumers are willing to buy luxury goods in Tmall.

In just 5 years, there has been a qualitative change in the relationship between Tmall and luxury fashion brands and consumers, and the word "communication" can not be separated from the word "two".

With the promotion of various innovative marketing paths such as "super brand day" and "super product day", Tmall has used its strength to empower the brand business, and has also reversed the stereotype of its consumer's mind as merely a shopping platform.

In April 25th, the third Tmall TOP TALK was held in Hangzhou. This is a private meeting which belongs to Tmall and other top brands such as CEO. The two sides focus on consumer experience, consumer tools development, new consumption scenarios and business logic, aiming at creating more experience and value for consumers.

Different from previous years, this year's TOP TALK also issued the "Tmall super ONE 2019 China brand digital innovation award", which aims to let more people see the brand case with commercial explosive power, digital innovation and brand marketing power.

Of the 10 brands listed on the list, 5 came from the luxury fashion industry, including the most commercial explosive brands M.A.C and ZARA, the most digital innovation brand Jo Malone, the annual brand upgrading award YSL and Adidas.

Tmall president and Taobao President Jiang Fan announced that Tmall should double the size of online pactions in the next three years and become the main engine of brand global growth.

In response to this overall goal, Jiang Fan said Tmall had to achieve three points, that is, the scale of Tmall platform pactions doubled, to help global brands release over 100 million new products and hatch 100 new year sales over 1 billion new brands, to maintain the number of Tmall buyers continued to grow rapidly, and to upgrade the brand official flagship store to the brand's main operation position.

What supports such a great ambition is that Tmall has firmly grasped the right to speak in China's retail market.

A key step in breaking the stereotype of the industry

Just as Rome was not built in a day, the rise of Tmall's counterattack can not be separated from the foundation that has accumulated over time.

Turning the clock back 10 years ago, relying on the environment of the electricity supplier, Tmall pioneered the "double 11" Shopping Festival in 2008. Once every year, the success of the big boost to stimulate the domestic demand of Chinese consumers, the record was record high. In 2015, the final performance of the shopping Carnival reached an astonishing 91 billion 200 million yuan, approaching the 100 billion yuan club, constantly refreshing the cognition of the industry and consumers on the basic value of Tmall.

But in the eyes of prudent luxury brands, this is not enough for them to venture into.

According to fashion headline monitoring, in the three years from 2014 to 2016, Tmall has only 11 luxury brands, such as Burberry, Rimowa and LA MER La Mer, with an average annual sales of about 4, and sales are not high, most of them are symbolic only for counterfeiting.

As other domestic e-commerce platforms began to follow the example of the "double 11" Shopping Festival, Tmall began to think and find a breakthrough.

At this turning point, the general manager of Tmall brand marketing center, Xiu Yu, put forward the concept of "Tmall super brand day", trying to build up the whole Tmall and even the Alibaba's ecological strength from the perspective of brand to create a big event once a year. At the marketing level, we use creative ideas to impress more consumers and get the attention of media attention, and get rid of the traditional mode that only used discounts to win in the past.

In the face of the industry's question of "Tmall is not good at making brand", Xiu didn't retreat, but used all resources and connections. In August 15, 2015, SWAROVSKI became the first brand of Tmall's super brand day cooperation. Then in just six months, she and the team made 4 or 5 successful cases, which quickly attracted the attention of CEO Zhang Yong and Tmall CEO Jing Jie.

In March 23, 2016, Martha Lahti, the world's top sports car, launched the first SUV Levante into the Alibaba Xixi Park, and the 100 SUV with a unit price of 999 thousand and 800 yuan was sold out in 18 seconds, which fired the first gun for "Tmall super brand day".

In addition to the sales of nearly 100 million yuan, the exposure and influence created by Tmall for Martha Lahti surpassed the total number of brands entering the Chinese market over the years.

In fact, the average price of millions of Martha Lahti is only a stepping stone to Tmall's breakthrough. The platform really aims at the luxury field with huge potential and wider audience.

In the middle of 2016, "Tmall super brand day" and the United States Department Store Messi reached a cooperation in New York and Shanghai to hold Shuangcheng records. After the big show in New York, the first time the new style of the show moved to China, which was an important step for Tmall to attack fashion.

At the same time, "Tmall super brand day" has begun to come into contact with fashion apparel and beauty brand, and signed a cooperation agreement with fashion magazine "VOGUE".

According to the agreement, VOGUE will regularly shoot fashion blockbusters for Tmall super brand day and publish them in magazines. This is undoubtedly a great temptation for fashion brands.

In VOGUE, cooperation with Tmall will help magazines explore more possibilities in the new field.

In 2017, Burberry became the first luxury brand to cooperate with "Tmall super brand day". After a week in London, Tmall moved the show to Shanghai in the first place, and VOGUE made a special report on this.

Seeing that the luxury brand attitude of Tmall's influence in the digital age has begun to reverse, it has not taken much time from the original to avoid it.

In 2017, Tmall's luxury brands rapidly doubled to 8. Not only did the five largest departments of the world's largest luxury group LVMH enter, Swatch group's Tissot, Armani's Armani Jeans and Marni brands also announced that they joined Tmall's luxury matrix, and the 2018 new luxury brands entered the frequency of Tmall more than 1 per month.

"Tmall super brand day" has also been recognized by more and more brands.

In 2018, from the beginning of Armani, various cosmetic brands such as Givenchy, Guerlain, fresh, MAC, Sisley and so on all carried out deep cooperation with Tmall super brand day, and even opened the door of the brand headquarters factory.

This means that in their eyes, Tmall is no longer just a channel for selling goods. Through "Tmall super brand day", the brand can reach more and more Chinese consumers and convey the brand idea more accurately.

The high street fashion people who feel pressure in the traditional retail ecology also regard the "Tmall super brand day" as a new opportunity, so that fast fashion has a new way to play offline.

Since 2016, Tmall has cooperated with the Zara parent company Inditex, the Spanish fast fashion giant, first to pform the brand shop window for ZARAHOME, and then to a concert with the Bershka.

After two years of preparation, "Tmall super brand day" last year with Inditex group's Massimo Dutti created a "fashion to the future" fashion show, and joint Tmall product development AR fitting room, so that online shopping experience is more perfect.

With the success of many successful cases, "Tmall super brand day" is ushering in a new milestone this year. In February, it opened its first cooperation with the German sports brand Adidas, launched the new Ultra BOOST 19 brand new series in the world, and specially built Tmall's exclusive customized shoebox, which is the first time that the new adidas product has been released on the third party e-commerce platform.

5 years later, looking back at the marketing of "Tmall super brand day", IP has never been seen as a benchmark.

With the acceleration of popularity of smart phones represented by apple in China, people's consumption scene has gradually shifted from offline to online. For brand businesses, where people gather is to be able to do the dissemination. Tmall, which holds 100 million active users, has naturally become the best stage for the brand to show itself.

Facing the slow growth of offline stores, online luxury brands continue to move forward, while Tmall, the largest share of China's electricity supplier market, naturally becomes the preferred partner of many luxury brands.

Xiu stressed that the Tmall platform was originally done, and the emergence of Tmall super brand day allowed the brand to integrate the product and effect together through creativity.

It's not just "double 11".

For "Tmall super brand day", Tmall has a vivid description, called the brand's "double 11". Xiu Yu believes that this statement helps foreign brands and consumers better understand the meaning and value of "super brand day" IP. "After all," double 11 "has become a marketing IP for globalization.

Different from the traditional "double 11" for consumers, "Tmall super brand day" is the protagonist of the brand, Tmall is responsible for building the stage, to a certain extent, to ensure the uniqueness between the brand and brand.

Xiu Jie revealed to fashion headlines that Tmall brand marketing center is a horizontal team responsible for the landing of Tmall super brand day and the participation of Tmall industry.

For example, Estee Lauder will be Tmall super brand day, Tmall colleagues in the makeup industry will join in, and Tmall group colleagues who are in charge of fashion will participate in the Inditex group's brand.

For this reason, there is a need for a person called "marketing interface" in Tmall. They share KPI with Tmall brand marketing center. When facing the horizontal departments, they export industrial demands. When facing the vertical industry, they can convey Tmall's department needs, so as to maximize the enthusiasm of the colleagues in the industry, so as to achieve effective cooperation and achieve the ultimate goal of the project.

On the brand side, we should prepare the creative plan, the inventory of goods, customer service and logistics as well as "double 11", and we need to prepare the supply chain procurement two months in advance.

At the same time, Tmall has also extended different marketing matrices on the basis of "double 11" and "super brand day", which are divided into 4 levels:

The first is the upgrading of large-scale marketing activities. Tmall divides the year into four nodes, namely, "Tmall 618", "99 gathering ceremony", "Tmall double 11" and "double 12 year-end grand ceremony", so as to extend the "double 11" effect as much as possible.

The second is brand marketing upgrading. In addition to the first gold medal marketing IP "Tmall super brand day", Tmall also created the Tmall All Star program and Tmall Club, forming the two marketing power of star influence and the extreme experience marketing position.

To meet the needs of more consumer groups, new products are also a key strategy for Tmall.

In the new product marketing upgrading plan, guiding the brand to follow the trend of innovation, putting the new products in Tmall's debut is the primary purpose, and at the same time is to expand the difference with the competitors, and no longer be easily copied.

The plan has been broken down into 4 parts, including the super new product rapid growth channel "Tmall small black box". Last year, it has carried out deep cooperation with 500 brands. The global brand digital new product hatching position "Tmall new product innovation center" has now covered 800 first-line brands; "Tmall U first" is the largest distribution platform of the whole network, and the annual number of samples distributed to hundreds of millions of levels; "Tmall super category day" has become a powerful tool to help brand trend category penetrate new markets.

Tmall also did not give up the training of new users. In the new crowd marketing upgrading level, through the "Tmall brand new event", "Tianhe plan", "Tmall fans circle" and "88VIP" four IP, from the 700 million high latent members, the joint brand shares high-quality resources, amplifies potential energy, and carries out visual operation on the brand fans, and then makes 1 consumption events, 3 big nodes and 8 characteristic member days to create a closed loop of consumption and communication.

Adhering to the principle of "professional people and professional people", Tmall and the brand cooperation have made many impressive creative marketing, such as "how to buy perfume that you can not smell" with Jo Malone. Through the pioneering fragrance search and advanced customization tools, consumers have sold 24 thousand bottles of perfume on a single day through the Internet, and all the exclusive products have been sold out.

In April 16th last year, the YSL beauty Tmall flagship store officially opened, and the YSL Tmall super brand day was also carried out on the same day, marking the world's largest beauty group L'OREAL China's high-end brand in Tmall's "full slam".

In fact, Tmall stretched the timeline of the marketing event to half a month. In the early stage, it started a cool flash experience store in the north and South Square of Sanlitun, Beijing from 2 to 6 April. After 13, it held the Huang Zitao concert at the 1862 old shipyard in Shanghai on the theme of "night game city".

Under the guidance of targeted marketing activities, YSL sold less than half a day in Tmall's first super brand day, and its sales volume has exceeded 30 million, and its total sales have increased by more than 1 million 100 thousand. This data refreshed the data collection of the high-end cosmetics brand named Givenchy, which also entered Tmall last year.

Tmall and H&M and ZARA launched the "two week customization" also received positive feedback from the market. The H&M high-end series STUDIO show came to China for the first time last year. Zara pioneered the introduction of new retail outlets in China. With the help of Tmall, it provided more choices for consumers, further breaking the barriers between brands and consumers, thus helping to achieve the overall retail upgrading of the fast fashion industry.

This Tuesday, Estee Lauder group's other high-end beauty brand TOM FORD BEAUTY also officially entered Tmall, and landed in Shanghai "Tmall super brand day" activities, through digital media interaction, etc., under the new product launch.

According to the fashion headline monitor, the world's first limited powder tube lipstick sold at a price of 430 yuan has sold 20 thousand.

Under the promotion of brand flow and star effect, the topic of "Tmall super brand day" in micro-blog has accumulated tens of billions of dollars, and is regarded as a miracle in business topics. The remaining 10 billion level topics are almost all kinds of entertainment.

What surprised Tmall even more was that Tmall's super brand day was written into the annual plan of many international brands. At Nike's global earnings conference, "Tmall" was mentioned every 10 minutes. Italy's luxury men's brand Zegna also said it was very important to cooperate with Tmall Tatsu, which was an important step for the group to consolidate its position in the highly digitized era.

In the first quarter of February 28th, Nike's revenue in China increased by 24% to 1 billion 588 million US dollars, or 10 billion 600 million yuan, and has recorded double-digit growth for 19 consecutive quarters.

The group emphasized in the earnings report that it will continue to strengthen strategic cooperation with Alibaba in the future and join forces with Tmall in pushing new retail sales.

It is undeniable that "Tmall super brand day" has become the key to the performance of many international brands, creating an irreplaceable leap in growth.

According to data released by the TOP TALK conference, the average turnover of brand names on Tmall super brand day is 10%.

In addition, the participation of "Tmall super brand day" brand business average turnover grew by 70%, and some brands even achieved several times of paction growth.

Xiu Yu concluded, "like all 11 platforms, all platforms are doing, but in the end, only Alibaba's double 11 have the greatest influence. Tmall is not afraid of competition when integrating resources and giving consumers real rights and interests."

The founder of the new consumption era

It is not difficult to be number one. It is difficult to sit on the throne of "first".

From 2015 to the present, "Tmall super brand day" has raised the whole platform from simple sales to new heights, and the brand and category of cooperation increase every year, but at the same time, the competition is becoming more and more intense.

As the secret weapon of empowerment brand, Tmall has higher expectations for Tmall super brand day.

According to the data released by Alibaba in September last year, the upgrading and upgrading of China's consumption has shown a new pattern and trend. The rapid rise of the younger generation of consumers has prompted consumer demand to be refined, and prices are no longer the core of physical consumption, and experience and mental consumption are becoming more and more meticulous.

In the process of consumption upgrading, physical consumption is also rapidly expanding and upgrading. Quality, originality, fashion, health and other words become a new key word instead of price.

In view of the extreme pursuit of product experience and effectiveness by younger generation of consumers, new products are becoming the main driving force for consumer upgrading.

According to the industry report, brand new products can bring not only high sales volume and high performance, but more importantly, new potential customers, new definition and new products, quickening the upgrading of product structure, optimizing supply chain efficiency and enhancing brand power.

Jessica Wang, general manager of digital marketing, L'OREAL mass cosmetics department, believes that "new products are not only the growth of business for the group, but more importantly, let the brand find new consumers, and be able to interact with them, explore new consumption trends, and provide new services to consumers. These three points are our biggest expectation for Tmall's joint launch of new products."

Gary Chu, general manager of Estee Lauder group, also admitted that new products are very important to the group strategy. Judging from the new products, the current consumption trend is very important.

Group cosmetics every year, a large number of new, especially cosmetics brand, almost every month on the new, and Tmall's first cooperation is particularly important.

In 2018, the number of new Tmall users was over 75 million. The group bought more than 17 new products per year, contributing 62% of the new GMV and 35% of the total GMV.

Among them, the consumption power of new products in Shanghai ranks first among all the cities in the country, and the 234 line cities, young and female are heavy new consumer groups.

Ali Institute predicts that the number of new product controls will exceed 100 million in 2020.

Alibaba also wrote in the third quarter of 2019 that Taobao Mobile's monthly mobile users reached 699 million, and annual active consumers reached 636 million. The index has maintained more than 20 million growth over the past 6 quarters, of which over 70% of the new annual active consumers come from the sinking market, which means that under the digital empowerment, higher quality products and better services have achieved undifferentiated contact. The huge rural and three or four line consumer market is also being activated, and will become a new engine to drive consumption growth in China.

In the face of such a positive environment, Chiang Fan said yesterday on TOPTALK that Tmall will use new products and new models in 2019 to make the brand more effective to reach consumers. At the same time, the flagship store upgrading strategy will be launched to upgrade Tmall from the sales center to the main operation position of brand consumers, so as to inject new strength into the upgrading and upgrading of the future marketing circle.

For the new product strategy, Tmall consumer platform business manager general Luo Luo emphasized that the single voice of "super brand day" in the whole network is irreplaceable in the business topic. After several years of accumulation, it has become the first marketing IP of the whole network.

At the meeting, home Luo pointed out that compared with the previous two years, this year's Tmall super brand day has undergone significant changes and changes. Both the mode and the rules are encouraging the brand to innovate in the way of communication between the product and the consumer, for example, setting up the annual calendar for the most senior partners, preparing for advance occupancy, strengthening the depth of strategic cooperation, and introducing new roles to carry out the "Tmall super brand day" improvement and statements, and building the brand power index seven dimensions.

In addition, Tmall will allocate more choices to the super products, and prepare a most influential, entertaining and interactive super opening ceremony for every Tmall super brand day.

Set up the super live main venue and the live broadcast sub venue, and launch the Tmall super live broadcast around the "Tmall super brand day".

Tmall super live studio has been completed at Ali center in Shanghai. The equipment and resource links are integrated at one station, including creative sources and daring team.

With the full integration and innovation of marketing, the "super brand day" IP is being interpreted more and more locally by Tmall and brand.

For the next three years, Xiu said Tmall will continue to emphasize the super spirit of the super brand to the industry and consumers.

"Tmall super brand day" has been verified by numerous paction results. But how to explain the super spirit in the new environment, how to deal with the brand fans and members in the digital environment, and tell the brand story is the next step for Tmall to achieve.

The second half of Tmall's conquest of luxury brands is just beginning.