Photo credit: Alibaba Group
This week, Alibaba Group’s luxury e-commerce platform reported a jump in the number of livestreaming hours during the recent 6.18 Mid-Year Shopping Festival as brands looked to engage with Chinese consumers.
In other news, international marketplace AliExpress inked a strategic partnership with one of Brazil’s largest retail companies to increase user penetration and widen its selection of product offerings.
Balenciaga Fashion Show, Tmall’s 618 Festival Give Luxury Livestreaming a Boost
Brands on Tmall Luxury Pavilion have been producing more livestreaming content, the platform shared this week as it crunched numbers from its recent 6.18 shopping event.
Total livestreaming hours hosted on Luxury Pavilion grew by 75% during the sale, which started in late May and continued until mid-June.
But China’s second-largest shopping festival isn’t the only reason livestreaming is a hot topic for luxury brands.
Spanish fashion house Balenciaga also took to Tmall in late May to livestream its Spring 2025 fashion show in Shanghai, attracting over 2.11 million views in the process.
The show featured “See Now Buy Now” experiences with special collaboration items like a Balenciaga X AliPay t-shirt and a collection with Under Armour. The oversized AliPay t-shirt, emblazoned with the logo of the financial services platform, sold out within three days.
Balenciaga was one of a number of luxury brands – including Miu Miu, Prada and Moncler – to achieve double-digit GMV growth during this year’s 6.18 shopping festival, according to Tmall data.
Their success was driven in part by the purchasing power of a select group of consumers.
Members of Tmall’s 88VIP loyalty initiative and other brand-operated loyalty programs accounted for over 60% of the total GMV recorded by Tmall Luxury Pavilion during 6.18.
The 6.18 sales period saw more than 100,000 products released on the luxury platform, which reported double-digit GMV growth during the event.
Read Alizila’s definitive wrap-up of the 2024 6.18 campaign
AliExpress Joins Forces with Brazilian Digital Retailer Magalu
This week, AliExpress signed a strategic agreement with Brazil-based retail company Magalu to bring the platform’s Choice line of products to new audiences.
As part of the partnership, which comes into effect next quarter, products from AliExpress’ Choice premium shopping service will be available for purchase on Magalu digital channels and across more than 1,250 of its brick-and-mortar stores in Brazil.
“We have been increasingly focused on expanding our local operation, reinforcing AliExpress’ commitment to contributing to the development of Brazilian e-commerce,” said Kai Li, CEO Latam at AliExpress, in a statement.
At the same time, products from Magalu’s own stock will also be accessible on AliExpress.
“The agreement accelerates our strategy of diversifying categories and increasing purchase frequency, in addition to boosting our cross-border operation,” noted Frederico Trajano, CEO of Magalu.
Founded over six decades ago, Magalu has grown into one of Brazil’s largest digital retail platforms with total sales online and offline of 63.1 billion Brazilian reais ($11.4 billion) in 2023.
Alibaba Cloud’s Wuying Awarded Innovation in Education Technology
An educational initiative by Alibaba Cloud has been recognized market research company Tech Breakthrough for making learning more accessible in rural China.
Alibaba Cloud’s Wuying Cloud Study Room was presented with the EdTech Deployment of the Year – K-12 Award during the annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards, widely regarded as the largest and most competitive recognition program in education technology.
Since launching in 2021, Wuying Cloud Study Room has provided over 100,000 students in 162 rural Chinese schools with access to IT resources, learning materials and software applications.
The program is powered by Alibaba Cloud’s Wuying architecture and by running all workload on the cloud, schools in underdeveloped areas can reduce the maintenance costs for hardware, reducing the need to purchase new IT equipment.
AliExpress Launches New Global Advertising Campaign Ahead of Olympic Games Paris 2024
AliExpress unveiled its latest global advertisement campaign at the Olympic Qualifier Series 2024 this week as the platform gears up for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 starting next month.
While athletes competed for a spot at Paris 2024 over the four-day event, AliExpress debuted its Find Your Sport advertisement with a skateboard-themed simulation.
“This campaign is designed to inspire the sporting dreams and passions of people around the world,” Albert Zhu, Head of Global Marketing at AliExpress, shared in a statement.
Consumers have placed more than 161 million orders for sports-related items on AliExpress since 2019, according to platform data.
Alibaba’s Taobao Drives Immersive Retail with Updated Apple Vision Pro App
E-commerce marketplace Taobao has released an updated version of its e-commerce application for the Apple Vision Pro, which goes on sale in Mainland China on June 28.
Taobao Vision Pro offers users an immersive shopping experience powered by 3D and mixed reality technology, making it possible for consumers to test drive cars from their couches, redecorate rooms at the touch of a finger and more.
Alibaba Cloud Launches English-language Version of Open-Source AI Model Hub ModelScope
Alibaba Cloud has unveiled the English-language version of its open-source AI model community, ModelScope, as the company seeks to bring generative AI to more businesses and developers worldwide.
Modelscope hosts tools and resources to enable developers to bring their AI projects to life thanks to over 1,500 high-quality Chinese-language datasets and an extensive range of toolkits that support data processing.
Developers can also tap a variety of modules on Modelscope to customize their model inference, training and evaluation with only a few lines of code.
