Denmark has become the latest country to tap Tmall Global as a way to reach the more than 440 million Chinese consumers shopping on Alibaba Group’s e-commerce sites.
The Scandinavian country of 5.7 million people has launched a “Denmark Pavilion” on Tmall Global, Alibaba’s dedicated cross-border e-commerce platform. The pavilion features about 20 Danish brands from the fashion, lifestyle, home and food categories. Consumer electronics company Bang & Olufsen, industrial designer Jacob Jensen Design and footwear maker ECCO are among those to be included in the pavilion.
The brands are already selling on Tmall Global and Tmall.com, Alibaba’s domestic B2C shopping site, through their own flagship stores. But the Denmark Pavilion gives them a dedicated channel through which they can introduce Danish culture and the country’s products to Chinese consumers. Denmark joins the United States, Australia, Germany and 12 other countries to open pavilions on Tmall Global.
“Chinese consumers have often limited knowledge of Danish products and with the opening of an official Danish pavilion on China’s leading e-commerce market place Tmall Global, we hope to draw attention to Danish products and brands,” said Denmark’s Foreign Minister, Anders Samuelsen, in a statement. (Samuelsen is pictured above with Alibaba Group Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai.)
The event was live-streamed through Tmall, and participating brands such as Blue Pro air purifiers, Arla dairy products and Flexa baby furniture used the broadcast to kick-start their introduction to Chinese consumers.
Watch these highlights from the Denmark Pavilion launch on Tmall:
Samuelsen and Tsai were at Alibaba headquarters in Hangzhou, China, on Sunday to witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Alibaba that aims to boost exports from Denmark to China, in part by selling through Tmall and Tmall Global. Tsai said that Alibaba would give Danish companies “direct access to the growing Chinese middle-class market.”
“Danish design, art and lifestyle are admired all over the world for their sophistication and minimalism, and there is no doubt that Danish products will become even more popular amongst Chinese customers, enticing an ever-growing number of them to want to travel to the country themselves,” Tsai said in the statement.
To help promote that travel, a Denmark Pavilion was also opened on travel-booking site Fliggy, formerly known as Alitrip. The pavilion will offer travel tips provided by the Danish Embassy, Danish Consulate and Visit Denmark, the official Danish tourism board. Denmark will also be the first country to participate in Fliggy’s new visa information platform, which will allow Chinese travelers to check for the latest visa requirements and travel policies for Denmark. In addition, Fliggy signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Scandinavian Airlines in which SAS will open a new flagship store on the site. Twenty airlines have launched flagship stores so far.
The agreements come just a few weeks after the opening of the China-Denmark Tourism Year, a state-level initiative to increase the flow of visitors between the two countries.
