Gucci revealed to its Chinese fans this week it's now giving shoppers in China access to purchase its full range of fashion, handbags, accessories, and jewelry directly from its online store. Gucci's revamped e-commerce site, which heavily focuses on visuals and product story-telling to engage the consumer, lets shoppers make purchases online using localized forms of payment, including Alipay and WeChat.
The new move by the brand bolsters its digital portfolio, one that digital intelligence firm L2 ranks highly. L2 puts Gucci at number five in its 2017 Digital IQ Index for Chinese luxury brands, a recent list of top performers in the luxury segment online in China. Gucci gains points for its strong social media engagement, especially on Weibo where it worked on viral campaigns with Chinese celebrity Li Yuchun, a.k.a. Chris Lee.
On WeChat, Gucci has been leveraging the platform’s online-to-offline capabilities to grow its following and learn more about its customers. This year, the brand has hosted several events across Asia, including the recent art exhibition “Blind for Love” that gave Gucci fans a look into the world of the brand’s creative director Alessandro Michele. For that event, Gucci invited fans to reserve a tour via WeChat, and they later had the option to post photos of the exhibition using the #blindforlove hashtag on WeChat and Weibo. According to L2, this particular campaign gained 9.5 million views.
Now, it has added another aspect to its multi-pronged effort to grow its reach in China. The brand saw its fastest growth in two decades in the first quarter of this year, which the brand partly attributed to a rebound in Chinese luxury spending, according to Bloomberg. Online sales rose 86 percent in the first quarter. The brand first launched its content-heavy website, designed by Alessandro Michele in 2015, but only in the Untited States and Canada.
Gucci had an official website in China, but before Monday, it did not give consumers the option to buy its products directly on the platform.
Gucci said in a statement that its newly launched website is optimized to fit all screen sizes, which will accommodate traffic from the growing number of mobile shoppers in China—about 70 percent of its global traffic comes from smartphones.