What happened
Following Prada’s official launch on Tmall on March 14, the Italian luxury fashion house, Prada Group, added its Miu Miu line to its Tmall flagship store on March 24. As of publication, the newly launched e-shop has accumulated 11,610 followers on the site. Moreover, both Prada and Miu Miu are now also featured in Tmall’s Luxury Pavilion — the luxury hub for the B2C retailer — boosting the platform’s brand profile. Miu Miu’s collaboration with Tmall, in conjunction with a series of new WeChat Mini Programs later this year, marks the digitalization of the high fashion brand.
The Jing Take
The Tmall flagship store has become the second official website for luxury brands to connect with Chinese consumers. It now features a much improved shopping experience, which was unveiled in an update in the second half of last year. For luxury players on Tmall, the site offers strategic support such as digital marketing, e-commerce operations, data analyses, and technological solutions like ISV (Independent Software Vendor). Meanwhile, as the online gateway for product debuts, Tmall's “Hey Box” (Little Black Box in Chinese translation) is an incubator for up-and-coming items and a perfect platform for limited edition drops that the younger Chinese luxury consumers scramble for.
Prada Group’s entrance into the highly competitive Chinese digital battleground has encompassed a 360 degree approach on WeChat, Weibo, and Tmall. However, Miu Miu has been playing catch up with other major brands since its WeChat pop-up shop launched last fall. With a promising digital strategy in China’s market, the luxury group is expected to keep up its positive performance there despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s strike on the global luxury industry.
The Jing Take reports on a leading piece of news while presenting our editorial team’s analysis of its key implications for the luxury industry. In this recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debates that sprout up on Chinese social media.