As more Chinese consumers are using mobile shopping to buy international luxury brands, they’ll soon have a new social marketplace to make purchases on their mobile phones.
In early 2017, MyMM.com, a new social mobile multi-brand lifestyle shopping platform will be launched exclusively in China with a wide range of in-season fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products from international brands exclusively to customers in China. The social shopping platform is a joint product of Walton Brown, a well-established brand management company that forms part of The Lane Crawford Joyce Group (along with Lane Crawford, Joyce, Pedder Group, and ImagineX) and eCargo, a China-based logistics and technology company. On July 26, the companies announced the formation of a joint venture called WWE & Company Limited (WWE) that will be leading the operation of MyMM.com.
They’re getting into the market at a time when China’s m-commerce market is rapidly expanding. With more than 667 million internet users—a number higher than any other country, China has the largest e-commerce market in the world with a growing percentage of online shoppers rapidly shifting from PC to m-commerce sales.
Details on the new platform are sparse so far, but WWE says it estimates that it will be able to leverage the Chinese government’s new cross-border e-commerce regulations to provide “profitable opportunities for international brands to accelerate growth and a viable option for new brands to launch into China for the first time to capture new consumers.”
"We are assembling a fantastic team of experts in technology, retail and marketing to make MyMM.com one of the leading online destinations for Chinese customers." says eCargo CEO Christopher Lau, who also serves as the new joint CEO of WWE.
Walton Brown President and WWE Joint-CEO Thomson Cheng states that the partnership is “in line with our overall strategy of investing and advancing our m-commerce footprint in China by working together with luxury, premium, and contemporary brands to fill the white space that currently exists in the online market.”
While there are many players in China’s fashion e-commerce market, WWE expects that there’s room for more. China’s e-commerce market is expected to be equal to that of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France combined by 2020, according to McKinsey, which predicts that it will be worth US$420 billion to $650 billion.