It is understood that after exiting JD.com at the end of last year, the Farfetch official overseas flagship store will officially open on March 1st in the Tmall Luxury channel, aligning with the Alibaba camp. On November 5th last year, Alibaba and Richemont Group, the parent company of Yoox Net-A-Porter, officially announced a global strategic partnership, each investing $300 million to jointly purchase $600 million in privately placed convertible bonds issued by Farfetch.
Farfetch is one of the world's largest luxury e-commerce platforms, currently hosting over 3,500 global designer brands. The FARFETCH store entrance is now displayed on the Tmall homepage, listed alongside another luxury e-commerce platform, "NET-A-PORTER," which previously joined Tmall Luxury.
Alibaba Group can reach 779 million consumers in China through e-commerce platforms like Tmall and Taobao. However, up to 95% of the designer brands on Farfetch had not previously joined Tmall, and many lacked operational teams in China. With Farfetch joining Tmall Luxury, Farfetch founder and CEO José Neves stated: "They will live in the world's largest store."
Currently, the cooperation between Farfetch and Tmall is still in its early stages. The integration of operational models, data, backend supply chains, and other aspects between the two parties still requires time for adaptation, alignment, and debugging. José Neves also added: "Selling on Tmall also includes media costs. This platform is like adding a Google and an Instagram on top of Amazon. It's not that once you open a store, you automatically get maximum traffic." Farfetch's primary goal right now is to figure out how to help brands achieve better exposure and sales on the Tmall platform.