Alibaba’s Tmall anticipates international and domestic cosmetics brands to open 1,000 shops on its platform in 2019, in an effort to meet the demands of Chinese consumers.
At its annual beauty summit, the company announced seven international companies have signed agreements to open flagship stores on Tmall in 2019: Tom Ford, Glamglow, Oriental Therapy (P&G’s new beauty line), Japan’s Cosme and d-program, Korean brand Primera and Sweden’s Barnäng.
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An additional five companies (Maybelline, Kiehl’s, Innisfree and domestic brand Winona) signed New Retail partnerships during the summit. The partnership provides them with access to a complete view of their customer base via integrating insights from digitized offline promotion activities and storefront information with online information.
Also announced at the summit: the Korean Small & Medium Business Corp will launch a flagship store to house 50 niche Korean brands. Additionally, Tmall showcased the Alibaba Business Operating System, which was officially unveiled in January 2019.
Alibaba reaches nearly 700 million Chinese customers; since 2018, Tmall has seen sales of beauty products increase 60%. Online sales of cosmetics, skin care and personal care products grew 46%, 40% and 37% in China in 2017, per a report released by Tmall and market research firm Kantar.