Valentino’s Candystud Pops Up in Beijing With Alibaba Collaboration
Valentino has linked with Chinese giant Alibaba to give its Candystud collection some pop in Beijing.
The collaboration will help promote the Valentino Garavani Candystud collection at a Valentino pop-up store in Beijing’s Sanlitun neighborhood and on a 3-D virtual store on Tmall Space, where the platform’s Luxury Pavilion hosts pop-up shops.
Maison Valentino is launching two limited-edition Valentino Garavani Candystud bags, four exclusive sneakers styles and a collection of small leather goods to mark the occasion.
Customers can preorder goods today online through Thursday. The physical pop-up opens on Friday.
Jessica Liu, president of fashion and luxury at Tmall, said, “Valentino’s simultaneous running of a physical Candystud Factory pop-up store in Beijing and online with a Pavilion Tmall Space is a perfect illustration of how luxury brands can leverage Alibaba to engage their consumers and take advantage of the New Retail opportunity.”
Alibaba has been working on a new approach to retail that brings together the online and offline experiences, making use of its massive store of data to better understand and serve shoppers.
The Tmall marketplace draws 580 million monthly active mobile users — and has been working hard to connect with more brands, especially luxury names from the West that have been in some cases skeptical of the massive marketplace.
The Luxury Pavilion is a bid to create an online home for higher-end names, offering a tailored shopping experience that is controlled by the brand and is meant to sync better with the designer’s own tony flagships. The initiative was launched last year with brands such as Burberry, Hugo Boss, Guerlain and Maserati.
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