Luxury brands find new avenue on JD.com during COVID-19

Beginning January this year, several global luxury fashion brands, including Italy’s By Far, world’s oldest fine leather goods house Delvaux from Belgium, Chanel-owned jewellery brand Goossens and luxury cashmere specialist Barrie, British luxury leather brand Smythson, cashmere knitwear brand Pringle of Scotland, MSGM and Proenza Schouler, have established partnerships with China’s JD.com to boost sales online.

By Far recently opened a flagship store on JD and has seen 65 per cent of its products sell out after just four days. About 90 per cent of its products sold out after a month, JD.com said in a press release. To date, over 200 luxury brands from around the world have established partnerships with JD.

In the coming months, JD plans to offer more innovative programs to help brands deal with impact of the pandemic.

Some of the support JD offers to luxury brands includes live-streaming and social e-commerce. The company is also exploring omni-channel solutions with brands in the near future.

JD helped Canadian fashion brand Ports host a nine-hour fashion show through live-streaming to present the new Spring-Summer 2020 collections from a dozen brands under Ports, such as PORTS, PortsPURE and Ports V. The live-stream resulted in sales of more than 10 million RMB in a single day. It also is providing a free service for luxury brands to launch Wechat mini-programs within just one week to gain more traffic.

Luxury products have sold well on JD during the epidemic, despite not being considered daily necessities, the company claimed. This is because more Chinese consumers are turning to channels within China to buy luxury products after the outbreak of COVID-19, and they want to choose a platform that they trust.