Swedish home furnishing giant IKEA announced Tuesday the opening of its flagship store on Alibaba's online marketplace Tmall as a major step to boost e-commerce sales.
It is IKEA's first-ever online official flagship store on a third-party platform.
Anna Pawlak-Kuliga, CEO and president of IKEA China, unveiled the new store on the same day via a live-stream signing ceremony together with Jiang Fan, vice president of Alibaba Group and President of Taobao and Tmall.
More than 3,800 IKEA products, including best-selling items for living rooms, bedrooms and from other categories, have been put on sale in the first stage.
The initial service area mainly covers places in the Yangtze River Delta region and will gradually expand to the whole country. The two have also knocked through between their respective membership systems.
The cooperation with Alibaba is another breakthrough in IKEA's sales channel development, Pawlak-Kuliga said, noting that it will better meet the shopping demands of Chinese customers anytime and anywhere.
Data from Alibaba showed that some 30,000 merchants have set up shops on Taobao every day since February, including offline brands and retailers.
