Global wine companies, Baron Philippe de Rothschild (BPhR) and Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) have announced a new e-commerce collaboration and partnership with leading online retail platform, Tmall, to enhance brand building, supply chain efficiencies and consumer experiences in premium wine.
Celebrated at a launch event and press conference on March 8 in Shanghai, the event was attended by Chairman of the Supervisory Board of BPhR, Philippe Sereys de Rothschild, TWE Chief Executive Officer Michael Clarke, Tmall President Jet Jing, and Maggie Zhou, Managing Director of Alibaba, Australia and New Zealand.
As part of the agreement, wine brands from the BPhR portfolio including Mouton Cadet and Escudo Rojo will become available on TWE’s flagship Tmall store, enabling exclusive distribution and marketing of its premium French and Chilean brand wines in Mainland China.
“Our partnership with TWE, one of the world’s leading wine companies, as well as Tmall, China’s most influential e-commerce platform, will go a long way to help us grow in one of the most dynamic markets in the world – China. Working hand in hand with TWE, our joint efforts are underpinned by shared value of excellence and commitment. Together, we underline our intention to continue to expand on a fast-growing strategic market,” said Philippe Sereys de Rothschild.
As the latest agreement in Alibaba’s pursuit to help brands capitalise on the ‘new retail’ opportunity in China, the strategic collaboration will also see Alibaba leverage its outstanding big data capability to bring its online ecosystem, offline.
“The cooperation between TWE, BPhR and Tmall is not only benefited from the outstanding growth trends in online consumption, but also from Alibaba’s big data capabilities, brand Omni-chain solutions and new consumer experiences created by new retail online-offline strategies,” said Tmall’s President Jet Jing.
At the event, Tmall showcased some of the innovative new retail technologies it is making available to the alcohol industry including Tmall cloud shelf and the Tmall vending machine for alcohol. Through intelligence technologies such as “Pop-up Smart Store” and “Brand Databank”, Tmall will build up a set of new retail facilities to enable TWE to accurately identify consumers’ needs, promote R&D for new products, optimise supply chain networks and improve the consumption experience for customers.
“We look forward to working closely with our partners to deploy technologies such as contactless payments, cloud shelf and Augmented Reality in the future, that will help to promote TWE wines and products under BPhR, and further realise new retail possibilities. As the consumer experience continues to improve, we also see a role for us to support with the optimisation of brand building, warehouse management and marketing costs,” said Maggie Zhou.
With proven success marketing Australian and US wines to China, TWE added a French country-of-origin portfolio to its offering in 2017, and in January 2018 commenced importing and distributing BPhR’s French and Chilean wines to help meet demand from Chinese consumers who enjoy wines from both the Old World and New World.