Alibaba’s latest partnership aims to bring international lifestyle brands to China. Credit: Alibaba Group Holding Limited.

Alibaba Group has formed a strategic alliance with Hong Kong-based Fung Group’s retail arm to bolster the in-store and online offering of international lifestyle brands in China.

Fung Retailing operates a network of more than 3,000 stores with a variety of apparel and lifestyle brands, including women’s fashion, toys, convenience stores and kids apparel.

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“Through this exciting strategic partnership with Alibaba, we will help customers navigate the full Chinese retail economy and reach China’s 1.4 billion consumers more easily.”

The collaboration will combine Alibaba’s retail network, technology and insights with Fung Retailing’s expertise in marketing, global portfolio and offline retail channels.

Alibaba and Fung Retailing plan to jointly work on global brand recruitment, as well as provide merchandising, marketing and omnichannel distribution services to brands.

The partners aim to facilitate easy product development and marketing for brands, which will be able to leverage Alibaba’s retail channels such as Tmall and Intime malls, and Fung Retailing’s offline stores.

This will help minimise costs, risks and the time to enter the Chinese market.

Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said: “We endeavour to help global brands expand their foothold in the China market by fully integrating Alibaba’s strong capabilities in New Retail, big data and technology with Fung Retailing’s unparalleled advantageous in brand and supply chain resources.”

Initially, Alibaba and Fung Retailing will focus on the mainland China region, with plans to expand their alliance into other markets, where the former operates platforms.

Fung Retailing group managing director Sabrina Fung said: “Through this exciting strategic partnership with Alibaba, we will help customers navigate the full Chinese retail economy and reach China’s 1.4 billion consumers more easily.”

Last month, Alibaba entered a similar collaboration with Swiss luxury goods group Richemont focussed on the online luxury market. As part of this deal, Alibaba agreed to form a joint venture with online luxury fashion retailer Yoox Net-A-Porter Group (YNAP).