Tmall, Taobao’s upscale brand-friendly cousin, sells a lot of clothing. Sure, you say, but how much is ‘a lot’ specifically? Well, Tmall announced today that this year, a lot is equal to 60 billion RMB ($9.5 billion). That’s a lot!
The company announced that number — its estimated clothing sales for this year — earlier today in tandem with the announcement of that Nike has joined the service, opening a Tmall store to offer its swoosh-branded athletic clothing. Athletic clothes apparently make up for around 30 percent of Tmall clothing sales already, and the addition of a Nike store may help bump that number up even further. Athletic clothing sales are already up 300 percent compared to last year, and clothing sales overall are up 200 percent, according to the company.
Of course, one should always take forward-looking accounting numbers from any company with some grains of salt, and 2012 is far from over. But Tmall has showed no signs of slowing during its massive growth over the past year, and we expect that at least for the next six months people will continue to clothe themselves in garments rather than adopting nudism en masse, so Tmall is probably safe in its estimation that it’s going to continue to sell an awful lot of clothes.
[via Sina Tech]
