Sina Launches Luxury E-Commerce Store, Packed with Designer Brands

Sina, best known for its wildly popular Weibo microblog, has today launched a designer brand-oriented B2C e-commerce site, called Sina Luxury.

Sina’s Luxury store – take a look here – carries brands such as Dior, Burberry, Gucci, and Paul Smith.

Unlike the Chinese luxury e-tailer IHaveYou.com (pictured below), Sina’s new site doesn’t (yet) have menswear.

Prominently featured at the top of the Sina Luxury page is a “100 percent guaranteed genuine” stamp, which is a jibe at the piracy/counterfeit problem on rival e-commerce sites, especially on the C2C sections of Taobao and Tencent’s Paipai.com.

Ihaveyou.com (pictured) is a smaller rival to the new Sina Luxury store.

The luxury clothing and accessories market is potentially huge, with an estimated 175 million middle- to upper-income level Chinese being able to afford such items. Of those, a fast-expanding 10 to 13 million often buy genuine designer goods. According to Analysis International, luxury item sales in China will be valued at US$16 billion by the end of 2011.

Sina faces competition in this luxury sector from a variety of angles – from small start-ups such as the afore-mentioned IHaveYou.com, right up to e-commerce giant Taobao’s TMalls, or the new Netease Fashion store.

Speaking of Taobao, it yesterday unveiled its so-called ‘designer-to-consumer’ (D2C) portal – check it out here – for limited-edition or custom-made designer outfits. Whilst it won’t bring in customers in such numbers as big-name designer labels, it’s a measure that Taobao might be ready to take its TMall more upmarket in the near future.

For a fun overview of Chinese consumers and luxury brands, check out this infographic we posted last week.

[Source: Techweb – article in Chinese]