Luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet tests e-commerce in China with JD.com
Swiss brand teams up with Chinese online retail giant to sell its timepieces using e-store via mainland’s WeChat social media platform
A lucky collector of luxury timepieces in China got a surprise visit from Audemars Piguet’s CEO François-Henry Bennahmias and JD.com founder Richard Liu on Tuesday.
The executives arrived in Beijing to hand-deliver the luxury watch that the collector had bought using the Swiss brand’s e-store on mainland China’s WeChat social-media platform.
The online retail giant JD.com is providing the technical support for the watchmaker’s WeChat e-store.
The collaboration between the two companies marks Audemars Piguet’s first foray into e-commerce.
Watches available via the WeChat pop-up e-store are priced from 149,000 yuan (US$24,000) to 463,000 yuan.
The pop-up is rendered in the form of a mini programme located below Audemars Piguet’s official WeChat account.
“We chose to go for the pop-up store under WeChat because it is one of the most popular platforms in China right now,” Bennahmias said.
“What attracts us to use [a] mini programme among other websites is the flexibility that allows end-users to create direct payment, instead of going through a third-party website to process payment.”