The Alibaba News Roundup is a weekly digest of events and happenings across the company. This week, Lazada is offering free warehousing fees for Chinese merchants in the lead up to Chinese New Year on Feb. 11. Also covered is Christian Louboutin’s launch of a flagship store on Tmall Luxury Pavilion.

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Lazada Launches Rent-Free WAREHOUSE Program for Chinese Merchants During CNY 

Lazada, Alibaba’s flagship e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, is waiving warehousing fees for Chinese merchants for 60 days starting in February in the lead up to Chinese New Year. Starting Feb 11, China will go into holiday mode for two full weeks, which means slower logistics for all orders coming out of the country. To avoid potential operational delays, Lazada is encouraging Chinese merchants to sign up for its 60-day  rent-free warehouse program. Participating merchants can stock up on their top-selling products prior to the Chinese New Year in Lazada’s central warehouses in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. During the holiday, the platform can quickly dispatch the items to its local warehouses in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia or Thailand. This means APAC shoppers can get their orders without holiday disruptions, while merchants can improve their operational efficiency without incurring additional costs.

Christian Louboutin Launches on Tmall Luxury Pavilion

Christian Louboutin, famous for its red-soled stilettos, on Wednesday opened a flagship store for shoes and accessories on Tmall Luxury Pavilion. The new store features a range of colorful animations, short videos and gamified experiences, including a pop-up that takes shoppers into an immersive world inspired by its new Super Loubi collection. Enabled by Alibaba’s Tmall Flagship 2.0 technology, the virtual pop-up feature lets visitors explore Christian Louboutin’s signature themes and their origins, like red-lacquered soles and pansies. With Chinese New Year fast-approaching, the French label also spotlighted special-edition products in a campaign featuring Chinese pop sensation Karry Wang, the brand’s first-ever celebrity ambassador in China. The new store opening comes just over a year after the launch of its beauty line, Christian Louboutin Beauty, on the Alibaba-owned platform. 

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