【2022 Archives】

Besides chatting with friends022 Archivesidly thumbing through their social feeds, you can now buy luxury bags off China's largest social app, WeChat.

The country's most popular messenger app -- which boasted nearly 900 million daily users last year -- is so ubiquitous that luxury brands like Longchamp and Burberry are jumping onboard, reports the Wall Street Journal.

SEE ALSO: Japan's new ultra-luxurious train is here, and tickets cost $10,000 each

Big brands like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Dior are also testing demand through flash sales.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Early adopter, Longchamp, has already launched two in-app stores. One allows people to create customised products from the French maker, and the other allows people to post their experiences with Longchamp's physical stores.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"We've seen the importance of WeChat," Jean Cassegrain, Longchamp's CEO, told Interface, a Chinese tech publication. The company found that WeChat pulled in a lot of sales, after earlier experiments with social media marketing in China.

Mashable Trend Report Decode what’s viral, what’s next, and what it all means. Sign up for Mashable’s weekly Trend Report newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

WeChat seemed more effective than other e-commerce platforms, Cassegrain added. "One way or another, [WeChat] will significantly contribute to our sales."

WeChat is taking over everything

This validation for WeChat is a big deal. The app started out as a messenger before adding a Facebook-style timeline feature, allowing people to blast their lives to friends.

Today, you'd find WeChat's in-app wallet commonly used for transferring money to friends, as well as paying merchants of all sizes, from roadside stalls to big retail stores. This payment is often done by scanning a simple QR code.

Credit: LightRocket via Getty Images

But will that spending translate to big ticket items from luxury brands? That remains to be seen, say industry watchers.

Buying a $20,000 watch on your phone.

Pablo Mauron, managing director in China for Digital Luxury Group, a high-end digital marketing firm, said: "For the luxury industry, it's important not to fool ourselves...People want to touch the product."

"I'm still doubtful that someone that doesn't have a relationship with a brand will buy a $20,000 watch on WeChat."

Still, brands setting up WeChat stores creates a unique closed loop not seen in many other examples outside of China. This loop takes users from the initial contact with the brand, to the purchase, and straight through to a personalised customer service channel, observed Interface.

---

Featured Video For You

---

These deluxe speakers are made from Lamborghini exhaust pipes

---

• Life
• Social Good
• Entertainment
• Deals
• Tech
• Science
• Digital Culture
• Shopping

• I'm a college professor. My advice to young people who feel hooked on tech
• Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with Drawings of Ireland
• Translating Pushkin Hills: An Interview with Katherine Dovlatov by Valerie Stivers
• Read Frederick Seidel’s Poem “Dayley Island”
• Is it 'Thunderbolts*' or *The New Avengers'?
• Sadie Stein on childhood fame
• The Morning News Roundup for March 17, 2014
• Shad Season by Sadie Stein
• Your 'wrong person' texts may be linked to Myanmar warlord
• The Morning News Roundup for March 21, 2014

• John Lewis mourners push back against hypocritical GOP remembrances
• Buffering by Adam Wilson
• The Epigraph by David Parker
• Staff Picks: ‘At Last,’ Ambivalence by The Paris Review
• Adam Johnson on ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ by Karan Mahajan
• Ivanka Trump sparks bean memes after she posed with can of Goya beans
• Ghost River by Will Hunt
• ICE drops policy banning international students from online study
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for May 8
• Document: Manuscript Pages of ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens

• Contingent No More
• Google updates policies on personal explicit images in search results
• Wordle today: Here's the answer and hints for August 3
• Bull City Redux by Nicole Rudick
• Stablecoin bill advances in U.S. Senate as Trump critics call to end his crypto dealings
• The top masturbation question people had during the pandemic
• The Morning News Roundup for March 25, 2014
• Barry Hannah on Flannery O’Connor, who was born today in 1925.
• Bomb Envy
• Here's how to stream Xbox games directly to Discord

• NYT mini crossword answers for May 9, 2025
• The Morning News Roundup for March 20, 2014
• 'The Afterparty's Wes Anderson episode is the perfect cure for lifeless AI parodies
• Google will soon notify you of search results showing your contact information
• No Time for a Negative Peace
• E. L. Doctorow’s prescient, forgotten sci
• The Morning News Roundup for March 18, 2014
• See the First Footage from the Cinematograph, Circa 1895
• Episode 4: The Wave of the Future
• AI.com now redirects to xAI, Elon Musk's project, instead of ChatGPT. It's not clear why.