Photo credit: Hublot

Swiss watchmaker Hublot made its entrance on Alibaba Group’s e-commerce marketplace Tmall ahead of the Spring Festival and will ring in the Lunar New Year with a limited-edition dragon timepiece.

Last month, LVMH-owned brands Tiffany & Co. and Chaumet unveiled flagship stores on the platform, making Hublot the final major brand within the French luxury group’s stable of jewelry and watch businesses to do so.

The brand’s Tmall store offers over 100 watch models, including timepieces from its Big Bang, MP and Classic Fusion lines and several new additions unveiled last week at the LVMH Watch Week show in Miami.

Hublot creations range from simple rubber-strapped diving watches to elaborate diamond-covered multicolored designs.

To parse through the wide range of watches on offer, the brand’s Tmall store offers special services for users, who can stay ahead of special releases, collect loyalty points redeemable for gifts and more.

An automated chatbot named Beta also helps Hublot customers on Tmall by answering their questions and alerting shoppers to exclusive offerings.

“For LVMH Maisons, having this strong intimacy and strong interaction with customers to invent a personalized experience is absolutely critical. We believe that technology is able to bring us this unique opportunity,” Franck le Moal, Group IT Director and CIO of LVMH, said in a recent interview with Alizila.

Enter the Dragon

Since its founding in 1980, Hublot has earned a reputation for combining creativity with sharp engineering, resulting in highly functional pieces of wearable art.

The company continues this tradition with a limited-edition Spirit of Big Bang Titanium Dragon timepiece in collaboration with Guangzhou-based artist Chen Fenwan.

The watch design references traditional Chinese paper-cutting art through a multi-layered dragon pattern in magenta, purple and ivory hues and has a limited run of 88 pieces.

How are you preparing to ring in the Year of the Dragon? Explore our Lunar New Year tag to find inspiration from Chinese brands and consumers