Over 60 leaders from renowned brands covering major industries participated in collaborative event

HONG KONG, June 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Tencent Smart Retail and Tencent Cloud International joined hands with the Italy China Council Foundation (ICCF) in hosting a thematic exchange event called "The New Era of Smart Retail – Engage Your Chinese Client with Tencent & Weixin Ecosystem" held in Milan, Italy. The event was attended by more than 60 leaders from well-known brands, covering nine major industries including luxury goods, cosmetics, travel services, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare. Weixin is commonly known as "WeChat" outside of China serves over a billion of monthly active users in the Chinese mainland.

At the event, Tencent Cloud and ICCF discussed solutions that are available for the smart retail industry. With its deep expertise in the local Chinese market, Tencent Cloud showcased its one-stop smart retail solutions for entering China. Their services cover business registration, security solutions, customized IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions, platform development and operation, as well as go-to-market marketing solutions, supporting the entire lifecycle of businesses. Furthermore, it offers efficient and worry-free services for overseas brands expanding their operations in China.

The Tencent Weixin ecosystem empowers retailers and business to tap into its features, including Mini Programs, Official Accounts, Video Accounts, Weixin Pay, Moments and Search to facilitate a seamless connection with Chinese consumers, drive sales conversion, and enhance brand awareness.

Within the Weixin ecosystem, these resources provide retail brands with four distinct points of value. First, they offer companies brand autonomy, enabling complete control over brand content, user experience, store operations, and ownership of digital assets. Second, the facilitation of private domain allows direct access to customers for personalized interactions related to product launches, event planning, and after-sales communication. Third, through Weixin's social attributes, companies can more easily go viral and expand their brand's reach. Finally, offline capabilities such as QR code scanning helps the transition between online and offline scenarios, enhancing operational efficiency.

Demonstrating these solutions' capabilities, here are some brands that currently enjoy the benefits of Tencent Cloud's features:

• L'Oréal Paris: implemented an online-to-offline business model in China in partnership with Tencent, leveraging platforms like Weixin Mini Program and WeCom – resulting in the expansion of its reach, increased sales, and nurturing of customer loyalty. With Tencent's support, L'Oréal Paris successfully digitalized over 1,000 offline stores, achieving significant sales growth in both online and offline channels.
• Sika Group: optimized its management of decoration craftsmen through WeCom groups to better coordinated with the customer orders from online stores. With the versatile service of Tencent Cloud, Davco, a subsidiary of  the century-old Swiss enterprise Sika Group, specializing in the architectural decoration materials industry, achieved customer expansion and business improvement, reaping benefits like cost savings, efficiency improvements and enhanced security defense provided by Tencent Cloud's exclusive IT architecture.
• International luxury brands like Baolong Commercial; CHANDO; and LVMH Group's MakeUpForEver utilized Weixin Mini Programs for marketing during festivals like Chinese Valentine's Day (520 festival), where they offered exclusive services such as online games and lucky draws. Tencent Smart Retail has facilitated collaborations between these brands and Tencent's IPs like QQ Family, Honor of Kings, and QQ Dance respectively, to help capture the local community of followers.  

Over the past six years, more than 1,000 leading merchants have built their own brand mini-program websites within the Weixin ecosystem. Tencent Smart Retail has established partnerships with over 600 strategic partners. Acting as a "bonding agent," Tencent Smart Retail leverages public domain traffic from platforms like Video Account, Search, and Tencent Advertising. It collaborates with Tencent's IP resources in gaming, video, music, and more, while assisting businesses in integrating online and offline touchpoints. This includes WeCom, social communities, stores, and sales assistants, ultimately establishing a consumer-centric omnichannel operation.

At the event, Fred Sun, General Manager of Europe at Tencent Cloud International, shared that as one of the world's leading cloud service providers, Tencent Cloud offers more than 400 technological and connectivity solutions. These solutions span across big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, security, and more, customized to support enterprises across industries in their digital transformation and engagement with new-age customers.

Sun also pointed out, "Leveraging our technologies, networks, and capabilities available in over 70 availability zones worldwide, Tencent Cloud is committed to delivering innovative solutions and business models for multinational brands, empowering them to globalize their businesses."

Mario Boselli, Chairman ICCF, said, "New technologies are spreading with surprising capacity and will be the driving force behind a new scientific and industrial revolution. The challenges we face require all countries to work together for the common good. Italy and China can play a driving role in this scenario and contribute to the spread of open innovation thanks to their investments. We as ICCF are available to foster collaboration between Chinese and Italian companies".

The Italy China Council Foundation (ICCF) is a non-profit association that brings together Italian and Chinese companies and individuals. With over 400 associates and partners, the ICCF is a leading organization in Italy and Europe. It plays a crucial role in developing relations between Europe and Asia, dedicated to fostering relations between Europe and Asia, particularly Italy and China. It serves as a platform for collaboration and bilateral projects, facilitating the development of initiatives between Italian and Chinese entities.

About Tencent Cloud
Tencent Cloud, one of the world's leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.