Tmall partners with Walt Disney for Avengers 2 merchandise

Tmall.com, Alibaba's online retail for brands and retailers, has teamed up with The Walt Disney Company to be the first exclusive distributor of the Marvel Studio’s 2015 blockbuster Avengers 2 merchandise on Tmall.com.This marks the first time Alibaba Group has opened up its resources in connecting brands and filmmakers to establish a convenient model in developing a movie-related merchandise market made available online for movie fans.By leveraging Alibaba Group’s foundation of merchants and user base, Tmall.com partners with Taobao ticketing platform to collaborate with more than 40 premium brands including Audi, Lego, Ecovacs, Hasbro and Li Ning to bring a selection of Avengers 2 merchandise to Chinese consumers as the movie opens yesterday in cinemas across China.These superhero themed merchandise are available on Disney’s flagship store on Tmall.com.“This marks another effort into further enhancing the collaboration between the participants within our platforms and to also fully utilise the resources we have across Alibaba,” said Sherry Lang, director of co-marketing for Tmall.com.For the first time, Alibaba Group worked with Taobao ticketing platform and Tmall.com to establish a convenient connection between filmmakers and authorized intellectual property merchants on Tmall.com.This streamlined partnership will benefit filmmakers, merchants and as well as movie fans to ensure that a wide selection of genuine movie merchandise is made available to online Chinese consumers through marketing projects.The Avengers sequel topped U.S. box office for the second weekend in a row with an estimated US$ 77.2 million according to Rentrak as of Sunday May 10, 2015 and it opened in theatres in China yesterday.