Recently, American office furniture company Steelcase announced its official entry into Tmall, launching its online retail model and marking the company's accelerated expansion into the Chinese market.

According to the official, Steelcase Tmall store features a wide range of products, including chairs, desks, office furniture and other products that provide solutions for office environments and multimedia design for different enterprises.

However, 77 Degrees found that only 11 products are currently available on the store shelves, with the main product being the ergonomic chair category, which is currently selling well online. These include five ergonomic chairs with a price range of RMB 3,800 to 12,800, three multifunctional tables with a price tag of over RMB 10,000, and three other matching products.

In terms of popularity, the store has only 347 followers and a handful of product sales, with the highest sales showing 23 items for sale and a variety of products with zero sales.

Of course, Steelcase is a newcomer, and although it is one of the world's leading office furniture companies, it is not the traffic bearer that Ikea is, so it is understandable that it did not attract much attention.

However, Steelcase still has high hopes for the opening of the Tmall store, considering it not only a breakthrough in the retail channel, but also an important milestone in its development strategy for the Chinese market.

Mr. Lei Zhenyu, General Manager of Steelcase China, said, "We hope to provide people with easy access to the most ergonomic office products. We want to make it easy for people to access the most ergonomic office products and bring them the latest office concepts that fit the new era. In addition to this, we want to customize our products for consumers. Customizing products for consumers, Steelcase's personalized service also responds to the contemporary consumer trends in China."

As a global leader in the office furniture industry, 100 years of brand development has laid a solid foundation for Steelcase. Today, Steelcase has a multi-channel global distribution network, including more than 800 Steelcase dealer offices, with total revenue of approximately $3.7 billion in FY2020.

Even though Steelcase is well known for its high-end offline channels, the company does not want to miss out on Tmall.com, a platform with over 800 million active users, which will open up more possibilities for Steelcase to expand its overall business in China in the future.