After more than a decade in China, the world's second-largest fashion retailer, Hennes & Mauritz, has just launched its flagship store of its eponymous brand on Tmall.com.

This is also the first time the 71-year-old brand is selling its apparel through a third party.

This also means that four major global fashion groups (including Inditex, L Brand, and Gap) have now set up e-commerce stores on the world's most visited business-to-customer online shopping platform operated by Alibaba, which boasts 500 million users.

Speaking about the decision, Magnus Olsson, country manager of H&M Greater China, says: "The time is right. We will soon be in China for 11 years. We have lots of physical stores and launched our own dotcom in 2014. And now we are ready."

The event to launch the store was held at the brand's physical flagship store in Shanghai, and was attended by Wang Yuan, a member of China's hottest boy band, TFBoys.

The 17-year-old－who, together with his two bandmates, has a combined fan following of over 100 million on social network Sina Weibo－was also named the brand ambassador.