Tmall Logo PNG
The largest Asian marketplace has a mysterious Tmall logo, and that’s part of what made it famous. The emblem’s original style immediately signals that the online store is for Chinese people who love unusual, practical things.
Tmall grew out of Alibaba Group, founded in Hangzhou on June 28, 1999, by Jack Ma and 17 partners. Alibaba first focused on B2B trade, then launched Taobao in May 2003 as a C2C marketplace, a direct response to eBay’s expansion in China. Taobao avoided seller commissions, which helped it gain users quickly.
In April 2008, Taobao introduced Taobao Mall as a B2C section for official brand stores and authorized distributors. It was created for buyers seeking genuine products amid concerns about counterfeits. In 2010, Alibaba renamed Taobao Mall as Tmall and moved it to tmall.com. That year, its gross merchandise volume reached 30 billion yuan, about three times that of 360buy (later JD.com).
In June 2011, Jack Ma split Taobao into three businesses: Tmall for B2C, Taobao Marketplace for C2C, and eTao for search. Soon after, sellers protested Tmall after annual service fees rose from 6,000 to 60,000 yuan and deposit requirements rose from 10,000 to 150,000 yuan. In 2012, it adopted the Chinese name 天猫 (Tiānmāo), meaning “heavenly cat.” By Q1 2013, Tmall held 51.3% of China’s B2C goods market, ahead of JD.com and Amazon China.
In 2014, Alibaba launched Tmall Global to enable foreign brands to sell directly to Chinese consumers. By late 2014, it hosted 5,400 retailers from 25 countries, including Costco and dm. Tmall became a key platform for Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sale, first held in 2009. In 2023, it joined Taobao and Tmall Group as part of Alibaba’s “1+6+N” restructuring. In 2024, it was placed within a unified e-commerce unit alongside Taobao, AliExpress, Lazada, and Trendyol.
Meaning and History
Tmall is considered the largest Chinese online platform in the B2C sector. It was once called Taobao Mall but split from Taobao because of branding issues. The main marketplace sold low-quality, dubious-origin products, while the Taobao Mall section featured original products from famous brands. The only thing they had in common was very similar names, which often confused customers. As a result, the sites were divided. This is how Tmall appeared, officially called Tian Mao in China since 2012, meaning “heavenly cat.” This unusual name served as the basis for all its logos. They depict a black cartoon cat with large, round eyes.
What is Tmall?
Tmall positions itself as Asia’s largest online retail platform. It forked off Taobao.com in 2010 and has its own domain. In 2011, Tmall became an independent company within the Alibaba Group, and a year later, it changed its Chinese name to Tian Mao.
2012 – 2014
London-based studio Superunion designed most of Tmall’s visual identity, including the color scheme, mascot, and wordmark. The specialists drew inspiration from the phrase “sky cat” (Tian Mao), so they built the brand around a personified cat. They decided to turn him into a conductor for the marketplace’s clients.
The custom-drawn logo featured a dark red rectangle. A black cat’s head filled the lower part, but not all of it- only the top- with large ears, a triangular nose, and round white eyes with vertical pupils. The head was extended horizontally. At the center of the square is a white inscription with two characters and the e-commerce website address: “TMALL.COM.” The hieroglyphs denoted the brand’s Chinese name: Tian Mao.
2014 – 2017
Another old Tmall logo featured a bilingual marketplace name and a black cat head on a white background, this time with a thin neck and no triangular nose. All lettering was in red. The hieroglyphs were at the top, and the words “TMALL COM” (without a dot) were at the bottom. Both lines were left-aligned. The cat’s head was in the upper-right corner.
2017 – 2019
Designers regrouped the e-commerce website logo. At the top, the inscription read “TMALL,” with seven Chinese characters below it. All glyphs have been recolored in deep pink with a hint of fuchsia. A black cat’s head sat at the bottom, peeking out like in the first logo. The background was white.
2019 – today
Tmall now has a full-length cat logo. The animal stands with its hind legs behind it, and its front legs are spread apart as if to maintain balance or invite hugs. The mouth, consisting of two curved lines, resembles a friendly smile. The brand’s Chinese name is written in red at the bottom. In the same line is its domain address: “TMALL.COM.” The designers used a custom sans-serif font with many rounded corners.
The marketplace also uses two short versions of the logo. One of them serves as an application icon. Its base is a red square with rounded sides. It contains the white characters for Tian Mao and the familiar black cat head peeking out from below.
The second, shorter Tmall logo appears as the website icon in the browser tab next to the page name. It looks like a red square with a white “T” in the middle. In the lower part of the square, a black stripe runs across it, flanked on both sides by triangular elements that resemble cat ears.
The cat in the Tmall logo is shaped like the English letter “T” and the Chinese character “天” for “sky.” This coincidence is not accidental: in 2012, the trading platform officially became known as Tian Mao, which translates to “sky cat.” Tmall is only an international brand name. On the other hand, the phrase “Tian Mao” can be interpreted as “lynx,” but judging by the emblem, the cat is meant.
The final link in the site’s rebranding, which is now separate from Taobao, is a new logo. It was accepted as the winner of a design competition that lasted almost two months. The trading platform received more than 12,000 submissions. Among them, the most popular was the cat, Tmall’s current mascot.
The artists drew inspiration from the word “Mao,” which also refers to the politician Mao Tse-tung and translates as “cat.” An interesting story is connected to this. Shortly before Tmall split from Taobao and moved to its own domain, the Chinese internet noticed that a decorative pattern on a banknote featuring a portrait of China’s founder folds into the silhouettes of three mysterious cats. Allegedly, one of them stands on its hind legs, and the other two worship it. Moreover, the animals have large, horizontally elongated heads, round eyes, and triangular noses.
The designers of the Tmall emblem decided to play on this fun fact by depicting a “sky cat” to guide visitors to the marketplace. As a result, a partially anthropomorphic character became the central element, and the rest of the identity is built around it.
Font and Colors
All Tmall logos are united not only by the cat image but also by the same typography. Designers developed an individual sans-serif typeface for wordmarks: the trading platform’s domain address is set in a rounded, grotesque style. The capital “M” is particularly unusual, using a downward-curved line instead of the central diagonal.
Both icons and the Tmall wordmark are bright red. In Chinese culture, this color symbolizes joy, happiness, holidays, and celebrations. In all versions, the cat is black, with white eyes, nose, and mouth.