(Yicai Global) Oct. 22 -- Ele.me, the Chinese meal takeaway platform acquired by Alibaba Group Holding, has launched a partnership with Hong Kong's Watsons Personal Care Stores to start selling the latter's products to its tens of millions of monthly users across China's mainland. 

Watsons has selected nearly 1,700 items to be sold on Ele.me and it is expected that 2,500 stores will go online before year-end, digital news outlet Sina reported today. Already 1,600 Watsons beauty and healthcare shops have gone through the transformation toward the new retail era where offline and online fuse into a multi-dimensional shopping experience.

Shanghai-based Ele.me began to look into ways to team up with Watsons in March in terms of new retail. In July, the pair started pilots of online shops in the southern city of Guangzhou -- well in time before the Chinese annual shopping bonanza called double-11 on Nov. 11.

Watsons has already partnered with Alibaba's e-commerce platform Tmall and logistics arm Cainiao Network Technology to distribute ordered products to clients living within a three-kilometer radius from over 200 shops in just two hours. With Ele.me, the delivery time will shrink to less than an hour.

The food and beverages takeout firm is turning into an integral part of Alibaba's bigger picture for e-commerce future as the parent said early this month it will integrate reviews and listings platform Koubei and Ele.me into a new life services firm.

Editor: Emmi Laine