The brands have fallen victim to a wave of purchase-and-return abuse linked to Hangzhou’s booming livestreaming industry.The brands have fallen victim to a wave of purchase-and-return abuse linked to Hangzhou’s booming livestreaming industry.
SHANGHAI — Saint Laurent and Miu Miu, both popular in China, have quietly banned shoppers from several Hangzhou subdistricts on their official stores on Tmall, the Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform, after falling victim to a wave of purchase-and-return abuse linked to the city’s booming livestreaming economy.
But both brands quickly lifted the bans on Monday since the news was reported by local media a day prior.
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The bans, first reported by the state-owned local outlet Pengpai, targeted addresses within Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan District’s Yingfeng Subdistrict, Binjiang District’s Xixing Subdistrict and Shangcheng District’s Sijiqing Subdistrict, all of which are known as vibrant influencer hubs where livestreaming companies, individual influencers and talent agencies are based.
When delivery addresses were entered from several of the banned subdistricts on Saint Laurent‘s and Miu Miu‘s official stores, users were met with a message that read, “The item you are trying to purchase is not available for delivery to your region, and cannot be purchased at this time.”
The restrictions were also observed at several other popular brands, such as Songmont on Tmall, and Bottega Veneta on JD.com, China‘s other major e-commerce platform.
Pengpai verified the Saint Laurent ban by testing more than 20 addresses within the affected subdistrict, spanning residential compounds, government offices, schools, hospitals and commercial buildings. Switching the delivery address to other Hangzhou districts immediately restored normal ordering.
Based on platform regulations, brands can blacklist users, but new accounts can be easily created, which explains the luxury brand’s strategy to impose a sweeping ban on an entire block within the municipality.
Luxury brands’ frustration with e-commerce reflects a broader trend in China. By taking advantage of Chinese e-tailers’ seven-day free shipping and returns policy and backed by China’s robust delivery system, online return rates spiked 10 percent in 2025 to reach as high as 60 percent for womenswear and 40 percent for menswear, according to the report ”2025 Chinese livestreaming e-commerce data analysis” published by 100EC, a Hangzhou-based research firm.
After the story broke over the weekend, Saint Laurent’s Tmall flagship store restored purchasing access for consumers in the affected subdistricts by Monday.
Also on Monday, Chinese netizens discovered that Miu Miu had implemented similar restrictions on an even broader scale.
WWD confirmed the ban Monday morning via an order page for a 19,300 renminbi handbag returning purchase errors across several addresses in the restricted subdistricts. By Monday afternoon, Miu Miu had also lifted its ban.
Alibaba, Miu Miu and Saint Laurent did not respond to requests for comment.
The restrictions drew further scrutiny when the local media platform Jiemian News reported that Miu Miu’s geographic blacklist had extended well beyond Hangzhou.
Other smaller Chinese hubs, including Zhongshan and Dongguan in Guangdong province, and Tongxiang in Zhejiang, were also subject to Miu MIu’s purchasing restrictions. However, the bans appear to have been lifted at the time of publication.
Like Hangzhou, these cities are home to e-commerce hubs and small garment factories that often engage in the act of copycat pattern-making based on trending luxury pieces — sometimes returning them after the copy is made — according to local media reports.
The news quickly sparked conversation online — Jiemian published an op-ed on Monday acknowledging the commercial logic behind the brand’s decisions.
“From the brands’ perspective, such measures may represent a preemptive move to protect their commercial interests…since high return rates directly undermine inventory turnover and brand premium,” Jiemian wrote in the op-ed. “Blacklisting an entire high-risk area wholesale is the lowest-cost damage-control solution available — why go to the trouble of identifying individual bad actors when you can simply cut off the entire ‘infected’ zone?” asked the piece.
However, the piece also argued that such selective geographical restrictions, or “geographic discrimination,” may constitute an infringement on consumers’ right to fair trade. “By targeting geography rather than individuals, brands are in effect converting the misconduct of a minority into a presumption of guilt applied to all residents,” the Jiemian op-ed wrote, noting that e-commerce platforms should also bear responsibility in these instances as “architects of transaction rules and the holders of centralized data.”
The surge in online return rates has also become an environmental issue in the market.
To raise awareness, this April, American outdoor brand Patagonia introduced a policy on Chinese e-commerce platforms requiring shoppers to pay 15 renminbi, or around $2, for their first item and 5 renminbi, or 70 cents, for each additional item at checkout. The fees will be fully refunded if nothing is returned, and returned items will incur additional shipping charges.
The policy, which drew criticism on Chinese social media, was a direct response to the company’s experience during last year’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, when Patagonia shipped 16,179 packages and received 11,277 returns, which meant that its return rate reached nearly 70 percent.
