Photo: Screenshot of the flagship store of Russia's State Hermitage Museum on Tmall

Chinese netizens gave a round of applause after Russia's State Hermitage Museum, one of the four largest museums in the world, opened its flagship store on Tmall, an e-commerce platform under Alibaba Group, on Sunday.

Many netizens believe that the online store model can help museums reduce losses during the pandemic, which is worth promoting.

"The State Hermitage Museum's flagship shop offers me more choices of shopping online while quarantining at home," one Chinese netizen posted on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

According to a report by Chinese news site The Paper, the State Hermitage Museum has cooperated with 18 Chinese brands to design and produce 50 cross-border cultural and creative products, including an IP necklace themed "Peacock Clock" which is one of the most well-known treasures in the museum.

The State Hermitage Museum followed the lead of some 27 other museums including the Palace Museum, the Summer Palace, the National Museum of China, the British Museum in the UK and Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US, which have already opened their official online stores on Tmall.

Some Chinese netizens have high expectations that the Louvre Museum in France will follow suit.

"It would be very interesting for famous museums to cooperate with each other to produce some interesting cultural products to sell online," one Chinese netizen wrote on Weibo.

The British Museum, as the first overseas museum to open an online store on Tmall, has seen an increase of 2.5 times in its annual sales. All the products were sold out within two weeks of opening its Tmall flagship store on July 1, 2018, The Paper reported.

"Cultural and creative works have already become an ideal way to make the national treasure element come 'alive' among young people. Traditional treasures could gain more young fans with this innovation," Wang Fei, an employee of Tmall, told The Paper.