Alibaba Repositions AliExpress as "International Taobao"
Tencent Tech, 3/26/13
Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group's international wholesale marketplace AliExpress announced on March 26 that it will shift its focus from online international wholesale to overseas shopping, with the goal of developing a platform similar to Alibaba's C2C & B2C e-commerce site Taobao, but facing buyers in markets outside Mainland China.
AliExpress spokesperson Shen Difan said that Taobao merchants now make up the mainstay of merchants on the AliExpress platform. AliExpress will focus on personal consumers in developing markets including Russia, India, and Brazil. As of mid-March, AliExpress had more than 110,000 merchants on its platform, offering over 50 mln items for sale — year-on-year increases of 300% and 500%, respectively. More than 95% of daily new AliExpress merchants are Taobao merchants. In addition to its strategic shift, AliExpress will broaden its product offerings, expanding from its earlier focus on 3C items to include apparel, jewelry, home decorations, and other product categories.
In January 2013, AliExpress saw a 420% YoY growth in gross merchandise volume (GMV) over January 2012, the company says. AliExpress received more orders in the month of December 2012 than for the entirety of 2010, its first year of operations. AliExpress now receives more than 38 mln PVs per day from overseas vendors, and has enabled transactions in more than 220 countries and regions. Developing markets in Russia, India, Brazil, and Eastern European countries have shown the fastest growth in transactions to date, with Russia surpassing the United States and United Kingdom to become the country responsible for the greatest number of transactions. 65% of customers using the AliExpress platform are individual consumers; the remaining 35% are primarily engaged in small-scale wholesaling.
Keywords: strategy Shen Difan statistics Internet traffic GMV e-commerce Internet overseas B2C C2C AliExpress Alibaba Group
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