At least since its brilliant IPO on September 19, 2014, Alibaba has been on everyone’s lips in Germany, too. Until now, the leading German media had mainly associated the Hangzhou-based company with product counterfeits and cheap goods from the Far East.
The story of Jack Ma is one of the most exciting stories to come out of modern China: At the end of the 1990s, the English teacher was still looking for a job. The founding of Alibaba made him a billionaire almost overnight and a role model for countless small business owners. The success of Jack Ma’s company is based on the popularity of the two e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall. On both websites, retailers can put items online to sell. While opening a Taobao store only requires an address, cell phone number, and ID card number, Tmall requires a fee of RMB 150,000 (approx. 21,300 euros) – an amount that many small businesses cannot afford.
Consequently, Taobao is mostly made up of small businesses that are allowed to market their products quickly and unbureaucratically via the platform. Some of the retailers active there primarily target local customers, while others sell their products primarily internationally. With more than 800 million products listed, Taobao is one of the ten most visited websites in the world according to Alexa – even though Taobao.com is only available in Chinese after more than eleven years.
“Taobao Agents” enable trade with Chinese small businesses
The majority of traders active on Taobao still have neither sufficient English skills nor experience with international transport and customs fees. Anyone who wants to shop on Taobao from Germany is therefore dependent on intermediaries who establish contact between small businesses active on the Chinese platform and international buyers. With names like Alibaba and Taobao, it is becoming increasingly easier to make money in the USA and Europe, and so some try to give intermediaries operating from Hong Kong or Macau the false impression that they are consultants authorized by Alibaba.
In contrast to Taobao, Tmall features the online shops of numerous international corporations, such as Nike, Samsung, and L’Oréal. Numerous Chinese companies, such as Lenovo, Haier, and smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi, have also opened an accounts on Tmall in recent years. The e-commerce platform was initially launched in April 2008 under the name “Taobao Mall” and changed its name to Tmall in 2010.
Since 2011, the Alibaba offshoot has been working hard to improve its image as a high-end platform by charging higher usage fees for online shop operators and running targeted advertising campaigns. While foreign companies previously had to rely on Chinese partners to open a Tmall store, Alibaba has been using Tmall Global since 2014 to directly target overseas producers who intend to sell high-quality products to customers with high purchasing power within China.
“Internet car” and entry into Snapchat
Despite scandals about product piracy and defects in cheap goods, Alibaba is also continuing to make inroads in Germany. With its entry into the American start-up company Snapchat and its plan to develop an “Internet car”, the online platform is making headlines again these days.
Intermediaries and communication agencies who recognize the signs of the times and now get in touch with the companies represented on Taobao and Tmall and prepare them for the European market can still hope for good profits. In recent years, skepticism towards the company has increasingly given way to admiration for company founder Jack Ma and his successes