[ad_1]
Alibaba Group Chairman Michael Evans said the company will move its Tmall e-commerce site to Europe.
Chesnot | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Paris – Ali Baba It will expand one of China’s major e-commerce sites into Europe, the company’s chairman said Thursday, in a significant step in the Chinese tech giant’s international push.
The announcement comes just two months after Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, announced plans to split its business into six units, a move aimed at giving each unit more autonomy and faster decision-making powers.
Michael Evans, head of Alibaba, said the company will bring one of the Chinese e-commerce services Tmall to Europe.
“So you’ll see something called our Tmall in China become Tmall in Europe, which means we’ll serve local brands and local consumers in the local market,” Evans said at the Viva Tech conference in Paris, France.
Evans revealed that the company is currently implementing a pilot project in Spain, which will “expand across Europe.”
In China, Tmall is Alibaba’s website and app that focuses largely on selling foreign brands to Chinese consumers.
The launch of Tmall in Europe reflects a major shift in Alibaba’s strategy in international e-commerce operations.
While Alibaba’s international push into online shopping is nothing new, it has focused on a site called AliExpress in Europe. However, AliExpress does have items shipped from China to Europe. Shipping times are often long even though products may be cheaper than competing products.
However, Evans’ suggestion is for Tmall to focus in Europe on selling local brands to local shoppers. It is unclear if this will be in any way integrated with AliExpress.
One of Alibaba’s six independent businesses is called the Taobao Tmall Commerce Group which focuses on China’s two major e-commerce producers. But it also has a global digital commerce unit focused on driving e-commerce for Alibaba overseas.
“Europe is a top priority for all companies that have an international component. So by that I mean the international trade business, the cloud business, the logistics business in particular,” Evans said.
[ad_2]
