Alibaba‘s Tmall Global plans to open six new Tmall procurement centers across the world to help overseas vendors capture Chinese consumers’ booming appetite for newer and better imported goods.
The Tmall procurement centers will be established in Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, as well as in North America, Europe and Oceania, although no time frame has been given.
“This year, we are committed to offer our overseas merchants more personalized and customized solutions so they can receive faster and more direct assistance from the platform, which enable them to accelerate their growth in China.”
– Jet Jing, Tmall Global President
China is currently the world’s second-largest consumer market, following the US, according to Boston Consulting Group. The research consultancy notes that China will see nearly $2 trillion in new consumption by 2021, which means the country will continue to be a top destination for consumer companies for the foreseeable future.
It also projects China’s e-commerce cross-border trade to more than double to RMB 620 billion ($98 billion) in gross merchandise volume by 2019, from RMB 305.5 billion in 2016.
Tmall Global, which already offers more than 18,000 brands from 74 countries and regions, is committed to attract even more brands and vendors across the world to sell their goods into China in the coming year
“We must discover new categories and find new products so Chinese consumers can find items that are best suited to their needs”
– Alvin Liu, Global General Manager, Tmall
To achieve these goals, Tmall Global pledged to boost the traceability of items sold on the platform. By using blockchain technology, consumers will be able to easily track their orders throughout every stage of the delivery process, starting from the factory at the country of origin.
Tmall want to expedite the expansion of overseas fulfillment centers so smaller foreign brands can introduce their products to the Chinese market more quickly. Based on customer feedback and transaction information, these brands will be able to adjust their export strategy to better meet the demands of Chinese consumers if needed.
The platform will also increase the use of bonded warehouses (a secure place where imported goods can be stored without import duties until the items are dispatched) to reduce the cost for vendors that are looking to penetrate the Chinese market.
2 Responses
We are the oldest established medicated oil and balm manufacturing Co in Singapore. Our products are much sought after by China tourists whenever they visit Singapore. We would like to reach the China market through TMall. Would appreciate your kind assistance and guidance on how we can get started.
Thank you
There simply isn’t a viable way for eBay to pull this off in-house. $AMZ has invested billions of dollars and many years into their sophisticated fulfillment and logistics operations. Ebay doesn’t have the people, process, technology, nor facilities to make #FBE happen internally.
My guess is Pitney Bowes is on the short-list for eBay to ‘partner’ with since they handle GSP and offer fulfillment services as well, but I would estimate other fulfillment outfits and 3PLs working on RFQs (or soon will be).
Mimicking Amazon’s catalog listing format and buy-box is one thing, attempting to replicate their real-world, tangible, material, brick-and-mortar fulfillment centers and operations is another thing entirely. It’s just not viable to pull off organically in-house — they’ll have to go outside and find a business partner.
The other option is for eBay to make another acquisition a-la GSI Commerce but with a greater network footprint and otherwise suited for smaller sellers. eBay could conceivably have everything needed to pull off FBE in the US by picking up a company that can successfully roll-out fulfillment across the US.
That certainly could happen, however, it doesn’t jive with some of the very recent messaging put out from eBay’s CPO a couple weeks ago touting that, “we (eBay) pay zero dollars a month in rent for fulfillment, warehouses, and logistics infrastructure.”