An Alibaba new local to global service is aiming to support small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) expansion efforts, as reported today by The Financial Times.
Alibaba are introducing a new initiative in an ongoing bid to fulfil their ‘global dream,’ their mission to trade globally, which was one of their founding goals.
This year marks the beginning of the new strategy which saw merchants from four global markets joining the initiative. The local to global programme saw Alibaba’s markerplace, AliExpress inviting SMBs’ from overseas to join the platform. Sellers from Russia, Turkey, Italy and Spain are now selling products to other countries via AliExpress.
“This year is the first year for our ‘local to global’ strategy. This strategy is intimately connected to Alibaba’s broader globalisation strategy”
– Trudy Dai, president, Alibaba’s wholesale marketplaces division
Alibaba’s efforts to support sellers international footprint see the marketplace using a variety of localisation strategies which focus on building the customer base.
Earlier this year, online Turkish retailer Trendyol launched a store on AliExpress, following Alibaba’s investment in Trendyol last year.
Last year saw AliExpress working with Moscow’s sovereign wealth fund and Kremlin-friendly oligarch Alisher Usmanov to establish their presence in Russia. This involved Mail.ru, a local internet company controlled by Alisher, with about 97m active users boosting AliExpress’ Russian customer base.
