Alibaba Expands Cross-Border E-Commerce Initiatives

A total of 11 countries, including United States, will launch country pavilions on Tmall Global, an extension of China’s largest third-party B2C platform for brands and retailers.

BEIJING — Alibaba Group announced Wednesday an expansion of its cross-border e-commerce initiatives, including the launch of 11 official country pavilions on its Tmall Global platform and cooperative partnerships between Juhuasuan, Alibaba’s group-buying platform, and 26 foreign embassies in China.

A total of 11 countries, including United States, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, France, Britain, Spain, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Turkey will launch country pavilions on Tmall Global, an extension of Tmall.com China’s largest third-party B2C platform for brands and retailers. These country pavilions are curated online verticals aimed at providing Chinese consumers with a one-stop shop for popular products from a particular country and other travel and cultural information. Brands already on Tmall.com and Tmall Global can opt to join their originating country’s pavilion.

In May, Korea was the first country to launch a country pavilion ( http://korea.tmall.com ) on Tmall.com, allowing small-medium Korean enterprises to sell authentic products such as cosmetics and apparel directly to Chinese consumers.

By cooperating with various governments and official trade agencies and utilizing Cainiao’s, Alibaba Group’s logistics affiliate’s, extensive logistics network, Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms are able to help small businesses anywhere sell high-quality products directly into China. As a pioneer of large-scale cross-border e-commerce, Alibaba not only lowers trade barriers for those looking to sell into China, but also meets the needs of China’s rising middle class consumers who are increasingly looking for high quality, imported products.

Juhuasuan, a leading Chinese group-buying e-commerce platform under Alibaba Group, also announced today it has reached cooperative partnerships with embassies of 26 countries to collaborate on marketing and promotion of those countries’ products on the Juhuasuan platform. The countries involved are the United States, Canada, Russia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Australia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Greece, Mexico, Singapore, Finland, Indonesia, Norway, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Nepal, Israel, South Africa, and Malaysia.

“Alibaba Group has been incubating this country pavilion project for some time now. Today, these 11 pavilions are the first fruit of this ongoing project to make global trade easier. Alibaba Group has signed agreements with various foreign countries to bring products from small-medium-enterprises to the Chinese market and offer consumers in China authentic products through Tmall Global and Juhuasuan,” said Jeff Zhang, president of China retail marketplaces for Alibaba Group.

According to a recently released report on cross-border e-commerce by Accenture, by 2020, China is expected to become the world's biggest cross-border B2C market.

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