We have noticed that a lot has been going on at Alibaba ever since the former CEO and Founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, made a public appearance in China after being away from the country since last 11-12 months. Since then, Alibaba has decided that they will split into six different units and we have also heard that their logistics firm is considering releasing an IPO which will be a great thing as well. It is also known that Alibaba has decided to split so as to “unlock investor potential” which means they want more funding and want their other business units to be profitable as well.
Now, there is a new report from Alibaba which reveals that they are launching a local e-commerce site in Europe which will be same as their Chinese e-commerce site. President of Alibaba, Michael Evans, says that Tmall will come to Europe but it will sell local brands to the locals instead of selling Chinese brands to the people of Europe. In a press conference, Evans said that “So you will see something called Tmall which we have in China, become Tmall in Europe, which means we will serve local brands and local consumers in the local market,”
Currently, Tmall is being tested by Alibaba in Spain and the pilot project will “expand across Europe” soon as per the Alibaba President. He added that “Europe is a top priority for all of the businesses that have an international component. So by that, I mean, the international commerce businesses, the cloud business, the logistics business in particular.” If you are aware about Alibaba’s business in Europe, it already runs its e-commerce site named AliExpress which is a global version of its Chinese site. However, with its European site, it looks like Alibaba will only sell European products to the people of Europe instead of AliExpress’ international catalog of products. AliExpress also ships products from China to Europe which takes time so they will look to have their warehouses in Europe to reduce shipping times to a great extent as well. At the moment, Tmall is an app that sells foreign-branded products to Chinese customers.
