Community News

Why Alibaba Holds the Key to a Global Recovery from COVID-19

Great overview of an article in The Information ($) by Hendrick Laubscher, one of GELF’s favorite global ecommerce thought leaders.

A recovery in Chinese consumption will be crucial, not only to China but also to other countries that are now grappling with the economic impact from the escalating pandemic. And Alibaba is an important sales channel for global companies tapping Chinese demand.

Major American brands such as Nike, Gap and Apple all operate their stores on Alibaba’s Tmall online marketplace in China. If the pandemic severely hurts demand in the U.S., Japan and Europe, global businesses may have to rely even more on the Chinese market.

“Alibaba is a key part of the machinery that makes China’s economy hum,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of consultancy BDA China and author of a book about Alibaba. “The economic impact from the outbreak has really hit small and medium-size businesses hard. And those businesses are the lifeblood of Alibaba.”

Yahweh Xu, a manager at Buy Quickly E-Commerce, a Shanghai-based company that helps international fashion brands launch their online stores on Alibaba’s Tmall, was recently contacted by five European fashion brands that urgently wanted to open their Tmall stores in China, where they currently have little presence. The brands are desperate because their sales in Europe and other major markets are collapsing because of the pandemic, Xu said. “Some brands even asked me if I could help them launch their Chinese online businesses in two days.”

Thanks for the heads up Hendrick! Please stay connected with the GELF community by joining us at GELF’s new podcast, The Global E-Commerce Tech Talks …

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *