When Etao made its first dubut in late last year, Taobao positioned and touted the service as a price engine for online buyers.
Taobao spun off Etao as an independent company in an aim to serve the best interests of online hunters by helping them find the best deal online through price comparison and more. In this month, Alibaba announced investing US$ 157 million (RMB 1 billion) into the Taobao portfolio, aiming to help boosting 3rd party ecommerce sites’ online exposure and traffic.
More and more indie designers are emerging in China and they need a place to connect them with potential buyers.
Founded by media veteran Zhao Jinwen, Wowsai is positioned to be such a platform for indie designers and people who prefer quality product…
China has no equivalent of a nationwide big-box retailer like Wal-Mart, instead it has e-commerce. Hurst Lin, general partner at venture capital firm DCM, says that amid all the hype for e-commerce, the untold story is the role it plays in China’s lesser-tier cities:
“E-commerce plays the role of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart started off saying, ‘I don’t want to go to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, because they already have JC Penny, K-Mart, Macy’s. I want to go the rural areas, towns with a population of no greater than 10,000.’ So Wal-Mart put outlets in each and every Smalltown, America. And they end up being the biggest retailer in the world.
And I think no one is doing that [in China]. Obviously, Wal-Mart itself is trying, but it has not done that well, because the government is on their ass. And also, they cannot build fast enough to keep up with the consumer. So the thing that fills the gap is e-commerce.
Within 21 minutes, Taobao had already processed over 200 million Yuan ($31.5 million) in purchases.
The sudden overload of shoppers actually crashed their payment system for about an hour and a half, according to Taobao’s Weibo.
Lashou, one of China’s leading daily-deal sites, has filed for IPO on the heels of Groupon’s successful debut. Lashou aims to list on Monday, November 14.
Lashou, which recorded a net loss of $89.7 in the first nine months of 2011, aims to raise $80 million. To shore up investor confidence, investors and executives pledged to buy shares at the issue price, which is listed a $13-15 in the roadshow presentation.
Nie Linhai, deputy commercial counselor of the ministry’s Department of Electronic Commerce and Informatization, said the ministry “suspect Taobao Mall may have held a monopoly”, the report said.
Anyone into competition law might realize that the quote makes no sense. What’s actually going on here is that the e-commerce giant is being accused of abusing its dominant market position (Taobao might host as much as 70+% of online retail), which is one kind of monopolistic conduct prohibited under China’s Anti-monopoly Law.
Alibaba Group, China’s e-commerce giant, said today that it plans to spin off its Juhuasuan daily deal service from its online shopping site Taobao.com.
The announcement may be a prelude to Alibaba’s aggressive expansion in China’s daily-deal market, which reached 42.2 million users in the first half of 2011.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group said today that it will invest 1.8 billion yuan to help small- and medium-size merchants to grow their business, in an effort to put an end to the online protest that has disrupted Taobao Mall over the past week.
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There is a sharp contradiction in the internet media of China. While on one hand, the Chinese government is attempting to tighten the noose of censorship on the internet community of China, on the other hand there are a growing number of Chinese intern…
