US based online retail giant Amazon has opened a new shop rival Alibaba’s Tmall marketplace in China. The store will be offering footwear for women, food, toys, kitchenware as it is looking forward to expand in the lucrative Chinese market.
Amazon had also launched the a shop for its Kindle e-book reader on Tmall in 2014 has had a small presence in the country since 2011. The Tmall is operates about half of all the Chinese business to business transactions. Yang Xiao of e-commerce service provider HC International said, “China’s e-commerce industry is fast-growing and nobody wants to miss it”.
Tmall.com is is like a marketplace for the online retailers and offers payment processing services for them but does not sell its own products. Amazon had bought Joyo.com which is a Chinese music, books and video retailer in 2004 and then rebranded the company as Amazon.cn in 2011. The new stores presence in Tmall presents a valuable medium to reach the Chinese consumers. Even other retailers like Burberry, Inditex and Asos that owns the Zara chain have also set up a shop in Tmall.
On the other hand Alibaba and Amazon are rivals. A spokesperson from Alibaba said that the presence of Amazon in the Alibaba ecosystem will broaden the selection of products and improve the shopping experience.
Photo Credits: NDTV
