Alibaba Seeks To Attract International Brands Via English Tmall Portal

Tmall

To bring the number of global brands to 40,000 over the three years to come, Alibaba rolled out a merchant-focused English-language website for its Tmall Global marketplace. The Chinese eCommerce firm said it aims to make Tmall Global more accessible and attractive to niche brands, as well as brands of a small or medium size, from other nations, Reuters reported.

Tmall Global Deputy General Manager Yi Qian said, according to the report, “We believe the launch of this English-language website will expedite the process for brands and merchants to introduce their products to Chinese consumers.” At first, brands were able to connect with Alibaba primarily via its website in the Chinese language, personal introductions or trade shows.

Tmall Global, which is an extension of the Tmall marketplace from Alibaba, was rolled out in 2014. It has brands from other countries aiming to sell to consumers in China. The portal in the English language that will help merchants with tasks like opening Tmall Global shops will also reportedly be available in additional languages like Japanese and Spanish, per the report.

The news comes as Jiang Fan wants to increase transaction volume by two times in three years with ambitious aims for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Fan, who is one of Jack Ma’s closest lieutenants, runs the two largest eCommerce businesses for the company.

Jiang said, according to reports in April, “We’ll bring a new wave of user benefits, and catch a rising tide of growth.” The executive added that Tmall responsibility comes after he ran Taobao for more than a year. To attain its aims, according to the report at the time, Tmall has to incubate 100 more brands with an annual business of 1 billion yuan each.

The offering, however, had brought in over 100 million new buyers during the past year per the report, which is a clip that Jiang indicated would continue.