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SCMP Reporter

Mainland mail-order giant Mecox Lane has officially launched its on-line shopping network.

 The portal, M18.com aimed to attract a large slice of the 800 million yuan (about HK$748.56 million) that would be spent on e-commerce transactions in the mainland this year, Mecox Lane chairman Andrew Tsuei said at yesterday's launch.

 Mr Tsuei said that M18.com would build on Mecox Lane's mail-order product delivery network to expand its on-line capability.

  'We are an experienced retail company and already have a direct sales network,' he said.

 'We are confident we will become the largest on-line shopping mall in China.'  Mecox Lane was established in 1996 as the first foreign-invested mail-order company to receive central government approval.

 The company claims customers in 2.5 million homes throughout the country, with annual sales exceeding 60 million yuan.

  Mr Tsuei said M18.com was well positioned to capitalise on Mecox Lane's existing system of product-flow control and order fulfilment, since the back-end operational requirements of mail-order commerce were similar to that of an e-commerce business.

 He also said initial reaction to the Web site had been favourable during a pre-launch earlier this month in Beijing, Guangzhou, Urumuqi, Wuhan, Chengdu and Lhasa, with on-line daily page view reaching a high of 826,000 and first-week sales topping 1.28 million yuan.

 M18.com expects to expand its e-commerce network to 10 other cities in the coming months.

 Mr Tsuei acknowledged that more needed to be done before personal credit was used by on-line customers. Security remained a key concern, with the vast majority of customers unwilling to disclose their card numbers to e-commerce providers, he said.

 During its pre-launch, only 5 per cent of M18.com's sales were paid for by credit cards.

 The rest continued to use cash-on-delivery, Mr Tsuei said.

  To develop its e-commerce project, Mecox Lane raised US$13 million from venture-capital funds, including Warburg Pincus, iVentures, and South East Asia Investment.



Mecox wired to sell on-line