Alibaba’s online mall chief wants to double sales in three years by selling more American cherries and Australian baby formula
- To achieve its goals, Tmall must incubate another 100 new brands that do annual business of 1 billion yuan apiece
One of Jack Ma’s closest lieutenants just laid down a plethora of ambitious goals for Alibaba Group Holding.
Jiang Fan, who runs the company’s two biggest e-commerce businesses, wants to double transaction volumes on its Tmall service in three years. Alibaba does not disclose dealings over the platform, which helps brands and companies sell goods to 600 million-plus buyers, but it is one of the single largest online retailers in China’s US$1 trillion e-commerce arena.
China’s largest company, which also operates Taobao Marketplace for smaller merchants, is trying to revive growth as its home economy decelerates. Beyond investing in cloud computing services and making inroads into international markets such as Southeast Asia, Alibaba is also intent on becoming the window through which brands from Valentino to L’Oreal sell stuff to an increasingly affluent middle class. Alibaba, JD.com and other Chinese platforms are also hawking everything from American cherries to Australian baby milk formula.
Shares in the company rose 1.2 per cent in New York, their biggest gain in more than a week, while the market stood little changed.
To achieve its goals, Tmall must incubate another 100 new brands that do annual business of 1 billion yuan apiece, Jiang said in a statement. The service has drawn more than 100 million new buyers over the past year alone, a pace that will be sustained, he added.