Taobao
Brief introduction
Taobao is a shopping marketplace for consumers in China. Founded by parent Alibaba Group, it facilitates transactions between individual consumers and a wide range of sellers such as retailers, wholesalers, and other individuals. Similar to eBay, sellers are able to post new and used goods for sale on the Taobao marketplace either through a fixed price or negotiated sale or by auction.
Primary competitors include eBay, amazon.cn, paipai.com, yet reports have shown that Taobao has over 65% of the auction market and is growing.
www.taobao.com
Company: Alibaba Inc.
Private or public: Public
Address: No. 478 Wenshan Road Hangzhou city P.R.C
Contact information: Tel: 0571-26888888 Fax: 0571-88157868
User base: 200 million
Revenue: Break even[1]
Market share: 86%[2]
Users number Growth rate:77%
Competition: Dangdang.com, ebay.cn, amazon.cn
Relevant news
Alibaba Inc invested 5 billion RMB to Taobao.com[3]
Taobao, China’s largest consumer e-commerce company, today announced that its parent company, Alibaba Group, will invest RMB5 billion (US$732 million) over the next five years to further strengthen the Taobao marketplace (www.taobao.com) as the shopping destination of choice for Chinese consumers. The investment will be used for building a world-leading platform for merchants and providing the best online shopping experience for consumers. In addition, Taobao will continue to offer its services for free to buyers and individual sellers.
Alibaba, Taobao join hands to boost market share[4]
E-commerce giant Alibaba.com plans to encourage more users to sell products through the online auction site Taobao.com to expand their presence in the domestic marketplace.
David Wei, chief executive, Alibaba.com, said the business to business (B2B) website plans to break up the boundaries between Alibaba.com and Taobao.com to enable Taobao users to get stocks directly from the Alibaba platform.
[1] Taobao currently doesn’t make a profit, since they don’t charge commission to sellers and all income comes from advertising.
[2] According to http://www.techweb.com.cn/news/2009-01-20/385096.shtml
[3] http://press-releases.techwhack.com/27473-taobao
[4] According to http://www.china.org.cn/business/2009-09/15/content_18525728.htm
with their move to Japan and joint business with Yahoo, Taobao can then prepare their move to the west. that’s just huge
Yes, Taobao is going abroad, Taobao Japan was just launched, Alipay is actively expanding globally, this will be huge.
taobao agent in China
taobaomaster07@hotmail.com