Alibaba & Softbank partner to develop clothing online market

Alibaba, a widely reputed and well known Chinese business-to-business (B2B) company operating through online media, has formed a joint venture with Softbank of Japan to develop e-commerce market in the country.

A branch of Alibaba was already setup in Japan last November but it was only this year that a joint venture with Sofbank could materialize.

While Alibaba would make an initial investment of US $20 million and hold 35 percent stake in the joint-venture, Softbank would claim a 65 percent share.

Garment enterprises in the country are looking forward to this joint venture as a unique advantage in developing e-commerce. Most of them believe that the entry of Alibaba.com into Japanese market would bring about major changes in the existing apparel-e-commerce business.

The new company will take over operations of the existing Japanese-language website of Alibaba.com linking all the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Japan with buyers and suppliers around the world.

As such, Alibaba.com Japan will aim at catering to Japanese business enterprises with a complete database of suppliers available online from China and around the world. Besides, this joint venture will also help Alibaba.com, Japan to localize its contents and upgrade its services to improve the user experience for Japanese SMEs.

Expert analysis show that Japan has more than 4 million SMEs which together account for 25 percent of the country’s export value and about 63 percent of its import value. Moreover, since 2006, China has replaced US to become the largest trading partner of Japan and with this recent endeavor taken by Alibaba and Softbank, not only will bilateral trade get enhanced further, it will also open up new trade channels worldwide.