Alibaba to Triple Employees in Taiwan Office

HANGZHOU, Mar 25, 2009 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- Alibaba.com Limited (SEHK: 1688) is planning to triple employees in its Taiwai office within 2009, said Zhang Ziheng, the company's vice president for global sales.

Thus, the headcount in the business-to-business (B2B) platform operator's Taiwan office is expected to top 100. According to Alibaba they will take 2009 as the "investment year", said the vice president, adding that the company has already decided to spend USD 30 million on marketing advertising in the US and Europe in a bid to help its members sell products to those major destinations.

Alibaba had opened its office in Taiwan in July 2008 in order to serve its 40,000 Taiwan members and growing its business in Taiwan. More in the post "Alibaba.com opens Taiwan Office".

Alibaba.com Year 2008 Results Announced - shares decrease almost 10%

HONG KONG, March 19, 2009 /PRNewswire-Asia via COMTEX/ ----Alibaba.com Limited (HKSE: 1688) (HK.1688), the world's leading business-to-business e-commerce company, today announced its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2008.

Full Year 2008 Highlights

Total revenue of RMB3.0 billion in 2008, an increase of 39% as compared to 2007. EPS (diluted) was up 31% year-on-year to 26.71 Hong Kong cents and net income (profit attributable to equity owners) was up 25% year- on-year to RMB1.2 billion. Excluding the non-recurring interest income from our initial public offering over-subscription proceeds in 2007, net income was up by 95%.

The number of registered users and online storefronts on Alibaba.com's marketplaces increased by 10.5 million and 1.7 million, respectively, as buyers and sellers around the world saw the benefits of e-commerce to reduce costs and improve efficiency, especially during difficult economic times. New members signed up to our international marketplace in record numbers, with registered users growing by 3.5 million during the year to 7.9 million, up 80% year-on-year. Over one million new members joined our international marketplace during each of the third and fourth quarters of 2008, representing the biggest quarterly increases since Alibaba.com was founded.

We added over 126,000 paying members to our marketplaces in 2008, which exceeded the growth we had in any previous year. We saw a record increase of 12,192 Gold Supplier members in the fourth quarter, driven by the November 2008 launch of our Gold Supplier Starter Pack and an upgrade of our existing Gold Supplier service. These gains were made despite China's export sector experiencing its first negative growth in seven years during the quarter.

Thanks to the strong execution of our entire team and the relatively more robust China economy, our China marketplace contributed 36% of total revenue in 2008, compared to 28% in 2007.

Key Operating Data

As of December 31, 2008, our combined marketplaces had 38.1 million registered users, an increase of 38% year-on-year. We had 7.9 million registered users on our international marketplace and 30.2 million registered users on our China marketplace. In the fourth quarter of 2008, we added one million registered users to our international marketplace and 1.4 million registered users to our China marketplace.

As of December 31, 2008, the total number of storefronts on our marketplaces had grown to 4.6 million, an increase of 56% compared to 2007. Of this total, we had 970,000 storefronts on our international marketplace and 3.6 million storefronts on our China marketplace.

The number of paying members of our combined marketplaces had risen to 432,031 at the end of 2008, an increase of 41% year-on-year.

Citigroup review

“The company expects operating margin to be lower in 2009 compared to 2008,” Citigroup Inc. analyst Jason Brueschke wrote in a report yesterday. He cut his recommendation on Alibaba stock to “sell” from “hold,” and lowered his estimate for the company’s full-year profit this year to 561 million yuan from 785 million yuan.

J.P. Morgan review

Dick Wei, J.P. Morgan analyst, kept his "underweight" rating on the stock unchanged, saying the company might see a “good margin leverage” coming out of the macro downturn. “However, with the timing of demand recovery still uncertain, we believe share price lacks support at current valuation," he added.

J.P. Morgan had already shown their concern over 2009 estimates. Full story is here JPMorgan predicts that Alibaba operating profit margin to fall to 31% in 2009

2009 will be Year of Investment - David Wei

David Wei, CEO of Alibaba.com, cautioned investors as he said, "The risk of a further contraction in Chinese exports and a sustained period of lackluster growth still exists. However, we continue to be confident in China's economy, in e-commerce, in our products and in our people. In fact, we see the current global economic crisis as a great opportunity to help our SME customers move online, expand our market leadership and invest for growth so we emerge even stronger in the future. 2009 will be a year of investment and expansion for Alibaba.com as we stay focused on our customers and our goal of building the world's largest online community of buyers and suppliers."

Tradekey Review - All about Tradekey.com - A B2B Directory

TradeKey.com with an initial investment of US$100 million started in June 2005 by a Saudi Arabian IT Company named SISCOM. In just 4 years, Tradekey.com is considered as one of the world’s leading business-to-business directories. The main purpose of this online trading b2b directory is to match the requirements of international importers and exporters to advance their businesses.

With over 25 Million page views and 6 Million visitors per month, Tradekey.com has been successful in wining the trust of so many international traders. According to the current members counter on Tradekey.com, 2.6 million importers & exporters have registered so far.

Unlike other b2b websites, Tradekey.com is the only b2b directory with ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications to ensure that its users experience the same quality every time they use their services and data security for risk free business. Tradekey.com is the only b2b website after Alibaba.com with Google PageRank 7.

According to Alexa statistics, Tradekey.com falls in the range of b2b websites with traffic under 7 million visitors a month which includes ECVV.com, EC21.com, ECPlaza.com and other small scale business-to-business trade directories. So far Alibaba.com, GlobalSources.com and MadeinChina.com are taking the lead with an unmatched competition.

Other than International English, Tradekey.com is available in 3 other languages which include Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Spanish. Although these versions of Tradekey.com are machine translated but it clearly shows their long term vision to cater as much business audience as possible.

Tradekey Services

Tradekey.com offers different services to its members to not just help them promote their products and services but also helps them in creating a brand image. Like other B2B directories, Tradekey offers free as well as premium memberships for sellers and buyers.

In premium memberships they offer 2 packages, i.e. SilverKey & Goldkey. The main difference between different levels of memberships is their rankings on the listings. Goldkey results are displayed on top of Silverkey followed by free members’ products and offers.

Silverkey prices start with $369 and goes up to $2500 while Goldkey starts from $2500 and sky is the limit depending upon the nature of services required from Tradekey. Goldkey members are also offered personalized services with a dedicated sales & support team. Goldkey & Silverkey members can also place banners on homepage for certain time.

Tradekey.com also offers buyers consultancy services. They ask buyers just to enter their requirement with their contact information. Later they contact buyers with appropriate sell offers.

Tradekey.com also offers different types of partnership plans to market its services to international members. A brigade of affiliates & partners is working actively in China which has caused a big trouble to the competitors of Tradekey.com including Alibaba & GlobalSources. This review has already become long enough to bore you, please visit Tradekey affiliate plans review.

Alibaba's Jack Ma on hard times for China & 2 other video interviews by Financial Times

In his recent visit to America, Jack Ma gave interview to Financial Times.

Part 1: Jack Ma on hard times for China
Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba.com, the Chinese e-commerce company, says China's small and medium-sized companies are facing difficult times. He also discusses how his e-commerce site has plans to act as a channel of loans to banks.


Part 2: Jack Ma on Alibaba.com's global ambitions
Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba.com, tells Kathrin Hille his plans to transform his e-commerce site from being an online centre for Chinese companies to export their goods into a platform for small and medium-sized enterprises across the world to exchange their goods.


Part 3: Jack Ma says crisis cannot be solved by money
Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba.com, tells Kathrin Hille that he believes the role of shareholders and the capital market is often overrated, and at his company, shareholders come after customers and employees.


Summary of Jack Ma's interview can be read at: http://media.ft.com/cms/c6aba388-74a6-11db-bc76-0000779e2340.pdf

Alibaba’s Jack Ma Speech at Stanford University

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.com, recently visited USA in search of partners for the sake of business expansion. In his visit, he was alsinvited by Stanford University for a speech. Here are the highlights of his speech by Jefferson Chen, a 1st year Stanford GSB.

• A company’s balance sheet can only be fixed when it dies (i.e. there are ongoing ups and downs in a company’s history. The same for an individual life)
• Disasters always come the moment you start tsense success
• Chinese should use the Chinese way – imported ideas from the west might not work as well as you think (The world is changing – reversing positioning of China and the US in the past decade)
• MBA case studies never work in reality – HBS did a case study on Alibaba years agbut the company could barely recognize themselves in the case
• The purpose of this trip by the entire Alibaba management team is mainly “internal team building”
• Think, learn, innovate
• Visit Ebay, Google, MSFT, Starbucks, Yahoetc
• Looking for partners (making more sense for these big corps in the down turn – “back tbasics”)
• Recruiting from Silicon Valley (looking tadd 5,000 new positions in 2009, current employee base is 12,000) – best time tcompete for the best talents
• #1 priority for a company is NOT its shareholders, but its “CUSTOMERS”
• #2 priority for a company is its Employees; shareholder is only #3
• Most companies only focus on #s, not the vision or its customers and employees, hence they fail
• He personally thinks 2008 was the worst year and best year for Alibaba
• Sensed the financial crisis very early
• Did a lot of internal restructuring (downsize certain functions, preserve cash, etc) tbetter position in the downturn
• Hence now in a superior position vs. competitors
• Think 2009 will the best year for Alibaba
• Believe the darkest period has passed (Aug-Sept 2008), but the most difficult period has not (probably the next 3-5 years)
• Wants twrite a book on “How NOT to be big”
• Current users on Alibaba:
• 30 mm Chinese SMEs and 70 mm int’l SMEs
• 100mm+ users on taobao.com
• Taobao.com
• Overtakes Walmart global total volume in 10 years
• DESIGN FOR CONSUMERS
• Alibaba is a global company – just happen tbe started by Chinese
• “Forget” about your competitors, JUST focus on your CUSTOMERS
• Be yourself, be comfortable yourself
• Group dnot control anything at subs
• Subs fully run by their own CEOs
• NKPI on subs performance
• Group ONLY provides support, not overhead
• Work happily, live seriously

EC21.com Launches New Market Research Service - Korea Market Research

Seoul (Korea Newswire) March 3, 2009 -- EC21.com, one of the world's leading business-to-business (B2B) marketplace for global buyers and sellers, has introduced a new service, called Korea Market Research, which provides a web-based market research report for those who seek to start a new business in Korea.

The sole purpose of Korea Market Research service is to help foreign countries understand the Korean market environment, including factors influencing consumer lifestyle choices. Analyzing the market environment will be the first step and initial glimpse into the business market to determine the likelihood of success for the new business.

For those who seek to get into the market in Korea, EC21 has assembled a team of industry experts to launch the service which provides a report of market trends and must-know facts with local resource to help clients understand and develop their designated target market in Korea.

The report will give data on market size, import status of the designated market, a list of potential prospects, relevant trade fairs and exhibitions held in Korea. Information on market trends, market drivers and restraints will also be included. The readers will find a "bullet-point" conclusion delivering a snapshot of each specific market, for a quick understanding of the mechanisms, trends and issues that characterize the market.

"Our team has the unique expertise, vision and strategic perspectives to meet the needs of clients", said Tae-Sung Kim, the executive vice president of EC21. "In short, our goal is to provide key insights for our clients to get into the market successfully", he noted.

"When getting into the market, having detailed target market information can mean the difference between making informed business decisions and using basic estimation", said Tae-Sung Kim, "We hope that our new market research service will help for those who seek to export or start a new business in Korea create effective marketing strategies for reaching their potential market segment at an affordable price." he added.

How Korea Market Research works?

For More Information, Visit
http://www.ec21.com/html/services/KoreaMarketResearch/KoreaMarketResearch.html

Rumor: Alibaba is planning to launch Products Search Engine

163.com quoting an unnamed source reported that Alibaba Group is developing a product search engine to integrate all its resources. No comment on the news from Alibaba Group marketing executive is received yet.

Note: Alibaba had made several changes in its sevices later last year and early this year and encouraging it's members to post unlimited products.

360buy to Open Courier Subsidiary - Pay on Delivery

RMB 20 million are planned to investment by 360buy.com, an IT product business-to-consumer e-commerce site in the establishment of a Shanghai-based courier service subsidiary, reports Sina.

The business model presented so far will be like pay-on-delivery and has been planned to start its services in seven mainland cities of China including Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing. The service name is not publically annouced yet but it known internally as "Shanghai Yuan Mai Express".

On March 1, Alibaba Group's consumer-focused e-commerce site Taobao.com announced plans to launch a limited-time delivery service that cancels delivery fees for deliveries made later than three days after purchase.

Alibaba's Jack MA on the way to seek Parnters in US Market

Jack Ma has decided to move into the USA e-commerce market by launching an auction and online payment websites in USA. Group executives will make decision after visiting Silicon Valley and found an opportunity in meetings with prospective partners including Google, Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft.

Jack Ma discussed possibilities of partnerships with 10 senior managers of Silicon Valley in his recent two-weeks long trip to USA. The discussions include the possibility of bringing Alibaba's Alipay online payment system and Taobao auction site to the U.S., an Alibaba spokeswoman said Tuesday. Further she added that Alibaba has considered bringing its sites to the United States and Europe for two years.

Taobao to face challenge in USA

A Taobao venture in the United States would compete with eBay and face challenges the U.S. company itself succumbed to after setting up its own site in China.
By taking business steps like eliminating user fees and offering mor localized feel to its users, Taobao has already defeated eBay in China. According to iResearch analyst, Zhang Yanping, Taobao holds over 80 percent of China's consumer-to-consumer e-commerce market similar to the position eBay holds in United States.

"If Taobao wants to enter America, then it first faces a company that is similar to a monopoly," Zhang said.

"Taobao's brand and quality may be very well known in China, but if it wants to develop abroad then it would have to build these things from the beginning," she said.

Transaction volume on Taobao is almost doubled with registered users rose upto 98 million in 2008. Makeup and mobile phones were some of the most popular items that were traded on Taobao.

Payment service Alipay, launched one year after Taobao in 2004, now has 100 million users in a country where credit cards are rare and many online shoppers pay using cash-on-delivery.

Entering into American market can be a tough challenge for Alibaba as it is an old company now and almost every competitor has invested a lot of time in predicting the moves of Jack Ma. Only the time can tell how much Jack Ma has studied other markets.

Alibaba's Alipay Partnered with Tenso Logistics

Alipay, an online payment tool by Alibaba Group is now partnered with Tenso, the logistics subsidiary of Japanese company Netprice, to provide international logistics to Alipay users on March 3 2009. Alipay users will have to submit a delivery address in Japanese after registering with Tenso.

Alipay signed an agreement in September 2007 to provide online payment to Chinese users of Nissen e-commerce site Jshoppers. Alipay had 130 million registered users by late 2008, said the report.