Founded in 2010 by Alibaba Group to enable Chinese companies and individual to sell internationally, AliExpress has become one of the most patronized ecommerce sites as at today. AliExpress is the brainchild of Jack Ma, the former English teacher who founded the Alibaba Group.
Based in Hangzhou, Alibaba Group which own AliExpress is a huge Chinese ecommerce company that has been leading their domestic B2C market. Already famous for their international B2B platform Alibaba.com, it recently achieved true worldwide recognition when it launched the largest ever IPO in New York City in September 2014.
AliExpress as a B2C ecommerce website provides an opportunity to Chinese individuals and companies to sell their products directly to foreign consumers. Many consumers from different countries patronize the site. Brazil has the highest visitors to the site every day and is reputed to be the major country with the high number of buyers every month. Other countries and regions like Africa also visit the site to shop for goods.
AliExpress is similar to eBay. Sellers on AliExpress are either companies or individuals with goods to sell to international buyers. But, it is sharply different to Amazon which acts only as an ecommerce platform without selling products directly to consumers.
Interestingly, no consumers from mainland China is allowed to buy from the platform. Likewise, AliExpress does not allow non-Chinese individuals or companies to open stores with it. All the sellers are based in China and are given a unique store name to operate.
In terms of sale, AliExpress ranks high. It revenues run into millions of dollar. One particular day that is popular on the site is 11/11. It is the Chinese version of Black Friday. Of course, Black Friday that is anticipated every year on other ecommerce sites like eBay, Amazon and others also bring lots of revenues to AliExpress as Chinese sellers take advantage of this day to their goods at a discount – huge discounts at times.
Today, internet usage continues to rise every day, and more consumers are shopping online for new products and good prices. AliExpress has benefited from this as the ever growing Chinese manufacturers, and inventors seek to gain the patronage of millions of buyers who throng the site from all over the world.
As China’s role as “the world’s factory” enclave is firmly established, AliExpress is focusing on helping consumers buy directly from the source at very reasonable cost.