U.S. small businesses “Go Digital, Go Global”
with three new Alibaba.com offerings that make it even easier to do
business
Transformation of Alibaba.com hits new
milestones as sellers from U.S. grow at fastest rate worldwide,
U.S. buyers increase more than 70% year over year and overall
transactions by U.S. businesses on Alibaba.com increase more than
100%
As American small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) fight
through the challenges of COVID-19, Alibaba.com, one of the world’s
largest B2B ecommerce marketplaces and a business unit of Alibaba
Group (NYSE: BABA), today unveiled three new products and services
to help these businesses advance their efforts to digitize and
pivot online. The products and services include Alibaba.com Freight
to enable American SMBs to secure ocean and air shipping for their
orders, Alibaba.com Payment Terms to provide cash flow control and
Alibaba.com Online Trade Shows USA to connect U.S. manufacturers
and wholesalers with business buyers in an engaging and live online
format.
“Doing business online is the bridge for American small
businesses through this crisis and into the next decade,” said John
Caplan, President of North America and Europe of Alibaba.com. “We
are accelerating our transformation to get both sellers and buyers
quickly set up for success and provide the critical tools and
services that are required for growth - access to supply and
demand, shipping and logistics, and working capital. Ultimately,
our goal is to give SMBs even greater access to the $23.9 trillion
global B2B ecommerce opportunity – which is six times the size of
the B2C ecommerce market.”
ALIBABA.COM PAYMENT TERMS – A POWERFUL DIGITIZED TRADE
FINANCE SOLUTION
Maintaining cash flow and ensuring cash on hand have become even
more critical for SMBs during the pandemic. Alibaba.com Payment
Terms is the first-ever trade financing solution embedded directly
into a cross-border B2B ecommerce marketplace, allowing qualified
buyers to order goods and pay for them up to 60 days after they are
shipped. Before today, the vast majority of cross-border trade
between small businesses required full payment upfront. Small
businesses could not benefit from the global supply chain financing
programs that their larger competitors frequently enjoyed.
Alibaba.com Payment Terms1, offered in collaboration with MSTS,
addresses this problem and gives qualified SMBs an additional way
to stay competitive by helping to alleviate cash flow
pressures.
“We typically pay our suppliers upfront, which ties our cash up
in inventory costs and keeps us from planning very far ahead and
investing in our business,” said Necia Boston, founder of
Greenville, N.C.-based B.A.A.B.S. Beauty, a makeup and beauty
products retailer and early applicant of Payment Terms. “With
Alibaba.com Payment Terms, we’ll be able to keep our costs
competitive with larger beauty brands, plan for our future product
lines and stock up far in advance of the back to school and holiday
seasons.”
Payment Terms joins Alibaba.com’s suite of financial solutions
that provide business buyers the ability to preserve cash for
longer while funding their inventory costs.
“While SMBs often have difficulty getting trade financing from
banks, Alibaba.com’s Payment Terms provides the working capital
they need to fuel their growth,” said Caplan. “This is possible for
Alibaba.com because we know the buyers and sellers on our platform,
and financing is offered for transactions that we know are real.
This is a truly game-changing innovation that opens new
opportunities for America’s small businesses. I can’t wait to see
our customers benefit from it.”
ALIBABA.COM FREIGHT – A SHOCKINGLY SIMPLE BUILT-IN OCEAN AND
AIR SHIPPING SOLUTION
With an average order size of $2,000, Alibaba.com shipments
involve containers and pallets, not parcels and envelopes. The
newly launched Alibaba.com Freight, powered by digital freight
marketplace Freightos, helps SMBs simplify arranging their bulk
shipments with the ability to instantly compare, book, manage and
track ocean and air freight in real time online, effectively
modernizing the analog, opaque and historically slow process for
arranging cross-border logistics.
“Alibaba.com Freight’s extremely friendly user-interface takes
what is usually a daunting and extremely complicated task, and
turns it into a simple, concise step-by-step process without
allowing you to make any mistakes before you move on to the next
step,” said Casey Heim, founder and CEO of Hoxie, KS-based WAKE 10,
a manufacturer and seller of equipment in the wakesurfing and
boating industry and early user of Alibaba.com Freight.
“Alibaba.com Freight has helped us continue to source from overseas
and expand our product line even during this global crisis, and we
are set to launch four new products for the summer.”
ALIBABA.COM ONLINE TRADE SHOWS USA – LIVE CURATED CONNECTIONS
BETWEEN BUSINESS BUYERS AND SELLERS
According to Alibaba research, trade shows have historically
been the most important way for sellers to meet and acquire new
customers, and business buyers have benefited by using them to
explore new products and suppliers. COVID-19 has drastically
limited this critical channel for trade. In response, Alibaba.com
is launching Online Trade Shows USA, a series of category-specific,
livestreaming experiences designed to convene quality buyers and
sellers to meet and transact in real-time over a pre-determined
period of days. These events showcasing U.S.-based manufacturers
and wholesalers are part of Alibaba.com’s global online trade show
initiative2 of over 20 shows in the next 120 days to bring the
world’s SMBs together over virtual show floors.
These innovative, digital-first events feature agendas full of
insightful keynotes from industry leaders as well as top U.S.
suppliers promoting their products to a select audience of verified
business buyers. U.S.-based manufacturers and wholesalers are able
to showcase their stories, capabilities and products as a way to
promote their business, meet new prospects and drive sales during
this transition to digital-first trade. Buyers who attend the
events can interact and ask questions of the suppliers, schedule
one-on-one sessions and place orders through the platform.
“With the disruption of COVID-19, the next era in global trade
starts today, from home and online,” said Caplan. “The grit,
resilience and needs of American small businesses who face
extraordinary challenges right now have inspired and motivate us to
re-imagine the trade show experience for our customers. Alibaba.com
Online Trade Shows USA will showcase the innovative products and
capabilities of U.S. small businesses and connect them to our
rapidly expanding community of more than 10 million global
buyers.”
The first live event exclusively designed to showcase American
businesses will run from July 7-10, 2020 with the Supplements
& Nutrition category. Alibaba.com is hosting the
event in partnership with the USA CBD Expo, the nation’s largest
CBD industry event, and the United Natural Products Alliance
(UNPA). The event will feature daily sessions designed to
facilitate meaningful connections between business buyers and
U.S.-based manufacturers, wholesalers, raw ingredient suppliers and
brands in the supplements, nutrition and CBD category who offer
finished and customizable products. Sellers interested in being
featured can apply online and buyers interested in joining the
online event can register online. Additional U.S. shows will take
place over the coming months for a variety of categories, including
Food & Beverage, Agriculture, Beauty &
Personal Care with more on the way.
ALIBABA.COM BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
Alibaba.com – initially an online catalog of the world’s best
manufacturers – was the original Alibaba business launched in 1999.
It disrupted global trade by catapulting the global sourcing and
supply chain industries into the Internet-era. Nearly two decades
later, Alibaba.com began an earnest transformation on its journey
to reinvent global trade, this time by disrupting itself and
continuing the transition from a catalogue of suppliers to an
end-to-end global trading platform with simple search and
discovery, efficient communication and trusted payment, financing
and logistics options. The platform opened to American sellers in
July 2019, and the U.S. has since been the fastest growing market
for new sellers and buyers. As a result of the transformation,
gross merchandise value (GMV) on the platform has grown over 85%
year over year and customers will transact tens of billions of
dollars in GMV this year. At the same time, Alibaba.com’s annual
revenue growth accelerated from the low single digits in 2017 to a
17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR)3.
With today’s announcement, Alibaba.com continues to transform
amid the global pandemic while keeping at its core the mission to
make it easy for businesses to do business anywhere.
Endnotes
1 All the purchase program accounts as well as deferred payment
and other accommodations under the Alibaba.com Payment Terms
program are provided through MSTS. Alibaba.com is neither a lender
nor a broker for the credit lines issued under the Alibaba.com
Payment Terms program.
2 About Alibaba.com Global Online Trade Shows: Alibaba.com
launched its first global online trade show to support SMBs
affected by the Coronavirus in May focused on Home and Health,
which attracted more than 1 million business buyers over the course
of two weeks. The next global Alibaba.com trade show will take
place on June 6-26, 2020 and will feature suppliers and products
from more than 40 categories.
3 Alibaba.com revenue figures approximated by “International
Commerce Wholesale” segment financials reported in public
filings.
Supplemental Media
Alibaba.com B-roll can be found here.
About Alibaba.com
The first business unit of Alibaba Group, Alibaba.com is a
leading platform for global B2B e-commerce that aims to make it
easy to do business anywhere. Launched in 1999, Alibaba.com is
engaged in services covering all aspects of commerce, including
providing businesses with tools that help reach a global audience
for their products and helping buyers discover products, find
suppliers, and place orders online fast and efficiently. It serves
millions of buyers and suppliers from over 200 countries and
regions around the world.
About Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group's mission is to make it easy to do business
anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of
commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live
at Alibaba, and that it will be a company that lasts at least 102
years.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200602005208/en/
Media: Brion Tingler +1 917 528 1992
brion.tingler@alibaba-inc.com Alibaba.com Agency M Booth
alibaba@mbooth.com
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