China’s e-commerce is not only Taobao or Alibaba. In fact, China has a wide range of e-commerce platforms addressing different types of audiences across different geographical locations, presenting different features, and selling different types of products. The most popular ones are:
- Tmall Global: namely the CBEC extension of Tmall, focusing exclusively on B2C and B2B2C Cross-Border E-Commerce. Tmall Global is the largest CBEC platform, perfectly integrated within Tmall and Taobao (900 million users), offering different solutions to sellers, but at the same time being also the most expensive platform and with the strictest requirements.
- JD International: namely the CBEC extension of JD.com, i.e. the second-largest B2C e-commerce platform in China, with more than 580 million active users and its own in-house logistics company. Its focus is mostly on beauty, fashion, children and health products as well as home appliances and consumer electronics.
- Kaola: launched in 2015, was until recently a very important CBEC player, but now its importance is gradually diminishing. Its main products are baby products, pre-packaged F&B products, health food, healthcare products, beauty products, cosmetics, etc. Kaola’s main users are young female consumers.
Other platforms, though not exclusively CBEC platforms, have also started to operate in this field. Key examples are Xiaohongshu (RED), but also Wechat.
A detailed introduction of these platforms, their strengths, weakness, target base, operating costs, is available in the following resources produced by the EU SME Centre.
