AliExpress is Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce platform, which facilitates trade and brings sellers and buyers together. AliExpress does not sell directly, but provides a platform for safe transactions between sellers and buyers. AliExpress was founded in 2010, and is today one of the top cross-border B2C platforms. Alibaba’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. AliExpress not just serves consumers from all over the world (it is currently available in: Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabic, Hebrew, Polish) but also enables small and medium-sized businesses to grow locally and globally.
AliExpress is available to ship in more than 200 countries and regions, and recently launched their selling program to include overseas sellers, limited to some countries: from Italy, Spain, Russia and Turkey. AliExpress was previously only open for Chinese sellers accessing international consumers. Now, they are exploring a change to their business model by opening its marketplace to non-Chinese sellers, which means they will be better positioned to compete against Amazon and leverage AliExpress as a platform to sell their products.
Leveraging Alibaba Group’s technology and expertise in commerce, AliExpress has built infrastructure to provide the best experience for consumers and sellers, including four key components – a well-established platform, localized payment options, an efficient logistics network through local partnerships and a money back guarantee if the item you received is not as described, or if the item is not delivered within the Buyer Protection period.
AliExpress have been offering a livestreaming service for more than 1 year, and the penetration keeps increasing. They have quite a few merchants who have enjoyed a better result via livestreaming. In China this has been growing year on year, and is now estimated to account for about 9 percent of total e-commerce sales in China. Brands use livestreaming, broadcasting in real-time, as a tool to promote products and engage better with their potential customers.
They have also launched a brand new platform called AliExpress Connect, which is designed to create opportunity for both brands and influencers: as the world moves increasingly toward online shopping. It offers new income sources and job opportunities for influencers and content creators, helping them to scale and digitalize their business. While for brands, it opens up the opportunity to attract new customers. Anybody interested in joining the program, you could email to the following: aesocial@aliexpress.com or go directly to: https://connect.aliexpress.com/
Whilst their website is not as user friendly as Amazon’s they are positioning themselves to better positioned in developing e-commerce markets to compete against Amazon.