Alibaba announces international intentions

By Barry Eitel

SAN FRANCISCO

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced Thursday that it will build an international version of its online retailer Taobao, its first site open to consumers outside of its native China.

The company currently serves worldwide wholesale customers with its Aliexpress platform, but doesn’t have an international outlet for retail.

Taobao, with analogies in Amazon and eBay, allows users to sell to each other and small businesses to sell products online.

Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, made the announcement at the World Internet Conference in the Chinese town of Wuzhen.

Poised to go global two months after its historic initial public offering on Wall Street, Alibaba is in its “most dangerous moment,” Ma said.

In September, Alibaba shocked the world with its $25 billion IPO, the biggest debut on the New York Stock Exchange in history, and undoubtedly a cause of envy amongst the Silicon Valley elite.

“Even two months before the IPO, people didn’t think we would make money,” Ma said in a speech at the conference, layering in his famously self-deprecating speaking style. “Now the problem is people think we are too good -- we can do anything.”

After its IPO, Alibaba opened an engineering office in downtown Seattle, a key location to poach talent from American tech institutions such as nearby Microsoft and Amazon.

As Alibaba opens its digital doors to shoppers from the United States, a prolonged battle with retail behemoth Amazon is sure to ensue.

While Alibaba is a massive operation, Amazon has a long reputation for tenacity, with recent fights waged against publishers like Hachette, brick-and-mortar shops and even the federal government. 

Neither Ma nor Alibaba provided a specific timeline for the rollout of the international version of Taobao.

The planned launch would have English and other language versions.

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