Alibaba International wants to capture the "sky-high traffic" of the Olympics

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

Established 25 years ago, Alibaba International, known as the "eldest son of Alibaba," has shown a clear momentum of accelerated expansion in recent years. After continuously launching AI foreign trade products and semi-managed services, it has now set its sights on the Olympic economy.

As a top partner of the Olympic Games, on the eve of the Paris Olympics, Alibaba International has significantly increased its overseas investment. Starting from July, Alibaba International's advertisements have covered the streets, alleys, subways, and airports of Paris; at the same time, they have signed the endorsement of French basketball legend Tony Parker, who has won the NBA championship four times.

Obviously, in the current key period of cross-border e-commerce competition, even Alibaba International, which focuses on B2B business, hopes to leverage major sports events and global celebrity endorsements to strengthen brand marketing, shape brand value, and achieve further breakthroughs in performance.

With the support of substantial advertising investment, merchants on Alibaba International have already tasted the dividends of the Olympic economy.

Data provided by Alibaba International shows that Olympic-related hotspots have continued to emerge on Alibaba International this year. From January to the present, the online export volume of merchants in Olympic-related industries on Alibaba International has exceeded 7 billion RMB.

Lin Zhilie, general manager of Guangzhou Xili Apparel Co., Ltd., engaged in sports apparel, told Wall Street News that the driving force of the Olympics is very obvious. The visit volume to their store on Alibaba International has increased by 30%-50%.

It is worth mentioning that not only directly related industries like sports apparel, but also emerging industries on Alibaba International such as artificial turf and sports flooring have experienced rapid growth on the eve of the Olympics, with orders shipped to France alone increasing by as much as 139.58% year-on-year.

According to Wall Street News, unlike previous Olympics where the economy was concentrated in Yiwu and other industrial belts, through Alibaba International, more outbound industrial belts have seen a "sky-high flow" of traffic from the Olympics.

In Guangdong alone, since April this year, the number of Guangdong merchants added to Alibaba International has increased by 30% year-on-year.

Qiu Zongbing, general manager of the NanYue region of Alibaba International, said, "It is said that the end of the Olympic economy is in Yiwu, but it is not limited to Yiwu."

For Alibaba International, this Olympics is not only a good opportunity to further enhance its global brand, but also an accelerator to attract more merchants and increase platform GMV.

An independent research report shows that 3.05 billion independent viewers watched the last Tokyo Olympics, and it is expected that the attention to this year's Paris Olympics will reach new highs.

No cross-border merchant wants to miss out on the dividends brought by large-scale sports events like the Olympics.

Wall Street News has learned that in addition to Alibaba International, starting from July, SHEIN has also held a half-month "2024 Sports Season" event, hoping to help related products quickly gain traffic, stimulate product sales, and boost seller performance through traffic support and multi-resource displayIn a year like this, when the competition in the cross-border e-commerce industry is more intense, major e-commerce platforms are seizing the opportunity to capture market share, especially platforms like Alibaba International that have not shown strong offensive momentum in the past.

It is well known that the cross-border e-commerce industry has been very lively in the past two years, but the focus seems to be more on SHEIN, AliExpress, TEMU, TikTok Shop, these Chinese e-commerce "Four Little Dragons" targeting the consumer market. Among them, TEMU, with its rapid growth, has led to a significant increase in performance and stock price for its parent company Pinduoduo.

As the cornerstone of Alibaba's global business, the international site positioned as cross-border B2B was one of Alibaba's earliest business segments established in 1999, and now belongs to Alibaba International Digital Business Group, one of Alibaba's six major business groups.

In recent years, with the domestic e-commerce industry reaching its peak increment, Alibaba International has once again become Alibaba's growth engine. In the first quarter of this year, it achieved revenue of 27.448 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45%, mainly driven by the performance growth of C-end cross-border e-commerce platforms represented by AliExpress.

Alibaba's financial report shows that in the first quarter of this year, Alibaba International site contributed revenue of only 5.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11%.

After the rise of major C-end cross-border e-commerce platforms, B-end business seems less attractive. However, Zhang Kuo, President of Alibaba International, stated that B2B has always been the main force for China and the world in the field of cross-border exports.

In his view, from the perspective of long-term development, establishing long and genuine connections with customers, gradually expanding business scale, and maintaining a certain reasonable profit are the competitiveness of the cross-border e-commerce B2B model.

In fact, in order to retain merchants, Alibaba International has made significant efforts over the past year. Starting in the second half of this year, Alibaba International has launched country-specific operations, accurately matching the local demands of key country markets with the categories of platform merchants. In addition, Alibaba International also provides cross-border logistics support to foreign trade enterprises based on the characteristics of different markets.

At the same time, Alibaba International has also launched two important initiatives: AI foreign trade tools and semi-managed services.

Last year, Alibaba Group, which underwent a major organizational change, clearly defined "User First, AI-Driven" as the core strategy for future development. Against this background, the introduction of AI foreign trade tools is a natural development for Alibaba International.

By early 2024, Alibaba International began to launch AI tools on all products and regional merchant ends. By the first half of 2024, the AI tools launched by Alibaba International can cover more than 40 scenarios including search, advertising placement, and customer service.

In addition to AI foreign trade tools, earlier this year, Alibaba International followed the footsteps of AliExpress and launched semi-managed services, becoming the first B2B cross-border e-commerce platform to offer this service.

Industry insiders believe that after the new wave of going global brought by full management, Alibaba International has set its sights on the opportunity for domestic merchants to go global, leading the way in the B2B field by introducing a simpler "managed going global" method, where pricing authority remains in the hands of merchants apart from platform logistics and after-sales responsibilitiesFaced with the strong rise of newcomers, Alibaba is now striving to return to a strong growth trajectory, with Alibaba International undoubtedly playing a crucial role as an investor's confidence booster in regaining confidence in Alibaba's future performance