Malaysian exporters on Tmall Global growing fast

KUALA LUMPUR: Tmall Global, Alibaba Group’s online business platform, expects Malaysia to continue expanding as one of the fastest growing exporters selling into China.

Tmall Global business development director Rex Cheuk said Chinese consumers are increasingly interested in Malaysian products due to the price and quality.

“The pricing is comparatively lower but the quality is really good and the taste fits in with Chinese consumers. That’s why there is an increasing trend of people in China looking for biscuits and snacks, as well as bird’s nest, from Malaysia,” he told reporters at a briefing on Alibaba’s “Access to China Consumers” seminar yesterday.

Cheuk said some of the signature products from Malaysia are food products including durian, coffee and biscuits.

According to the 2017 Tmall Global Annual Consumers Report, Malaysia was the seventh fastest growing exporter selling into China measured by year-on-year growth.

“Malaysia has become one of the popular countries where consumers choose to buy through Tmall Global. That’s the reason why we are having today’s seminar.

“My target is to recruit as many as we can and to connect more Chinese consumers so that they can enjoy products from Malaysia. We can see the increasing trend for this direction,” said Cheuk.

Tmall Global, which hosts some 200,000 brands, is a cross-border platform and an extension of Alibaba Group’s B2C Tmall business, which enables overseas merchants to enter China’s online retail market.

Cheuk said foreign merchants who use Tmall Global do not need a Chinese business licence to join the platform. Merchants who join Tmall Global can conduct their business from overseas without the need for physical operations within mainland China.

Tmall Global enables Malaysians to test the waters and sell their products in the Chinese market. It also offers retailers marketing solutions targeted at China.

Tmall was China’s largest third party platform for brands and retailers in terms of gross merchandise value in 2016.

Yesterday’s seminar, hosted by Alibaba Group, aims to enable Malaysian exporters tap into the market demand among Chinese consumers for Malaysian and foreign products. More than 500 Malaysian merchants participated in the seminar, designed to help Malaysian small and medium enterprises better understand China opportunity, major drivers in its e-commerce boom, as well as the latest insights and tools to sell their products effectively in China’s e-commerce market.

According to eMarketer, 60 cents of every dollar (RM3.8) spent online globally will come from China by 2020 while cross-border e-commerce in China will grow sixfold from 2015 to 2020 to US$245 billion, according to AliResearch and Accenture.