China’s Alibaba casts net towards Kiwi firms

In China’s biggest cities, e-commerce giant Alibaba’s payment business Alipay is used more frequently than cash.

That’s according to a survey by the Financial Times, and one of the many eye-boggling facts about the firm quoted by Alibaba Group’s new Australia and New Zealand managing director Maggie Zhou.

Best known for its business-tobusiness trading platform Alibaba.com, the group has recently opened an office in Australia which also encompasses New Zealand.

Zhou says there are many small to medium businesses here, particularly in fresh food, dairy or seafood, that could find willing buyers in China.

‘‘We see this country as clean, green and organic,’’ she said.

There are many other tentacles to the Alibaba group including Taobao, a Trade Me-like website for consumers; Aliexpress, its online shopping site; Alimama, a marketing service; logistics and social media arms.

But the platform Zhou is keen to attract SMES to is Tmall Global, a website where Chinese consumers flock to buy luxury goods that are not registered for sale in China.

At the moment it is used by about 500 to 600 New Zealand brands and Zhou says it would like to see more, particularly seafood, fresh food and dairy.

Alibaba signed a memorandum with the New Zealand Government in April, and is working heavily with NZTE.

To test the market, a promotion selling New Zealand apples sold 10,000 six-packs of apples in just 90 minutes.

A similar promotion with New Zealand oysters also sold out quickly.

Zhou says on Singles Day, a huge e-commerce shopping day in China, Tmall held a big promotion and New Zealand products ranked seventh.

Ultimately, Zhou says, Alibaba’s vision is to link people not only to Chinese consumers but to the rest of the world.

That to some degree is already happening as as it finds favour with users in Russia, India and south-east Asia.

While Alibaba’s focus appears to be clearly on attracting wouldbe Kiwi exporters, its arrival is acknowledged warily by local internet trading platform Trade Me.

Trade Me’s head of marketplace Stuart Mclean said that while he understood Alibaba was focused on exporting, ‘‘we’d be pretty silly not to think about the impact any large offshore e-commerce business can have on us’’.

Trade Me’s gross merchandise sales had increased for the past five quarters.