USA TODAY International Edition
Alibaba wants to help Chinese to buy American
Conference planned to teach U. S. business how to crack market
SAN FRANCISCO When Chinese megacompany Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma met with President Trump in January, he made a promise — the online sales platform would give 1 million U. S. small businesses entrée to the Chinese market.
Tuesday, Ma will announce he’s launching a program to make good on that promise. Alibaba plans a conference in Detroit on June 20 and 21 to teach U. S. businesses how to sell to the company’s 443 million customers in China.
The two largest small business markets in the world are the United States and China, and “connecting them seems like a good idea — good for the United States and good for China,” Aliba- ba president Michael Evans told USA TODAY.
While Americans are familiar with the idea that most of their consumer goods come from China, China does import some consumer goods from the United States. Alibaba sees an opportunity to greatly increase those exports.
Currently, the site has 7,000 U. S. businesses, mostly large companies and big- name brands. Over the next five years, Alibaba hopes to increase that to more than 1 million, with the vast majority small businesses.
To do so, it’s announcing an event and a five- year plan. To the event in Detroit, Alibaba hopes to invite as many as 2,000 U. S. small business owners, entrepreneurs, and farmers, choosing those who it believes have products that its Chinese audience is hungry for.
The aim is three- fold. First Alibaba needs to educate attendees about the business opportunity that China can be for them.
Next it plans to tell them how the nuts and bolts work of selling to China is done, everything from finding a partner company in China to work with to the logistics of shipping to dealing with foreign exchange.
Finally it will play matchmaker, introducing Americans to small Chinese businesses that maintain digital storefronts on Albiaba’s Tmall site.
“We’re going to be very involved in the end- to- end process, establishing the connection and the facilitating it,” Evans said.
Alibaba says it can do this because it has tremendous insight into the needs and desires of its more than 400 million customers in China.
The company isn’t another Amazon. It’s much more — a payment system, a chatting platform, a place to play games and a place to buy things. Given its outsized footprint and the time Chinese consumers spend on it, the company has a very good idea of the kinds of things consumers there want.
The nation has a middle class that’s expected to reach 550 million by 2022. The difficulties of selling halfway around the world in a foreign language and different currency are manifold.
But Chairman Ma’s efforts in this direction didn’t just begin with the election of Donald Trump and his America First rhetoric.
Ma penned an editorial that ran in the Wall Street Journal on the topic in 2015.
“I believe in the power of ecommerce to truly level the global playing field, making it possible for the smallest of businesses to reach consumers wherever they may be,” he wrote.
Now, Ma says, he’s ready to take it to the next level.