Charlie and Rock & Roll to sell signature collection at Nordstrom

Charlie Sheen, renowned television and film actor, and Christopher Wicks, designer and owner Rock & Roll Religion have finalized a deal to sell the signature line of retro shirts at Nordstrom retailers nationwide. The collection, which features Sheen's iconic short sleeved, button- up shirts officially launched at Magic Las Vegas on February 17, 2009 and will be available for purchase beginning in June.

DaVinci clothing is a high quality, California made line of casual shirts, reminiscent of the rockabilly culture born in the 1950's. As the fashion industry's premier purveyor of rock and roll and iconic apparel, Wicks designs other popular brands such as English Laundry, Fender: The Clothing Collection and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The DaVinci Collection by Charlie Sheen allows the pair to merge the laid back, stylish look Sheen is known for, with the classic, quality pieces Wicks consistently delivers.

"The launch of DaVinci Collection by Charlie Sheen has been really exciting thus far," said Sheen. "I am happy the designs have been well received and am looking forward to taking the next step with the line and Christopher Wicks. I feel people are really drawn to the line for its comfort, quality and vintage inspired look and I hope we have much success with it at Nordstrom."

"Mr. Sheen has been a wonderful partner in getting DaVinci Collection by Charlie Sheen off the ground," said Wicks. He understands the design process, and I think the natural fit of the casual, yet chic designs with his personal taste make the product very marketable."

The DaVinci Collection by Charlie Sheen incorporates the classic DaVinci mainstays such as agoya shell buttons, retro patterns and vertical contrasting color combinations with additional detailing and embroidery to enhance each piece. Made of cotton, rayon/acetate or rayon/polyester blends, pieces are manufactured from the original designs of the 50's, 60's and 70's.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

Senior Fashion Collections that are on trend for 2009

Pattern, color, multicultural, style moxie and fluidity all describe the senior fashion collections that will be presented and modeled on May 9, 2009 at Grady High School; 8 p.m. The show is guaranteed to rival the finest professional shows in the southeast.

Ten (10) senior designers will champion looks that are "on trend" for 2009. Sheer, Metallics, Gladiators, Eco-Fashion, Ethnicware, Fast Fashion, Fruit Salad (or mixed prints), muffin tops, and a multitude of palettes will delight beyond measure.

A vivacious set design will be constructed by the Grady Art Department, G-Stage, led by the unbelievable creative efforts of John Brandhorst, Arts Academy Director, and Jake Dreiling, technical director. Additional set design by Scenario Custom Scenery. Hair styling & make up by the fabulous Carter Barnes and Sweet Pea Spa. Jewelry provided by Wendy Babchin Designer Group.

Six years ago, E. Vincent Martinez launched UrbanCouture with just 40 students. Today, the 100-student program is a foundation of the school's arts academy. Over 100 Grady students serve as models, lighting and sound technicians, graphic designers, musicians, volunteers and more.

The program and its platform provide students with the skills and tools necessary to develop, unveil, and fuse fashion. This alluring environment grants the freedoms and expressions which arm the students with the confidence to pursue and become emerging designers.

source; fiber2fashion

DSW offers designer assortments to Frhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifederick shoppers

DSW, a leading multi-channel branded footwear specialty retailer, is pleased to announce the opening of a new store in Frederick, Maryland on May 7. The address of the new DSW store is:

DSW Shoes
Francis Scott Key Mall
5500 Buckeystown Pike
Frederick, MD 21703

The store will be the 16th DSW location in the Washington D.C. market.

DSW is for the passionate shoe enthusiast. The 17,000 square foot store in Frederick will offer women and men thousands of shoes at great prices. The store will have a contemporary feel, where shoppers can browse a breathtaking assortment of designer dress, casual, and athletic shoes in a relaxed, comfortable setting. A clearance area will offer customers even more unbelievable prices.

Customers are also invited to join the award-winning DSW Rewards program and earn certificates toward future DSW purchases, while taking advantage of member-only offers and events.

DSW is continuously opening new stores across the country. In 2008, DSW opened 41 stores in strategic markets and launched dsw.com in response to customers' requests to shop 24 hours, 7 days a week. The new store in Frederick, Maryland is the sixth DSW store opening of 2009.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

China's C2C and B2C sectors ride out economic storm in Q1, B2B struggles

Shanghai. April 29. INTERFAX-CHINA - China's online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors maintained a high rate of growth in the first quarter of 2009, although the business-to-business (B2B) sector struggled due to the global economic downturn, according to a report released on April 29.

China's C2C sector generated revenues of RMB 44.19 billion ($6.47 billion) in the first quarter of 2009, up 15.7 percent quarter-on-quarter, according to the report by iResearch. Revenues from the B2C sector reached RMB 2.51 billion ($367.7 million) in the period, up 12.2 percent from the previous quarter.

However, China's B2B sector revenues slid by 7.2 percent quarter-on-quarter to RMB 1.37 billion ($200.7 million). The drop was mainly due to a fall in transactions from overseas purchasers. During the first quarter of 2009, China's overall foreign trade dropped by 24.9 percent to $428.7 billion year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Taobao remained the top operator in China's C2C sector for the period, with an 82.2 percent market share. Tencent Paipai and EachNet followed with respective market shares of 10.5 percent and 7.3 percent.

The largest B2C operator in the period was 360buy.com, with a 22.9 percent share of the market. Joyo and Dangdang followed, with market shares of 15.14 percent and 12.75 percent respectively.

Alibaba.com led the B2B market in the first quarter with a 58.4 percent market share. GlobalSources.com and Made-in-china.com ranked second and third, with respective market shares of 9.5 percent and 4.4 percent.

iResearch predicted that the global economy will show signs of recovery in the second quarter of 2009. Aas such, China's C2C and B2C sectors will maintain their growth, and the B2B sector will recover to exhibit growth of 15 percent quarter-on-quarter.

Source: http://tmt.interfaxchina.com/

China unlikely to alter monetary policy

BEIJING, April 28 (Reuters) - China will not tighten monetary policy because an easy stance is still very much needed to stimulate investment and consumption at a time of slack global demand, the China Securities Journal said in an editorial on Tuesday.

After a surge of 4.58 trillion yuan in new loans in the first quarter, speculation is swirling that Beijing might apply the brakes to bank lending for fear that a credit binge will worsen banks' asset quality and finance an array of poor investments.

Ba Shusong, an economist with the Development Research Centre, a think-tank under the State Council, China's cabinet, on Monday became the first government economist to call for a tighter monetary policy. [ID:nPEK353117]

However, the official China Securities Journal said China must keep its current credit policy to achieve its target of 8 percent growth in gross domestic product this year.

"With such a broad goal, China has no choice in its monetary policy and needs to tolerate short-term risks," the paper said in a front-page editorial.

"It would be dangerous to diminish the force of monetary policy now, as doing so would discount the results achieved to date and lead to greater risks," the paper warned.

It said China would need new loans of between 6.66 trillion yuan and 8.17 trillion yuan this year to hit 8 percent growth.

Credit expansion can swiftly stimulate investment and consumption -- crucial engines for China given that net exports subtracted 0.2 percentage points from the annual first-quarter GDP growth rate of 6.1 percent, the paper said.

It said net exports might also drag down GDP growth this quarter if the global financial crisis turns out to be more severe than expected.

"At that point, we would face an extremely challenging task to safeguard 8 percent growth and it would be necessary to significantly increase the impact of monetary and fiscal policy," the paper commented.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

"90% of our orders come from Alibaba.com"

Foshan BANBO Lighting&Electron Co., Ltd., was established in 2002 and specializes in Vehicle Lighting and Electronic Products. Thanks to our sincere attitude, professional knowledge and high quality products, we grew rapidly to become one of the top ten suppliers to enjoy high reputation in the domestic industry within 4 years.

In 2006, we became a Gold Supplier on Alibaba.com and started to expand our business overseas. We received many inquiries via Alibaba.com and met many excellent customers, most of whom were from areas such as North and South America, Europe and Southeast Asia which eventually became our main markets.

In the beginning, we put all our product photos and descriptions on our Alibaba.com Company Website and thought that’s enough to attract foreign buyers. Alibaba.com provided many good suggestions to us such as improving the quality and appearance of our pictures, simplifying and highlighting the selling points in the description, changing the page’s background design to be more professional, and updating our products’ information promptly, etc. These suggestions helped us attract more attention from customers. Besides, the 3rd Year Gold Supplier approval seal helps us build trust faster with our customers.

Alibaba.com also offers many courses and trainings to improve our sales and marketing ability. We learned a lot from that. We believe that innovation and development are the lifeblood of a company. So we keep on learning and listening to the world. Alibaba.com offers us chances to learn from other successful cases and experienced members of the industry, and keeps us advancing with the times.

Currently, 90% of our orders come from Alibaba.com which gives us a very good platform to show BANBO to the world. E-commerce is a worldwide trend. We are doing our best to introduce our company to the world, and also to learn more about the world. It’s all about communication, and I believe Alibaba.com is a good B2B platform and a valuable acquisition to productive enterprises.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

'We have improved our operating rates' – Mitsui Chemicals

The petrochemical industry is witnessing a rebound of sorts since the last three fortnights. On the back of an increase in demand, prices of petrochemicals are touching new 2009 highs, leading to major companies increasing their operating capacities.

Mitsui Chemicals which operates two naphtha crackers at Chiba and Osaka with production capacities of 553,000 tons per annum and 455,000 tons per annum respectively has also reportedly increased its operating capacities in April.

Fibre2fashion spoke to Mr Takehiro Suzuki of the CSR & Corporate Communications Division of Mitsui Chemicals, who said, that, “The average run rates of Mitsui Chemicals' naphtha crackers until March were approximately 70 percent”.

He added by saying, “However from early April, run rates improved to approximately 85 percent and production adjustments for inventory optimization in the first quarter (January through March) of 2009 have also been completed”.

To another question as to how he sees the petrochemical industry faring, he said, “Although demand in Japan is still slow, we are seeing improvement in demand from China. The economic stimulus measures by the Chinese government have resulted in an increase in Japanese exports to China”.

“However, exports from China have not yet shown improvement and it is still unknown as to whether the government measures will actually stimulate the economy and lead to economic recovery”, he concluded by saying.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

Hansiba collection to receive British premium touch

A London based creative director; Mr Graham Hollick will be providing a new vision to the craftsmanship of women artisans of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). Towards this end, a premium clothing collection will be launched by the year-end at Ahmedabad, Delhi and Mumbai.

SEWA is an organisation of poor, self-employed women workers. SEWA’s main goals are to organise women workers for full employment, whereby workers obtain work security, income security, food security and social security (at least health care, child care and shelter).

SEWA had recently launched a clothing label Hansiba from fabrics stitched and embroidered by its own women members. The collection includes clothes, accessories and home furnishings using basically, kalamkari, blockprinting and cotton fabrics. Mr Hollick will now help launch a premium collection.

To know more about this wonderful idea, Fibre2fashion spoke to Ms Viloo Mirza, Consultant at the SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre, who said, “Graham Hollick is giving probono creative inputs at SEWA Trade Facilitation Centre to empower the women artisans who are the shareholders of this unique company”.

She continued by saying, “This is the first model of its kind with whom Graham Hollick wants to establish long term relationship. He is a very established designer since the last 12 years. SEWA has worked out three design collections which will be showcased in Ahmedabad in the month of December with a fashion show”.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

Clothing label brave hearts open new outlets despite slowdown

It is said that the best time to expand your business is in times of recession, but how many of the entrepreneurs have the guts to believe in this adage is the moot question. But there is indeed a tribe of brave businessmen from the hosiery knitting and clothing industry are setting up new stores at a time when other major retailers are either downsizing or closing down operations.

Bison London, a Ludhiana based hosiery and garment brand is one such label which has expanded its retail footprint in recent months despite the adverse circumstances. The company Superfine Knitters recently opened showrooms in Ludhiana and Jammu and is planning to open more such outlets in Dehradun, Amritsar and Saharanpur.

Fibre2fashion spoke exclusively to Mr Vivek Lakra, Director of Superfine Knitters to know and understand his strategy. We asked him the rationale behind opening outlets in such difficult times, to which he explained, “We are opening stores in a very sensible way and on very reasonable costs in high potential area and we are rejecting deals where we predict poor sales and where we find costs are high”.

Next we asked him the unique selling proposition (USP) of his stores and his brand, to which he replied by saying, “Till date we have 7 stores operational and 90 percent of the feed back is fully positive on price, schemes we offer, product range, fitting, colour schemes, hand-feel of the fabrics, etc, which we consider as a excellent feed back and our USP is international clothing designed by global designers at genuine prices”.

To conclude the interview, we asked him his opinion as to when he expects the situation to stabilize, to which he said, “At least 1-2 years”. The other main reasons for this expansion by a few apparel brands is that store rentals have fallen by as much as 40 percent in some cities and towns and this could be the perfect time to open a store, before the rentals start moving northwards once again.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

‘Bangladesh RMG sector is Wal-Mart of the world’ – CEO, Beximco

The economy of Bangladesh is very much dependent on exports from the garment industry which realizes a value to the tune of US $11 billion and provides direct and indirect employment to millions of people in the country, particularly women of Bangladesh.

But the tsunami like economic crisis and the resultant slowdown has put brakes on the high flying exports industry which was chalking phenomenal growth rates in the last few years and has the potential to weaken the economy of the country, brought about by falling exports since the last few months.

In our continuing series to bring to our reader the impact of the crisis on the textile and apparel companies of different countries, Fibre2fashion spoke to Mr Syed Naved Husain, CEO of Beximco’s Textile Division and South Asia’s largest and best-known vertical textile operation, which he helped setup.

Mr Husain grew to fame by successfully focusing Beximco’s massive operations on flexible manufacturing, speed to market and innovation, which resulted in bagging orders from globally renowned retailers like Zara, JC Penney, Philip-Van Heusen, Calvin Klein, H & M, MotherCare, Perry Ellis, and C & A.

We began the interview by asking him the impact of recession on Bangladesh, to which he said, “The impact of recession has been small in Bangladesh, as it has relatively low cost labour, a huge young work force, and cheap water and energy and moreover, with over 30 years experience in garments exports, Bangladesh has a very high standard of needle work”.

He added by saying, “The productivity is rapidly increasing as more sophisticated factories have been set up with world class industrial engineering as well as planning systems. Wal-Mart is doing better than most retailers in USA and in many ways Bangladesh has became the "Wal-Mart" of the world”.

Next we asked him to reveal his company’s reactions and strategies to counter the crisis, to which he said, “Beximco is a full service vendor; i.e. from fibre to garments and trims to washing, as well as large international design and product development facilities. We have focused on ‘innovation’ and ‘speed’ as our primary drivers”.

He explained by saying, “We deliver orders from fibre to garment in 50 days and reorders in 30 days. We have invested heavily in design and product development in Bangladesh, London, Italy and Hong Kong and every eight weeks we come up with a catalog of new looks, apparel and collection of fabrics”.

He continued “Our Design Studio makes collections for several leading retailers and achieves an acceptance rate of over 70 percent. It has taken us many years as an organization to achieve these analytical and creative abilities and also a ‘mind set’ to be market driven and ready to change course on short or no notice”.

“I feel thatmany self confident companies see the recession more as an opportunity than a threat. At Beximco we continue to invest heavily, expanding and hiring more people and those companies who get scared and cut back, will in my view surrender their future, he concluded by saying.

Next we asked him on his company’s plan for new products and target market segments, to which he said, “Beximco has a large men's, women's and children's divisions handling a wide variety of woven, denim and knit tops and bottoms, as well as selected outerwear and presently we will focus every day to get better at these categories rather than spread ourselves thin”.

“Beximco has established a very successful and fast growing retail chain of specialty stores for right trend fashion apparel and accessories under the brand name of ‘YELLOW’. The name ‘YELLOW’ was inspired by Van Gogh's famous Sun Flower painting and represents youth, energy and globalization”, he winded up the interview by saying so.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

Beijing, China – 8 October 2008 – Taobao, China's largest consumer e-commerce company, today announced that its parent company, Alibaba Group, will invest RMB5 billion (US$[1]732 million) over the next five years to further strengthen the Taobao marketplace (www.taobao.com) as the shopping destination of choice for Chinese consumers. The investment will be used for building a world-leading platform for merchants and providing the best online shopping experience for consumers. In addition, Taobao will continue to offer its services for free to buyers and individual sellers.

Taobao is the most trusted online commerce platform for Chinese consumers. According to China IntelliConsulting Corporation, 33% of China's Internet users have shopped online and 76% of these users have purchased items on Taobao.

Since its founding in 2003, Taobao has created an e-commerce ecosystem consisting of 80 million registered users and over 1 million sellers, as well as third-party service providers in payment, logistics and verification and a network of 400,000 web publishers in its affiliate marketing program. Moreover, Taobao will soon open its technology platform to independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop applications for Taobao's substantial user base, including advanced product display and special visual effect functionalities.

With 200 million items in selection, Taobao gives Chinese consumers the most comprehensive product choice on the Internet. Today, Taobao takes care of the everyday shopping needs of Chinese consumers, who purchase items such as clothing, accessories, cosmetics, home appliances, mobile phones, computers and digital cameras.

Jonathan Lu, President of Taobao, said, "The RMB5 billion investment into the Taobao ecosystem demonstrates our long-term confidence in the Chinese economy, our optimism for China's domestic consumption and our commitment towards creating job opportunities for entrepreneurs who harness the power of the Taobao marketplace."

He continued, "Given the rapid growth of Internet use in China, we expect online shopping will become a mainstream Internet application in the near future. Today, only one-third of Internet users in China have shopped online and we believe that by continuing to offer Taobao's services for free we can accelerate e-commerce adoption and market growth."

According to iResearch, China's online shopping market grew in gross merchandise volume (GMV) from RMB16 billion in 2005 to RMB56 billion in 2007. iResearch further projects that industry GMV will be RMB126 billion in 2008, growing to exceed RMB500 billion by 2011. The 33% online shopping penetration rate estimated by China IntelliConsulting Corporation in September 2008 has increased from 26% estimated by iResearch in 2007.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

CCI reduces prices of Shankar–6 variety of cotton

The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) , the government owned nodal agency for cotton trading in India has reduced the sale price of the Gujarat grown variety of cotton; Shankar-6. CCI has brought down the price of cotton by around Rs 400 per candy.

CCI is currently selling Shankar – 6 variety of cotton at Rs 23,100 per candy against Rs 23,500 per candy prevailing one week back. CCI in the current cotton season has purchased cotton totaling to 10 million bales across all varities.

Fibre2fashion spoke to Mr Subhash Grover, Managing Director of Cotton Corporation of India, who replied by saying that, “Since February and till the second week of April, prices of cotton were going high”.

He added by saying, “Due to reduced demand by mills and no feasibility of export of cotton, since third week of April prices have started going down by 300 to 400 Rs per candy”.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

CRM of apparel software company praises Surat textile sector

The Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce & Industry and the Surat Embroidery Association had recently organised a textile exhibition ‘fibre to fashion Expo 2009’, which ran from April 17-21, 2009 and received enthusiastic participation from exhibitors and visitors alike from across India.

The trade fair had around 120 participants from across the spectrum of the value chain extending from textiles to clothing like fibres, yarns, fabrics, accessories, packaging, technical textiles, machinery and many other sub-categories from the sector. Alongside, seminars had also been arranged to impart technical knowledge.

One of the exhibitors was a software company called Exilant Consulting which is a leading provider of information technology services. Exilant has developed best-in-class software for the apparel industry, which enables cycle time reduction, improvement of process efficiencies and lowering cost of manufacture.

‘SEAMLESS-ERP’ offers features that no other apparel manufacturing software does since it has been designed to address problems faced by the industry. It covers every aspect of the apparel manufacturing process, be it, merchandizing, costing, sampling, fabric and trims procurement, stores, shipping and production.

Speaking exclusively to Fibre2fashion, Mr Rajesh Dwivedi, Customer Relations Manager at Exilant reminisced about his wonderful experiences at the fair and said, “We are participating at the ‘fibre to fashion’ expo at Surat for the first time and I must say that the industry here is overwhelmingly huge and dynamic”.

Brimming with excitement, he continued, “With large capacities in the fields of embroidery, weaving, fabric processing and apparel manufacturing, Surat is bound to become one of the biggest clusters for the related business in the world in the near future”.

“Being a software product solution provider for the textiles and the garment industry across the subcontinent and beyond, we believe that Surat has to take a head start to inculcate best practices driven through automated business solution”, he exuberantly added .

He said, “This would empower the business owners to compete with the best worldwide through enhanced capabilities on on-time delivery, quality creativity and flexibility. Usage of web based ERP solutions would help the manufacturers to effectively control and manage their multi-location manufacturing, processing and trading centers.

He concluded by saying, “Such technological tools are also critical to facilitate and sustain a fast paced expansion, what we could understand most of the business/manufacturers here are aiming at".

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

Alibaba.com Helps Consumers Go Green and Save Some Green

The global trade in green products is increasing dramatically, according to popular searches on Alibaba.com, the world’s leading B2B e-commerce company.

Analysts had forecast that the multibillion-dollar green products market would lose momentum as consumers worldwide curtail their spending due to the economic downturn, but this trend is not supported by data collected by Alibaba.com. In fact, searches for alternative energy resources such as solar and wind, electric cars, bio-diesel and organic products increased steadily on Alibaba.com over the past two years, driven by growing mainstream environmental awareness, especially in developed countries along with large-scale government initiatives towards clean energy.

Historic rises in oil prices, which peaked at a record US$147 per barrel in the third quarter of 2008, further intensified global attention on the need for alternative energy. This is clearly reflected in the 67 percent increase in searches, particularly for solar energy products, on Alibaba.com during the same period compared to the third quarter of 2007, when oil prices were just US$77 per barrel.

Solar-powered energy and organic products are the fastest growing green sectors on Alibaba.com, increasing 71 percent and 68 percent year-on-year, respectively, in the first quarter of 2009. Solar lights are among the hottest green items sold online as some countries in Europe as well as the US move to replace traditional street lights with sun-powered alternatives. This trend is not just at a governmental level, as businesses and factories also move towards solar power for their outdoor lighting. Power savings and consumption reduction used to be the main objective for this shift, but the recession has brought other imperatives to the forefront, such as cost cutting.

“Despite the downturn, online trade in environmentally friendly products is holding up well. This is because going green not only saves money but also creates money, especially as more entrepreneurs develop innovative products to support growing global demand. Also, many consumer-based green options, such as switching to solar lights, both make economic sense and protect the environment. Entrepreneurs and SMEs are realizing that green is good business, as long as there is a fiscal motivation as well as an environmental one,” said David Wei, the CEO of Alibaba.com.

While consumers are lured to the “feel good” and cost-saving benefits of the green sector, entrepreneurs see a new growth industry with lots of business potential. Green technology is becoming more accessible to businesses of all sizes as costs are declining, and favorable government legislation and tax subsidies make it more sustainable. All these factors have led to exponential growth of the market for green goods.

“Climate change is having a positive impact on our business. Our sales have been growing by 30 to 40 percent over the past three years thanks to strong demand for green products from customers in the US, Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia. Solar lighting products are our most popular selling items,” said Xiao Benpeng, the International Trade Manager for Huangshi Donper Mech-Electric Group Solar Energy Co., Ltd., a Hubei-based company specializing in high-tech solar energy products and a member of Alibaba.com.

According to US President Barack Obama's stimulus bill, 10 percent of the funding will be allocated to environmental projects. In his inauguration speech, Obama pledged that America “will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories,” which has set the tone for the West, while China is committed to generate 16 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

“Around US$30 billion of China’s huge stimulus package is to be invested in energy conservation and ecological engineering. These large scale projects are going to have a major impact in driving awareness of green power and the desire for smaller-scale eco-friendly alternatives will escalate significantly, if not exponentially. Green is one of the new opportunities for entrepreneurs around the world, and e-commerce is clearly going to be the platform through which a significant amount of that business is conducted,” Wei concluded.

Source: http://uk.sys-con.com/

Alibaba.com and Hannover Fairs Shanghai Enter Partnership

Hong Kong, July 18, Alibaba.com, the most-visited B2B marketplace on the Internet in terms of user traffic, and Hannover Fairs Shanghai Ltd, (HFS), the Chinese subsidiary of Deutsche Messe, a world leading organizer of trade fairs and exhibitions, today signed a strategic partnership to promote CeBIT Asia to Alibaba.com's millions of buyers and sellers.

CeBIT Asia will be held from October 10-13, 2007 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre and is run by Hannover Fairs China Ltd. The annual event enjoys broad support from the ICT sectors and application industries, professional associations, and boasts a strong lineup of businesses from China and abroad, including Germany, Australia, USA, Korea, and India. Last year, CeBIT Asia attracted 324 exhibitors and 38,238 visitors. This year, the show will join hands with PTC Asia and CeMAT Asia and collectively is expected to draw more than 2,000 exhibitors and 70,000 visitors.

This partnership aims to unite the online and offline trade communities, providing global buyers and sellers with more opportunities to connect and trade. Exhibitors are expected to achieve a higher return on investment as this cooperation will lead to more promotions online and at the trade show, thereby improving deal closing rates.

The announcement is part of the growth of Alibaba.com's Trade Show Partnership program launched in February last year. The CeBIT Asia cooperation is the first phase in a partnership that could eventually include fairs in Europe, the United States and the rest of Asia.

"Our cooperation with Alibaba.com, one of the world's largest online B2B marketplaces, will help us draw more qualified visitors from across the world with a tangible willingness to invest and significantly extend the reach of CeBIT Asia," said Mr. Fu Yu, Managing Director of Hannover Fairs China Ltd. "Moreover, it will effectively expand the exhibition coverage from several days to all year round."

"This is a major step forward in our Trade Show Partnership program," said David Wei, President of Alibaba.com. "CeBIT combines innovative products and quality suppliers with a huge networking platform. Alibaba.com does the same in the virtual world. Electronic components and supplies is one of the most popular categories on Alibaba.com, so CeBIT Asia is an ideal event to kick off our collaboration with Deutsche Messe."

CeBIT Hannover is Deutsche Messe's flagship event and is the world's largest exhibition. It attracted 480,000 international visitors earlier this year. In addition to CeBIT, Deutsche Messe has a large portfolio of leading international events, including Hannover Messe (industrial technology) and Biotechnica (biotechnology). Its main exhibition facility in Hannover, Germany is the world's largest, measuring over one million square meters and attracting 1.79 million trade show visitors per year.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Alibaba.com and Infomedia Form Strategic Partnership in India

World's leading B2B online marketplace collaborates with India's largest B2B media company to provide Indian SMEs with the best solution for domestic and global trade

MUMBAI, 29 April 2008 - Alibaba.com Limited (SEHK: 1688), the world's leading B2B
e-commerce company, and Infomedia India Limited, India's largest Yellow Pages and special interest publishing company, today announced a multi-year strategic partnership designed to benefit small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in India.

The Alibaba.com and Infomedia partnership will combine the power of traditional print publishing with online media and e-commerce, providing Indian SMEs with a one-stop solution for global and domestic trade. Together they will create a strong online community of Indian business people and provide them with a single cost-effective channel to promote their products and source from quality suppliers in India and around the world. It will also provide SMEs in India with the latest industry news and technical developments in multi-media formats.

Prakash Iyer, Managing Director, Infomedia, said, "As India's largest Yellow Pages company – and now as part of the Network 18 group – Infomedia is delighted to bring Alibaba.com's strength and global reach to Indian businesses. We have a long history of helping SMEs grow their business and this partnership will help Indian companies realize their fullest potential worldwide. The Infomedia-Alibaba.com partnership will bring value to Indian SMEs by giving them a larger, multi-media business platform encompassing domestic and global trade services."

David Wei, Chief Executive Officer, Alibaba.com, said,"With its huge growth potential, India is a very important and strategic market for Alibaba.com and is a top priority for our global expansion plans. While Alibaba.com is the expert in helping small businesses trade internationally, Infomedia brings us a strong understanding of the Indian SME and B2B market. With Infomedia we have a strong local partner who can provide on-the-ground support for our members, including sales, marketing and customer service. We believe this alliance will help us become the dominant online B2B marketplace in India by the end of 2008."

India has more than 8 million SMEs, which account for almost 40 per cent of India's industrial output and employ around 30 million people. It is estimated that 3 million SMEs are engaged in B2B trade and around 1 million are in the export business. Alibaba.com has more than 400,000 members in India, already making it one of the country's largest B2B online marketplaces by member count. Alibaba.com launched a special India Channel in October 2007 to help Indian suppliers find local and global buyers for their products and services. The India Channel has been well received by members, with more than 20,000 Indian companies signing up each month since January 2008.

Founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba.com has built a global community of more than 27 million members from over 200 countries and regions. Thanks to Alibaba.com, small businesses around the world are going global and buyers and sellers of everything from automobile parts to evening dresses are finding their perfect trading partners faster and easier than ever before.

India is the second fastest growing major economy in the world. It had a GDP growth rate of 9.6% for the fiscal year 2006-2007 and is expected to grow by 8.7% this year. China, the world's fastest growing economy, is India's third largest export country. The Alibaba.com and Infomedia tie-up will help bridge two of the world's fastest growing economies and further promote trade between India and China.

source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Create a Better Tomorrow Together with Alibaba

Foshan Ouyad Electronic Co., Ltd is a manufacturer specialized in developing and producing new energy and power supplies. We focus on producing wind power system and solar power system. In addition to research and development departments for wind powered generator systems, we also have our own factories and assembly lines for producing and assembling wind powered generators. Besides, Ouyad enjoys independent Solar Panels, grid connect and off grid inverters, batteries production lines, etc. Our products are exported to countries and regions all over the world.

At first, we were only a registered member of China Alibaba.com, and meanwhile advertised on many foreign trade websites. But after several months’ trial and comparison, we found that Alibaba offered much more information than others and was really effective. So we kept on cooperating with Alibaba. Several years later, with the development of the company, we decided to explore more opportunities overseas. So we entered Alibaba trust pass and became a Gold Supplier in 2008. We receive some 10 to 15 inquiries every day from buyers worldwide and 80% of them are sincere inquiries. After we joined Alibaba.com, the number of orders from the overseas grew rapidly!

Alibaba does not only provide us valuable information and bring us more business opportunities; it also helps us make great progress in promotion and marketing. By attending the training courses held by Alibaba.com regularly, we learnt a lot from basic topics such as international trade etiquettes to more complicated subjects such as how to differentiate our company to stand out from our competitors. With those helpful advices and experiences, Ouyad will make every endeavor to reduce cost, improve quality of products and upgrade services so as to create a better tomorrow.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Alibaba, an Excellent Platform for Foreign Trade

Shenzhen Aoxing Audio Visual Equipment Co., Ltd., established in 1987, is a professional manufacturer of audio and visual equipments and related high-tech products. Specializing in supplying AV equipment and related peripheral products, our main product series now include projection screens, whiteboards, easel boards, overhead projectors, AV solutions and so on. As a professional global supplier, Shenzhen Aoxing is a modern enterprise of researching, producing, marketing and servicing as a whole. Focusing on ODM and OEM manufacturing, we are acknowledged as a professional global supplier. You are welcome to Aoxing at any time!

We got to know Alibaba.com since 2002 when Aoxing mainly focused on home market. But after contacting with Alibaba.com, We realized that it is a good international trading platform containing a big quantity of potential customers. So we decided to do foreign trade and presented our products to international market. We established good relations with Alibaba.com since then. It keeps on bringing big surprises to Aoxing's development. After 7-year cooperation with Alibaba.com, our company has developed into a large modernized enterprise of over1000 employees from a small factory with only a dozen men.

The Inquiry Operating System of Alibaba is very good and practical. It can timely provide suppliers with international inquiry information so that suppliers can reply the buyer's requirement and offer service immediately. It really plays a very important role in our transactions.

Among our present five major clients, there are two who established business relationships with us though this platform. They were looking for suppliers on Alibaba.com and sent inquiries to us. Only after 2 month's communication, we became good business partners.

source: http://news.alibaba.com/

The Key to International Market

Established in 1995, Hong Weilida Plastic Co., Ltd. is a professional manufacturer of all kinds of cosmetic bags, shopping bags, packaging bags, promotional bags and promotional gifts. We have a factory building covering an area of more than 6000 square meters and 500 employees. The factory enjoys heat sealing line and sewing line at the same time, so there are various materials for selection, such as PVC, EVA, TPU, non-woven, canvas, jute and other fabrics. Except for hundreds of standard items, with our own design department, we can conduct OEM business. Our products sell well in Europe, America, Japan, Korea and other countries and regions.

We should say "THANK YOU" to Alibaba, who helped us realize such a great achievement. At the beginning, we mainly targeted on domestic market. Ever since being a member of Alibaba, we started our foreign trade business. Through Alibaba, we knew many high-quality customers, one of whom keeps on purchasing the cosmetic bags every year, and the annual purchasing amount is usually more than $200,000.

Nowadays, more and more buyers know Alibaba, they will visit Alibaba website when they want to purchase the goods from China. There are lots of potential customers on Alibaba.com, so we believe our future is bright!!

source: http://news.alibaba.com/

More and More Innovation – Start from Alibaba

GUANGXI YULIN JIABAO MANUFACTURE OF COMMODITY CO., LTD, founded in 1997, is a professional manufacturer that specializes in household articles and kitchen units made from wire, rattan , wood and bamboo. Its standardized production workshops cover a land area of 70000 square meters. Since the establishment of the company, JIABAO has always attached great importance to the development of overseas market. The Overseas Sale Division is composed by 10 energetic young elites.

"To be of best quality, best service and best credit" has always been JIABAO's principle. With the efforts of our employees, our products enjoy good sales in EU, America, Africa, the Middle East countries, etc. During the past few years, our main outlets for export are introduction and promotion of our old customers and friends, company website presentations and fairs both at home and abroad. There are two points in common for buyers who are collected through traditional ways: 1st, they’ve already had settled suppliers; 2nd, they normally pay more attention to the current styles which are hot in their market instead of other new designs.

At this time when there has been an increasingly fierce competition in both domestic and foreign markets, to realize a better development of JIABAO, there is a need to continue to innovate and be creative. However, innovation under the traditional methods is far from enough. Therefore, we decided to have a try of network trade. Choosing a good network platform which has exciting influence is crucial for network trades. JIABAO started to choose B2B website in 2007 and finally, we selected Alibaba.com and became a "Golden supplier" in 2008. The reason why we chose Alibaba.com is that there are many professional traders who come from all over the world getting together in Alibaba.com. What's more, it has good reputation worldwide.

At the beginning, we didn't know how to make our products attractive and how to search big buyers on the B2B website. The service staffs of Alibaba Company come round in person to our company to teach us how to search big buyers and maintain our website. When we got in difficulties in our operation, we can call the Service Line “400-826-1688” for Golden Supplier for help, and could get the good solution from them at the very first time. We also have learned many precious experiences and methods through website traders' forum periodically held in Nanning and some professional training courses provided by Alibaba Company.

With our careful maintenance and constantly update, we gradually got some enquiries from many professional buyers overseas, and got to know many friends from every country by trade manager. One of them is a big American buyer who will visit our booth during The Spring Fair this year to conduct a face to face negotiation with us. Meanwhile, we grasped the market’s trend through this B2B website so that we can keep on designing and creating products to win the end-users' favor.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Extend overseas market through Alibaba B2B platform

Henan Boom Gelatin Co., Ltd. was founded in Oct, 2005. We started cooperation with Alibaba.com for products promotion and company propaganda since the establishment of the company.

We make a full use of this platform and pay a lot attention to it such as uploading the pictures of products timely and update the window array regularly. We receive many inquiries every week and always pay close attention to those valuable inquiries. On the basis of our main products such as gelatin and agar-agar, we also set foot in food additive and products of chemical industry in 2007. With the sustained business conception of "credit is the basis, quality is the first, and delivery just-in-time", we gained the high trust and good reputation from customers, which also laid a solid foundation for our strategy of diversification production and marketing.

We grew up with Alibaba in 2008. In 2008, we developed some new products, realized annual sales of $4 million, and made new progress in product and market diversification.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

LIJA celebrates spring arrivals with Customer Appreciation

Popular women's apparel designer Linda Hipp and her company, LIJA, celebrate the arrival of the brand's Spring 2009 collections with a Customer Appreciation event with offer at LIJAStyle.com through May 17.

Coinciding with the launch of LIJA's online showroom, the promotion encourages customers to explore the website and the brand's newly-introduced range of tennis and active apparel. With a focus on innovative style, femininity and superior quality, these collections feature a variety of luxurious, lightweight performance fabrics designed to enhance functionality, comfort and movement.

"As LIJA continues to expand, we wanted to thank our customers for their support," says Hipp. "Many of them have been with us since we introduced our golf collection more than a decade ago, and we want them to be some of the first to experience the pieces from our newest categories."

For Spring 2009, in conjunction with the launch of its new active and tennis collections, LIJA has debuted more than 200 pieces of golf and sportswear. Inspired by the glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age and American Spirit of the 1950s, these trend-setting styles span a diverse color palette ranging from Daiquiri and Margarita to Black and Silver.

LIJA is a staple in finer golf and non-golf retailers across North America, including world-renowned resorts and clubs like Riviera, Kiawah Island, The Greenbrier and Whistling Straits. The company's clothing is worn by scores of women golf professionals worldwide, including LPGA Tour star Leta Lindley, the 2008 LIJA Tour Style Leaders Grand Prize winner.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/

Alibaba.com, Kenfair Deepen Trade Show Partnership

Hong Kong, May 9, 2007 - Alibaba.com, the leading B2B e-commerce company in China and one of the largest B2B marketplaces on the Internet, today announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with Kenfair International (Holdings) Limited, a leading exhibitions organizer in Asia. Alibaba.com will be the official trade media partner for two Kenfair trade shows in October, promoting the events to its online community of more than 20 million small-and medium-sized enterprise customers in over 200 countries and territories.

Alibaba.com launched its Trade Show Partnership program in February 2006 to help trade show organizers increase attendance and extend the reach of their events by leveraging the resources of one of the world's largest online communities of importers and exporters. Alibaba.com's first successful cooperation with Kenfair was in October 2005, when it helped to attract significantly more qualified visitors to the 2005 Mega Show.

Herbert Ip, Chairman of Kenfair International (Holdings) Limited, said, "We are delighted to have Alibaba.com as the official trade media partner for Kenfair's trade shows. Our partnership will continue to unite the online and offline trade community and generate much wider exposure for our shows through Alibaba.com's huge network of members."

David Wei, President of Alibaba.com, said, "Kenfair and Alibaba.com are bringing the physical trade show and virtual marketplace together to give global buyers and sellers more opportunities to meet and trade. We will introduce our international buyers to two great shows in Asia and provide our suppliers with a new offline channel to market their products. We will continue to work with leading trade show operators around the world to create value for our customers."

Mega Show Part 1 is the largest Hong Kong trade show for gifts, housewares and toys and attracts 3,500 exhibitors and an average of 60,000 visitors every year. It will be held this year from October 21 to 24. Mega Macao will be the first large scale international trade fair in Macao for gifts, premiums, home textiles and consumer electronics and will run from October 18 to 20.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Choosing after Trust

Shenzhen Yada Cosmetics Co., Ltd. (Sino-American Joint Venture Enterprise), founded in 1992, is located in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. Based on OEM business, we specialize in researching and producing plastic color cosmetics, ranging from packaging to finished products. For the past 17 years, adhering to the principle of "Quality is the lifeline of the Enterprise", we have been keeping on improving the company's management and products development ability so as to adapt quickly to new developments.

During the initial stage of founding, we mainly sold our own brand—YADA, and supplemented by conducting foreign trade. Since 2000, we began to follow the way of OEM and OBM business. Due to the lake of knowledge on international market and necessary certificates required by foreign countries and absence of qualified foreign trade staff, we met a lot of unexpected difficulties. Luckily, we overcame all of the difficulties and the company developed faster and faster. Today, our products are directly exported to many countries and regions such as Europe, America, Africa, etc.

However, while we well maintained the relationships with our long-term clients, we came across a bottle-neck in developing new clients. At that moment, the E-business came into our mind. But there were so many B2B platforms that it puzzled us on how to choose the most effective one on the premise of limited budget. Then, we got to know Alibaba.com, and selected it as our platform without hesitation. We chose Alibaba, not because it offered a favorable price. We could not help impressing by its perfect training system and good image at home and abroad. We do trust Alibaba.

Our cooperation with Alibaba has already entered the third year now. Although we felt a little disappointed as we didn't gain what we expected last two years, their sincerity keeps us cooperating with them this year. With their patient and sincere support, we believe that our company will have a promised prospect in the New Year.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

MyTradeBook.com launches free B2B marketplace tool

MyTradeBook.com on Thursday announced the launch of a free web based B2B marketplace tool that allows businesses to build networks, engage in interest groups, advertise products and services to buy and sell, recruit human resources and partner with organizations related to their business ecosystem.

The tool will be initially launched in India and United Kingdom followed by other English speaking countries and major world economies.

Given the current economic scenario, this tool which is targeted at the SME (small and medium enterprises) segment offers Indian businesses a free online platform that helps create new markets and reach out to potential global customers.

Announcing the launch of the MyTradeBook.com, Mr. Richard Tunstall, Managing Director, MyTradeBook.com said, “There are many small & medium businesses that have products & services with global appeal, but are constrained with limited marketing budgets, which become even more pronounced in the current economic scenario. MyTradeBook.com is designed to cut through the clutter of the existing B2B marketplaces by offering users effective ways to reach out, collaborate and showcase their products and services in a much more targeted fashion. What’s more important is that they can do it for free.”

Amalgamating the concepts of business networking and B2B marketplace, this unique tool allows users to join as well as create Interest Groups. This facilitates collaboration and discussion between users on their areas of interest opening up avenues for generation of new ideas and business leads.

Users can also advertise their products and services for free in the Trade Pages of the tool. These posted adverts, as well as being viewed by all site visitors, can also be linked to and displayed in various Interest Groups based on product categories, offering users an opportunity to target their adverts to the most relevant people.

Apart from offering users, the ability to search Trade Page adverts, crucially MyTradeBook.com, also allows users to share Trade Page posts with other social networking sites and via email, creating viral marketing opportunities.

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/

‘Face crisis with correct & positive attitude’ – CEO, Natural Group

“There is not enough darkness in the entire world to put out the light of even one small candle”, said, Robert Alden. Mr SG Shelby, Chairman of the Bangladesh based Natural Group comes across as an optimist who always see light at the end of the dark tunnel.

The ongoing global recessionary trends have taken their toll of the textile and garment sector in each and every country. Bangladesh is no exception. Exports from the sector have fallen by nearly 30 percent in the first three months of the current year.

Despite that, the Chairman of Natural Group displays a positive exuberance, contrary to the prevailing trends. Set up in 1995, Natural Group now has eight companies under its fold and is spread across the value chain from fabric washing to apparel manufacturing.

Fibre2fashion spoke to Mr SG Shelby regarding the current depressing situation, a fall out of the global economic turmoil and which has created a slowdown unprecedented in history and has happened only once, way back in 1929.

We asked Mr Shelby his opinion on the belief amongst the industry that recession in a way is a boon for emerging countries like Bangladesh, to which he said, “Recession in the world economy is a curse to all under developing countries and it has started to touch Bangladesh and its impact is reflected all over the economy”.

Next we asked him as to what the industry should do in order to seize the opportunity in the current situation, to which he replied by saying, “All should go ahead with a correct and positive attitude and meet the situation head on”.

To another question of the strategies employed by his company to achieve the targets this year, he optimistically said, “We are trying to find out the new opportunities along with those existing, so as to balance this year's target”.

Towards concluding the interview, we requested him to tender his advice to the industry, to face the impact of the crisis head on, to which he gave a very simplistic but important solution by saying, “Industry should adopt and link with the latest technologies”.

Source: Fiber2fashion

More and More Innovation – Start from Alibaba

GUANGXI YULIN JIABAO MANUFACTURE OF COMMODITY CO., LTD, founded in 1997, is a professional manufacturer that specializes in household articles and kitchen units made from wire, rattan , wood and bamboo. Its standardized production workshops cover a land area of 70000 square meters. Since the establishment of the company, JIABAO has always attached great importance to the development of overseas market. The Overseas Sale Division is composed by 10 energetic young elites.

"To be of best quality, best service and best credit" has always been JIABAO's principle. With the efforts of our employees, our products enjoy good sales in EU, America, Africa, the Middle East countries, etc. During the past few years, our main outlets for export are introduction and promotion of our old customers and friends, company website presentations and fairs both at home and abroad. There are two points in common for buyers who are collected through traditional ways: 1st, they’ve already had settled suppliers; 2nd, they normally pay more attention to the current styles which are hot in their market instead of other new designs.

At this time when there has been an increasingly fierce competition in both domestic and foreign markets, to realize a better development of JIABAO, there is a need to continue to innovate and be creative. However, innovation under the traditional methods is far from enough. Therefore, we decided to have a try of network trade. Choosing a good network platform which has exciting influence is crucial for network trades. JIABAO started to choose B2B website in 2007 and finally, we selected Alibaba.com and became a "Golden supplier" in 2008. The reason why we chose Alibaba.com is that there are many professional traders who come from all over the world getting together in Alibaba.com. What's more, it has good reputation worldwide.

At the beginning, we didn't know how to make our products attractive and how to search big buyers on the B2B website. The service staffs of Alibaba Company come round in person to our company to teach us how to search big buyers and maintain our website. When we got in difficulties in our operation, we can call the Service Line “400-826-1688” for Golden Supplier for help, and could get the good solution from them at the very first time. We also have learned many precious experiences and methods through website traders' forum periodically held in Nanning and some professional training courses provided by Alibaba Company.

With our careful maintenance and constantly update, we gradually got some enquiries from many professional buyers overseas, and got to know many friends from every country by trade manager. One of them is a big American buyer who will visit our booth during The Spring Fair this year to conduct a face to face negotiation with us. Meanwhile, we grasped the market’s trend through this B2B website so that we can keep on designing and creating products to win the end-users' favor.

Source: Alibaba

Sending Sales Qualified Leads Boosts Marketing’s Stature

ATLANTA - (Business Wire) In this economy, sales reps can feel like they’re searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack when seeking qualified leads. USA Financial Marketing® changed that paradigm using Silverpop Engage B2B’s powerful marketing automation solution to score and nurture leads, increasing the number of qualified leads sent to sales by 50 percent.

USA Financial is an independent marketing organization that wholesales annuities and life insurance, and provides independent financial advisers marketing and financial adviser tools. The company's marketing team was delivering hundreds of leads to sales every month, but it was unable to determine the quality of the leads. The marketing technologies USA Financial employed provided no insight into its marketing programs' effectiveness or ROI, and wasn’t integrated with technologies used by the sales force.

"Both our marketing and sales teams were frustrated," said Raeanne Thompson, vice president of marketing services, USA Financial. "The sales team was spending too much time trying to determine if prospects were qualified, and most of the leads marketing turned over to sales were ultimately not converting into opportunities."

USA Financial worked with The Annuitas Group, a Silverpop Engage B2B strategic partner, to help it build a lead-management process that included database segmentation, lead qualification, lead scoring and lead nurturing. Using surveys powered by Engage B2B, USA Financial began to ask prospects questions that captured important qualifying data. As more information about each lead came in, Silverpop’s Engage B2B lead scoring capabilities would automatically identify prospects that would benefit from a nurture program as well as those ready to be routed to sales.

"Because Engage B2B is integrated with Salesforce.com, our sales team can feed reporting data back into the marketing solution," Thompson said. "This allowed us to implement a closed-loop system that gave valuable insights to both sales and marketing."

“Companies benefit from a closed-loop marketing system that helps ensure cross-organizational data consistency, aligns sales and marketing goals and provides a view into leads at each stage of the sales cycle,” said Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop. “It allows marketers to send qualified leads directly to each sales representative's CRM view, allowing the sales team to focus its time and energy on leads that are ready to buy.”

In addition to helping marketing better qualify leads, USA Financial uses Engage B2B to communicate with prospects and increase attendance at its monthly Discovery Day event, a major conversion driver in which potential clients get hands-on training in the company’s products and services.

"There is a 70 percent likelihood that once a financial adviser attends our Discovery Day event, the adviser will engage with USA Financial and implement the strategies and services we provide," Thompson said. "Because we are engaging with much more highly qualified advisers, the number of Discovery Day attendees has increased significantly, which has a considerable impact on the success of our marketing program."

Before Engage B2B, USA Financial would spend thousands of dollars to launch a program and not know how effective it was. Today, they can monitor the success and performance of their campaigns. "We can move forward with the marketing tactics and channels that provide us the most 'bang for the buck,'" Thompson said.

Source: http://www.earthtimes.org/

Alibaba Group Makes Strategic Investment in Koubei.com

Investment in leading Chinese community-based classifieds website to complement Alibaba Group's e-commerce portfolio, help drive e-commerce growth in China

Hangzhou, China, 30 October 2006-Alibaba Group, China's leading e-commerce company and the world's largest online B2B marketplace for global trade, announced today that it has entered into an agreement for a strategic investment in Koubei.com, one of China's largest classified listing and community websites. With the investment in Koubei, terms of which were not disclosed, Alibaba has gained a significant exposure in one of China's fastest-growing e-commerce segments.

Koubei.com, which means "word of mouth" in Chinese, was founded in Hangzhou in June 2004. In little over two years, it has become one of China's most popular classified listing and community websites. It offers local classifieds and discussion forums for people to find and share information on apartment rentals, restaurants, entertainment, employment, goods and services, and just about anything else. Koubei.com has sites tailored to multiple cities in China.

"Community-based classified listings are an essential part of e-commerce," said Tian Jian, Vice-President of Alibaba's investment and acquisition group, a newly formed effort to leverage the company's industry know-how and financial resources towards developing promising young companies that bring strategic synergies with Alibaba's core businesses. "Besides buying and selling products online, people want a marketplace to trade services and share information about service providers. With our investment in Koubei, we're partnering with the team that pioneered the online classified marketplace in China and opening up another channel to grow our existing e-commerce community of more than 40 million consumers and businesses in China."

The deal makes Alibaba Group the only Internet company in China with a leading position in the key growth sectors of business-to-business e-commerce, consumer e-commerce, online payments, communications and search, and now community-based online classifieds.

About Koubei.com

Koubei.com was founded in Hangzhou in June 2004 and is one of China's largest online classified listing companies. It offers local classifieds and discussion forums for multiple cities in China allowing people to find and share information on apartment rentals, restaurants, entertainment, employment, goods and services, and just about anything else. Koubei.com has over two million registered users.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Alibaba.com and Koelnmesse Form Strategic Alliance in Asia

Hong Kong, July 20, 2007 - Alibaba.com, the most-visited B2B marketplace on the Internet in terms of user traffic, and Koelnmesse, one of the world's largest trade fair organizers, today formed a strategic alliance covering joint marketing activities for trade fairs in Asia.

Alibaba.com and Koelnmesse will initially collaborate to promote the China International Hardware Show, the world's second largest hardware show, and leading food fairs including Sweets China, International Sweet&SnackTec China 2007, World of Food China and International FoodTec China. The two companies intend to explore a similar partnership arrangement for trade fairs in Europe.

"This alliance is a win-win for both parties," said Mr. Michael Dreyer, Vice President Asia Pacific, Koelnmesse. "We are confident that Alibaba.com's Trade Show Partnership program will help us effectively promote our events to the online community and bring in more participants. Alibaba.com will benefit by promoting their online service to buyers and sellers who participate in our events."

David Wei, President of Alibaba.com, said, "We are delighted that Koelnmesse, one of the world's premier trade show organizers, has joined our Trade Show Partnership program. Our strength in Asia and Koelnmesse's well-established base in Europe complement each other well. By working together, we can become an even more powerful facilitator of world trade for buyers and sellers everywhere."

Alibaba.com's Trade Show Partnership program is bringing together the combined forces of leading trade fair and exhibition companies and one of the world's largest online B2B marketplaces. This partnership is aimed at increasing attendance at Koelnmesse trade shows, promoting Alibaba.com to Koelnmesse's international and German domestic customers and giving exhibitors and buyers the benefit of the best sourcing opportunities online and offline.

In 2006, Koelnmesse held its three food fairs in Shanghai concurrently for the first time, creating immense synergy for different sectors of the food production chain. The fairs received almost 30,000 trade visitors and featured around 500 exhibitors.

Around the world, Koelnmesse organized 74 trade fairs and exhibitions last year in over 25 trade sectors, including major trade fairs such as International Hardware Fair/PRACTICAL WORLD, Asia-Pacific Sourcing, spoga + gafa, Anuga and ISM. Its main exhibition ground in Cologne, Germany attracts around two million buyers from more than 200 countries every year. For more information on Koelnmesse trade fairs and events abroad, please visit www.koelnmesse.com.

source: http://news.alibaba.com/

The global trade in green products is increasing dramatically, according to popular searches on Alibaba.com, the world’s leading B2B e-commerce company.

Analysts had forecast that the multibillion-dollar green products market would lose momentum as consumers worldwide curtail their spending due to the economic downturn, but this trend is not supported by data collected by Alibaba.com. In fact, searches for alternative energy resources such as solar and wind, electric cars, bio-diesel and organic products increased steadily on Alibaba.com over the past two years, driven by growing mainstream environmental awareness, especially in developed countries along with large-scale government initiatives towards clean energy.

Historic rises in oil prices, which peaked at a record US$147 per barrel in the third quarter of 2008, further intensified global attention on the need for alternative energy. This is clearly reflected in the 67 percent increase in searches, particularly for solar energy products, on Alibaba.com during the same period compared to the third quarter of 2007, when oil prices were just US$77 per barrel.

Solar-powered energy and organic products are the fastest growing green sectors on Alibaba.com, increasing 71 percent and 68 percent year-on-year, respectively, in the first quarter of 2009. Solar lights are among the hottest green items sold online as some countries in Europe as well as the US move to replace traditional street lights with sun-powered alternatives. This trend is not just at a governmental level, as businesses and factories also move towards solar power for their outdoor lighting. Power savings and consumption reduction used to be the main objective for this shift, but the recession has brought other imperatives to the forefront, such as cost cutting.

“Despite the downturn, online trade in environmentally friendly products is holding up well. This is because going green not only saves money but also creates money, especially as more entrepreneurs develop innovative products to support growing global demand. Also, many consumer-based green options, such as switching to solar lights, both make economic sense and protect the environment. Entrepreneurs and SMEs are realizing that green is good business, as long as there is a fiscal motivation as well as an environmental one,” said David Wei, the CEO of Alibaba.com.

While consumers are lured to the “feel good” and cost-saving benefits of the green sector, entrepreneurs see a new growth industry with lots of business potential. Green technology is becoming more accessible to businesses of all sizes as costs are declining, and favorable government legislation and tax subsidies make it more sustainable. All these factors have led to exponential growth of the market for green goods.

“Climate change is having a positive impact on our business. Our sales have been growing by 30 to 40 percent over the past three years thanks to strong demand for green products from customers in the US, Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia. Solar lighting products are our most popular selling items,” said Xiao Benpeng, the International Trade Manager for Huangshi Donper Mech-Electric Group Solar Energy Co., Ltd., a Hubei-based company specializing in high-tech solar energy products and a member of Alibaba.com.

According to US President Barack Obama's stimulus bill, 10 percent of the funding will be allocated to environmental projects. In his inauguration speech, Obama pledged that America “will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories,” which has set the tone for the West, while China is committed to generate 16 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

“Around US$30 billion of China’s huge stimulus package is to be invested in energy conservation and ecological engineering. These large scale projects are going to have a major impact in driving awareness of green power and the desire for smaller-scale eco-friendly alternatives will escalate significantly, if not exponentially. Green is one of the new opportunities for entrepreneurs around the world, and e-commerce is clearly going to be the platform through which a significant amount of that business is conducted,” Wei concluded.

Source: http://uk.sys-con.com/node/927812

Alibaba.com Opens Taiwan Office

Launch of Gold Supplier Membership to Boost Taiwan’s Export Competitiveness

Taipei, Taiwan – July 24, 2008 – Alibaba.com today opened its fourth functional office outside mainland China. The new Taipei office will be able to better serve its 40,000 local members and enable more small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan to grow their business through e-commerce. Alibaba.com's three websites – for global trade, domestic trade in mainland China and trade with Japan – collectively form a business community of close to 30 million registered users from over 240 countries and regions.

Taiwan is a priority market for Alibaba.com and the company is committed to bringing global trade opportunities to Taiwan SMEs by helping them reach millions of buyers and sellers around the world. Alibaba.com is the only business-to-business e-commerce company that connects its Taiwan members with potential trading partners in mainland China, emerging markets like India and developed markets like Japan, Europe and the US on one single platform.

In 2007, there were over 1.2 million SMEs in Taiwan, accounting for around 98% of all
enterprises[1] and more than 220,000 of them were engaged in export related businesses[2]. With the saturation and slowing of Taiwan's domestic market, it has become more crucial for local SMEs to engage in international trade to stay competitive. However, official statistics estimate that SMEs contribute only around 18% of Taiwan's total export sales. This compares to around 40% of exports contributed by SMEs in South Korea and India, and over 60% by SMEs in mainland China.

Steve Kang, Senior Business Manager, Alibaba.com Taiwan, commented, "In recent years, fierce competition and a flat domestic economy have cut into the profits of Taiwan businesses and traditional cost saving measures are no longer enough. SMEs in Taiwan need to increase their margins by finding new customers overseas and Alibaba.com can help them tap into the global marketplace."

Alibaba.com recently launched its Gold Supplier membership package in Taiwan. This paid service enables suppliers to gain more exposure to buyers on Alibaba.com's international marketplace by providing them with a premium storefront, priority placement in search results and high quality customer service. The Taipei office will provide local customer service, marketing and sales support, as well as conducting offline education and training for its Taiwan customers. Currently, Alibaba.com has about 2,000 paying members in Taiwan.

[1] According to the 2007 White Paper on SMEs published by the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan
[2] According to the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA)

source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Mercer Chooses Sterling Commerce To Facilitate E-Comms with NZ Inland Revenue

Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) company, today announced that Mercer, a leading global provider of consulting, outsourced and investment services, has selected the Sterling Collaboration Network, an on demand business-to-business (B2B) network, to safely and securely exchange electronic communications specifically related to superannuation with the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department.

In existence for over 30 years, Sterling Collaboration Network provides connections to over 90 other public and private networks and manages as many as 4.5 million B2B documents per day with more than 99.9 percent reliability. It will enable Mercer to automate the flow of information, including retirement benefit information to and from Mercer and the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department.

Mercer works with clients to solve their most complex benefit and human capital issues, designing and helping manage health, retirement and other benefits. The company conducted a lengthy market evaluation and chose Sterling Commerce based on its strong market footprint, brand reputation, and proven technical expertise in being able to transmit high volumes of messages in a secure and reliable fashion.

“We reviewed several solutions but were impressed with the scalability and proven expertise of the Sterling Collaboration Network. This was confirmed when we signed on to the network as this was both a rapid and smooth transition which enabled us to continue offering a seamless service to our clients.

“Since going live with Sterling Collaboration Network, Mercer and its clients have reaped the benefits of a faster speed of messaging service and an overall leap in the quality of document visibility and transparency,” said Andrew Godfrey, Chief Operating Officer, Outsourcing, Mercer.

Sterling Collaboration Network simplifies trading partner relationships by eliminating all paper-based transactions and providing end-to-end visibility and control over the business processes shared with outside companies. It eliminates all paper-based transactions and removes the technical complexity in dealing with the technical requirements of the trading community. With this solution, companies are able to securely and reliably exchange business documents, making it simpler to automate their B2B processes to increase their competitiveness and productivity.

“Sterling Commerce has performed as a professional organisation with the capacity to deliver a smooth deployment within set timeframes and provide ongoing excellence in its quality of delivery,” said Godfrey.

Source: http://www.itwire.com/

E-Business Survey -- Special Report: Winning Ways

Far Eastern Economic Review

THE REVIEW'S E-BUSINESS survey shows that small and medium-sized enterprises tend to invest much less in doing business on-line than their larger competitors. Maybe one reason they aren't spending so much is that they can rely on on-line B2B market places. True, it means they surrender some control, but they can cut costs to a minimum and expose their products to large numbers of buyers all over the world.

That's certainly the need addressed by Hong Kong-based Alibaba.com, which, by a narrow margin, was voted the most popular B2B Web site by readers of the REVIEW's e-mail newsletter.

Alibaba.com's founder, Jack Ma, has always stressed that his target customers are small businesses -- in his own words, "shrimps" and not "whales." On a typical day, the on-line community trading on the Alibaba.com Web site will contain around 50,000 buyers and 120,000 sellers from more than 200 countries.

But it seems that, in absolute terms, the companies that provide B2B exchange software and services are still at the shrimp stage of development.

More than 70% of the 4,846 people who responded to the REVIEW's e-business survey said they simply didn't have a favourite B2B site in their industry. Of the 20 prominent sites we suggested, most ended up with fewer votes than they have employees. Alibaba.com got the most votes -- a little over 4% of the total. Four other companies, two of them based in Asia and two in the United States (ariba.com, asia2b.com, commerceone.com and globalsources.com) got around 3% each.

The lack of dominant players isn't surprising, says James Wang, an Internet analyst with Merrill Lynch Taiwan. It's a sign of an immature market. "You're seeing that some companies like Ariba and Commerce One are gaining some traction over local sites. Within three to five years we'll start to see the winners," he says.

Support from only 3%-4% of a market may seem like a tenuous toehold, but business-to-business transactions over the Internet are potentially a very big pie. The total value of global commerce is predicted to exceed $50 trillion by 2005, with as much as 10% of that being conducted on-line, according to various analysts. Operators of B2B platforms don't necessarily need to expand their market share beyond a few percent, but with competing market places a mere mouse click away, they do need to work hard to hold on to the customers they have.

Companies coming into the market late with a "me too" approach are unlikely to succeed, says Wang. "There are a lot of local and regional players who are trying to reinvent the wheel." And B2B service providers who fail to look for customers across national or regional boundaries may be trying to build a niche where none exists: "The market's global," he says.

Alibaba.com is a good example of this. The company has its roots in China, home of founder Jack Ma, and more than half of the exchange's participants are based in China.

However, the rest come from all over the world, with a notable proportion from developing markets and poor countries that normally don't figure very prominently in e-business statistics. During the past few months, Alibaba has hosted an Albanian buyer of motorbikes, an Algerian company in search of computer-memory modules, as well as sellers of silk in Cambodia and cashew nuts in Burkina Faso.

source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Alibaba.com and Infomedia Form Strategic Partnership in India

World's leading B2B online marketplace collaborates with India's largest B2B media company to provide Indian SMEs with the best solution for domestic and global trade

MUMBAI, 29 April 2008 - Alibaba.com Limited (SEHK: 1688), the world's leading B2B
e-commerce company, and Infomedia India Limited, India's largest Yellow Pages and special interest publishing company, today announced a multi-year strategic partnership designed to benefit small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in India.

The Alibaba.com and Infomedia partnership will combine the power of traditional print publishing with online media and e-commerce, providing Indian SMEs with a one-stop solution for global and domestic trade. Together they will create a strong online community of Indian business people and provide them with a single cost-effective channel to promote their products and source from quality suppliers in India and around the world. It will also provide SMEs in India with the latest industry news and technical developments in multi-media formats.

Prakash Iyer, Managing Director, Infomedia, said, "As India's largest Yellow Pages company – and now as part of the Network 18 group – Infomedia is delighted to bring Alibaba.com's strength and global reach to Indian businesses. We have a long history of helping SMEs grow their business and this partnership will help Indian companies realize their fullest potential worldwide. The Infomedia-Alibaba.com partnership will bring value to Indian SMEs by giving them a larger, multi-media business platform encompassing domestic and global trade services."

David Wei, Chief Executive Officer, Alibaba.com, said,"With its huge growth potential, India is a very important and strategic market for Alibaba.com and is a top priority for our global expansion plans. While Alibaba.com is the expert in helping small businesses trade internationally, Infomedia brings us a strong understanding of the Indian SME and B2B market. With Infomedia we have a strong local partner who can provide on-the-ground support for our members, including sales, marketing and customer service. We believe this alliance will help us become the dominant online B2B marketplace in India by the end of 2008."

India has more than 8 million SMEs, which account for almost 40 per cent of India's industrial output and employ around 30 million people. It is estimated that 3 million SMEs are engaged in B2B trade and around 1 million are in the export business. Alibaba.com has more than 400,000 members in India, already making it one of the country's largest B2B online marketplaces by member count. Alibaba.com launched a special India Channel in October 2007 to help Indian suppliers find local and global buyers for their products and services. The India Channel has been well received by members, with more than 20,000 Indian companies signing up each month since January 2008.

Founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba.com has built a global community of more than 27 million members from over 200 countries and regions. Thanks to Alibaba.com, small businesses around the world are going global and buyers and sellers of everything from automobile parts to evening dresses are finding their perfect trading partners faster and easier than ever before.

India is the second fastest growing major economy in the world. It had a GDP growth rate of 9.6% for the fiscal year 2006-2007 and is expected to grow by 8.7% this year. China, the world's fastest growing economy, is India's third largest export country. The Alibaba.com and Infomedia tie-up will help bridge two of the world's fastest growing economies and further promote trade between India and China.

About Alibaba.com Limited

Alibaba.com (HKSE: 1688), a member of the Alibaba Group of companies, is the world's leading B2B e-commerce company. Our international marketplace (www.Alibaba.com) focuses on global importers and exporters and our China marketplace (www.Alibaba.com.cn) focuses on suppliers and buyers trading domestically in China. Together, our marketplaces form a community of more than 27 million registered users from over 200 countries and regions.

About Infomedia India Limited

Infomedia India Limited is India's leading media company with strong market presence in diverse business areas spanning Yellow Pages, Magazine Publishing, Printing Services and Publishing Outsourcing. A pan-Indian network covering 26 cities with over 2,200 employees gives Infomedia a national footprint. The Company is the undisputed market leader in Yellow Pages and Special Interest Publishing and is one of the most respected contract printers in the country. Infomedia has expanded into the Publishing Outsourcing segment and is well placed to consolidate its position in this booming market with tremendous growth potential. Infomedia is a part of the Network 18 group – India's fastest growing media conglomerate.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

David Wei Joins Alibaba.com as President

Former President of B&Q China brings solid operational experience and industry expertise to drive expansion of Alibaba's business-to-business marketplaces

Hangzhou, China, 20 November 2006 - Alibaba.com, the leading B2B e-commerce company in China and one of the largest B2B marketplaces on the Internet, today announced that David Wei has joined the company as president. Mr. Wei will be responsible for Alibaba's two B2B marketplaces, Alibaba International and Alibaba China. Collectively the two websites have more than 18 million registered members in over 200 countries and territories.

The appointment comes as the Alibaba Group restructures its operations into two divisions: one B2B division, including the Alibaba.com websites, and one consumer division, including the Taobao, Alipay and Yahoo! China businesses.

"David brings a strong combination of leadership, management experience and industry expertise," said Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba Group. "David's extensive experience in growing a large-scale retail and sourcing organization will be instrumental to further building our success as a global e-commerce company serving customers around the world."

Mr. Wei said: "Alibaba.com is a company I have long admired not only for its foresight and vision but for its steadfast commitment to creating value for customers. The company has exciting opportunities ahead and it's a great honor for me to join its leadership team."

Prior to joining Alibaba.com, Mr. Wei served as President of B&Q China since June 2002, and Chief Representative of Kingfisher Asia Limited since June 2003. During his tenure as President of B&Q China, Mr. Wei grew the company from five stores and 1,300 employees to 55 stores and 13,000 employees in 23 cities in mainland China, making it the third largest foreign retailer in China. While at B&Q China, he also played a leading role in growing B&Q's global sourcing operation.

Mr. Wei was the managing director and head of investment banking at Orient Securities Company Ltd. from 1998 to 2000 and worked at Coopers&Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) from 1995 to 1998. He graduated from the London Business School and holds a bachelor's degree in international business management from Shanghai International Studies University.

Mr. Wei serves as the Vice Chairman of the China Retail Chain Association, plays a leading role in a number of industry associations and will continue to serve as a non-executive director for several companies.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/

Alibaba.com and Koelnmesse Form Strategic Alliance in Asia

Hong Kong, July 20, 2007 - Alibaba.com, the most-visited B2B marketplace on the Internet in terms of user traffic, and Koelnmesse, one of the world's largest trade fair organizers, today formed a strategic alliance covering joint marketing activities for trade fairs in Asia.

Alibaba.com and Koelnmesse will initially collaborate to promote the China International Hardware Show, the world's second largest hardware show, and leading food fairs including Sweets China, International Sweet&SnackTec China 2007, World of Food China and International FoodTec China. The two companies intend to explore a similar partnership arrangement for trade fairs in Europe.

"This alliance is a win-win for both parties," said Mr. Michael Dreyer, Vice President Asia Pacific, Koelnmesse. "We are confident that Alibaba.com's Trade Show Partnership program will help us effectively promote our events to the online community and bring in more participants. Alibaba.com will benefit by promoting their online service to buyers and sellers who participate in our events."

David Wei, President of Alibaba.com, said, "We are delighted that Koelnmesse, one of the world's premier trade show organizers, has joined our Trade Show Partnership program. Our strength in Asia and Koelnmesse's well-established base in Europe complement each other well. By working together, we can become an even more powerful facilitator of world trade for buyers and sellers everywhere."

Alibaba.com's Trade Show Partnership program is bringing together the combined forces of leading trade fair and exhibition companies and one of the world's largest online B2B marketplaces. This partnership is aimed at increasing attendance at Koelnmesse trade shows, promoting Alibaba.com to Koelnmesse's international and German domestic customers and giving exhibitors and buyers the benefit of the best sourcing opportunities online and offline.

In 2006, Koelnmesse held its three food fairs in Shanghai concurrently for the first time, creating immense synergy for different sectors of the food production chain. The fairs received almost 30,000 trade visitors and featured around 500 exhibitors.

Around the world, Koelnmesse organized 74 trade fairs and exhibitions last year in over 25 trade sectors, including major trade fairs such as International Hardware Fair/PRACTICAL WORLD, Asia-Pacific Sourcing, spoga + gafa, Anuga and ISM. Its main exhibition ground in Cologne, Germany attracts around two million buyers from more than 200 countries every year. For more information on Koelnmesse trade fairs and events abroad, please visit www.koelnmesse.com.

Source: http://news.alibaba.com/