With market share of more than 67 percent of China's online shoppers, Taobao.com opens doors to large manufacturers and retailers
HANGZHOU, China, 10 May 2006-Alibaba Group announced today the launch of business-to-consumer (B2C) services on its Taobao.com online consumer marketplace. Already China's largest online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace, Taobao.com is expanding its e-commerce model to include products and services provided by major manufacturers and retailers.
"While American B2C models have failed to succeed in China, Taobao's model will make B2C a reality in China," said Toto Sun, Taobao.com's General Manager. "Because we are simply connecting large sellers to consumers, rather than taking possession of the goods and serving as a middleman, we are offering a solution that will benefit both manufacturers and consumers in China."
Already, Taobao.com has signed up manufacturers and retailers including Motorola, Nokia, Haier, Aigo, Lining, Adidas, Giordano, and UT Starcom. In the coming months, Taobao will aggressively expand its B2C services to include additional leading manufacturers and brands.
"Taobao's growth has been based on four pillars - trust and safety, the AliPay payment system, search and an active marketplace," Sun said. "With Taobao's trusted e-commerce community now leading the market, the site is the ideal channel for manufacturers and retailers to reach millions of consumers and to expand as online shopping becomes a part of everyday life in China."
More than 10 million small- and medium-sized businesses use other Alibaba Group online marketplaces for B2B marketing and sales, and Taobao.com expects to see a large number of Alibaba.com members joining its new program along with leading international companies.
Taobao.com's announcement comes after the China Internet Network Information Center announced this week the results of a new e-commerce study, which found Taobao holding 67.3 percent market share in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, versus eBay China's 29.1 percent. The recent data indicate significant market share growth from the fourth quarter of 2005, when Taobao.com was found to hold 57.7 percent market share by independent research firm Analysys International. Another recent study, by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, found Taobao.com to be the clear market leader in China, with 72.2 percent market share.
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.
Taobao.com now has more than 26 million product listings, nearly 20 million registered users, and over 100 million page views per day. In 2005, Taobao's transaction volume, or Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), reached US$1billion, up 700 percent from 2004. AliPay, China's leading online payment solution, recently reached 150,000 transactions per day.
Source: http://news.alibaba.com/
Drop shipping, also known as direct shipping, should be in your lexicon if you are a manufacturer, supplier or sell your products through retailers. If you are a manufacturer or wholesaler who is noticing the trend that retailers want to carry less inventory and order smaller quantities, you will find this blog article to be full of helpful information. If you are a retailer looking to add products to your store; but, don't want to hold inventory, this article may help you decide whether to expand your product catalog with drop ship products.
This blog post will cover the basics of drop shipping, some reasons for the growth in drop shipping and how a manufacture can start drop shipping for retailers. I'm not going to profess to know every way to offer your distribution channel drop ship; but I'll cover the basics of manufacture drop shipping, and I hope readers will comment with thoughts and recommendations to push the conversation further
You may also find value in my earlier post (to which this is a follow-up) on ToyFair 2009, where I outlined drop ship fulfillment as a critical feature routinely requested by retailers and offered by toy inventors and manufactures.
What is Drop Ship and Why Should You Care?
Drop ship fulfillment is the epitome of "just-in-time" inventory. With drop shipping’s model, the retailer does not keep any merchandise in stock. Instead, buyer orders are sent directly to the manufacturer or wholesaler, who then ships the item to the buyer. Drop shipping is common among e-tailers, catalogers or mail order businesses that offer a very large product catalog to retailers that can’t or don’t want to invest in inventory..
Let’s look at a fictional example
Rob the Retailer owns RobsElectronicToys.com and has been successful selling RC cars, model robots and other electronic gizmos. Rob has some bestsellers that he knows he can sell if he buys inventory, but his warehouse is small and he doesn't yet want to outsource order fulfillment to add capacity. Before he invests in a new product he likes to test it. Rob has been looking at stocking some expensive new electronic games like Rock Band™ and some expensive Karaoke machines. He is concerned that these may not fit his target niche; but, he thinks they will sell well. Calling around to manufacturers and wholesale suppliers, he realizes that to make a return he would need to invest a lot of money into inventory to get the best pricing breaks. He's nervous and just wants to test the market for a few months. He doesn't want to join the affiliate program for another electronic toys website because he doesn't want to lose the sale. Rob finds Don's Drop Ship Electronics, who will drop ship orders of the products Rob wants to sell directly to Rob's buyers.
Why using a drop ship supplier may be right for Rob:
* A drop ship supplier will allow Rob to close the sale on his site and pass the order to the supplier for fulfillment to the buyer. On each transaction, Rob is selling retail, buying wholesale and asking the supplier to ship to the buyer. Rob keeps the sale.
* Rob gets to expand his product catalog and test this new market. This way, he can stock it if it sells well.
* Rob doesn't stock inventory or have to ship the product; but, he gets a bit higher margin than an affiliate for the risk of billing and customer support, and he closes the buyer through his own shopping cart.
There are a few things that Rob needs to watch out for
1. Investigate the supplier. They must be reputable, ship products from a reputable carrier and not charge excess drop ship fees. Shop around. Remember if the supplier drops the ball on fulfilling the order, Rob has to deal with the customer.
2. Hot products can sell out, resulting in a back-order with the supplier and a support call to the buyer. Rob can always buy a small wholesale order or stock just a few products in his warehouse to protect against sell outs.
3. Ask about shipping, returns and credit card charge-back policies.
Why does it make sense for a manufacturer, supplier or distributor to offer drop shipping?
* Many retailers don’t want to invest in large quantities of inventory or minimum order amounts. Offering drop ship is a step between an affiliate and a wholesale account.
* Affiliates are often reluctant to buy wholesale, as they likely do not have their own fulfillment or warehouse solutions.
* Many manufacturers or wholesalers, like Don, have a huge product catalog that they want to give retailers access to. Often the 80/20 rule applies; 80% of the sales are generated against 20% of the product catalog. Offering drop ship opens up new sales opportunities to the long tail of his product catalog.
* Don knows that shipping and fulfillment are something that he can do well or outsource to a fulfillment company effectively because he has the largest economies of scale. By controlling the shipping process, Don protects his brand and tightly controls his distribution model.
* Don can charge fees to drop ship. He can now set up exclusive territories and know they are being enforced.
Before Don jumps into drop ship here are some things he should think about:
* Drop ship requires a warehouse to have robust pick-and-pack (direct to consumer) processes. To drop ship a warehouse needs to support 1-Day, 2-Day, ground and overnight shipping (maybe international); boxes and packaging for direct-to-consumer is different than B2B and returns processes need to be thought through.
* If you are used to shipping freight you will need to support parcel carriers like UPS, FedEx, USPS.
* Your product catalog has to be in a dynamic format and will likely need to support electronic feeds. The data can't be a printed wholesale catalog.
* Dynamic inventory updates and real-time inventory numbers must be supplied to your drop shippers and any drop ship marketplaces.
* You have to be committed to pick/pack and drop ship...or you should outsource this. You can always bring it back in-house.
How can a manufacturer, supplier or distributor power drop ship fulfillment?
* Manual: Provide retailers with enough information to post your products on their website. Provide product images, descriptions, wholesale price, MSRP, etc and updates on inventory. Provide them with an e-mail account, phone number or order form to input orders to you. You need to also provide shipping options, returns procedures and charge-back processes. This method allows a manufacture to truly stay in close contact with the retail channel; but, automation is obviously lacking.
* Shopping carts: If you have your products in a shopping cart, look to your cart to see if it can export your product data into an XML format or give your retailers product pages that plug straight into your shopping cart.
* Manufacturer drop ship software: There is software out there for manufacturers and suppliers that run their own fulfillment. One program I've seen is Order Storm. I can't vouch for the viability of this software; but, perhaps a reader can.
* Outsource: If you are a wholesale manufacturer or supplier and your fulfillment and automation processes today are geared toward B2B/wholesale shipping, consider outsourcing your fulfillment to a pick-and-pack operation that can help you automate the inbound order processing, handle the pick/pack and returns and give you live inventory data. This is exactly what the Shipwire drop ship fulfillment integration with Doba provides. Shipwire and Doba work together to allow you to outsource the fulfillment and supply inventory data feeds to Doba who will syndicate the data to their 20,000+ e-tailers. These etailers source drop ship inventory from the Doba marketplace and sell it on their websites. The Shipwire - Doba connection is free. Now manufacturers can outsource product drop ship fulfillment.
Additional Resources For Drop Ship and Fulfillment
*Doba – Doba provides a marketplace to connect e-tailers with drop ship friendly suppliers and the technology platform to manage order flow and product availability. Doba is only available for U.S. orders; however, it is open to international suppliers via the Shipwire-Doba connection.
*Shipwire manufacture drop ship fulfillmen – Shipwire provides a global warehouse network to store product and automate order fulfillment or drop ship fulfillment.
*World Wide Brands – International drop ship education. The team at World Wide Brands has done a great job of providing educational tools for merchants and suppliers entering into drop ship. They provide a directory of drop ship-friendly suppliers. WWB is a great resource to connect with drop ship suppliers and spend less time validating suppliers.
*Alibaba – a marketplace to connect buyers and sellers . Alibaba is a great resource to compare product costs and start building your supply chain if you move beyond drop ship.
Source: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/
888’s shares dipped yesterday when an analyst note suggested that the online gaming operator’s results, released earlier this week, showed consumer-facing growth had “halted abruptly” as the economic slump and currency fluctuations impacted player behaviour.
The note from investment bank Jefferies&Co downgraded the stock and said that until there were stronger signs of the business-to-business (B2B) operation delivering the promised new players and added growth, the shares were fairly valued at around 105p.
The shares ended Thursday down over 6 percent or 6.25p at 95.5p.
The note pointed out that underlying levels of trading at 888 were soft. “There has been an improvement since December’s nadir, but the core casino channel continues to be challenged and the first quarter is expected to be down on the fourth quarter overall,” said William Birch and Anna Barnfather at Jefferies
“With currency moves and lower gameplay impacting in the fourth quarter, this is already a soft comparison while the summer months are seasonally weaker: this all points to a lower run rate for the year than currently expected.”
The Jefferies team noted approvingly that the B2B operation – rebranded this week as Dragonfish – was a “credible” platform with a promising pipeline of partners.
The company this week announced a deal to provide a casino and poker offering for the Racing Post’s readership. Gigi Levy, chief executive at 888, said the firm was talking to 50 possible B2B partners, and was hoping that for this current year the division would contribute 50 percent of pre-tax profits.
But, as Jefferies noted, the B2B operation has yet to replace the growth that was coming from the consumer side. “We hope to see an early conversion of many of these potential partnerships, including some sizeable additions on the scale of the Sportech deal or bigger, but do not expect material uplift before the fourth quarter at the earliest.”
James Hollins, analyst at Daniel Stewart, also observed that current trading was behind expectations. He pointed out that the company had said that first-quarter revenue was 5 percent ahead of the December figure, but that the quarter was still 10 percent down on the previous quarter as a whole.
“This raises some questions over B2C [business-to-consumer] trading, although we are comfortable with our 6 percent year-on-year revenue growth target.” Like Jefferies, Hollins suggested this would be assisted by B2B growth.
Source: http://www.gamblingcompliance.com/
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