Kaola.com, the cross-border e-commerce arm of China’s tech giant NetEase, held its first press conference in Beijing on Tuesday. Zhang Lei, CEO of Kaola.com, announced the platform’s strategy for 2016 and set a sales goal of RMB 10 billion (USD 1.5 billion) for the year.
Kaola.com differentiates itself from other cross-border e-commerce platforms including Xiaohongshu and Ymatou in that it can take advantage of the resources of its parent company NetEase.
“Compared to other e-commerce providers, Kaola.com has the edge in users and capital,” said Zhang.
NetEase reported RMB 22.8 billion in net revenue in 2015, a YoY increase of 94.7%, and its news portal had over 360 million users and 110 million monthly active user by the end of 2015, according to NetEase’s full-year 2015 financial report.
Kaola.com’s three-step development strategy in 2016 includes building a top brand list to help customers choose popular products; using video, VR and live broadcasts as means to provide a visual immersive experience to help customers select products; and leveraging NetEase’s presence in media, email, gaming, music, reading and education to direct users to the e-commerce platform.
Other major competitors in China’s cross-border e-commerce industry include JD.com, Alibaba’s Tmall, online cosmetics platform Jumei.com and luxury e-commerce platform Vipshop.
(Top photo from http://www.wbiao.cn.)
