Tmall.com or Taobao Mall is a website in the Chinese language and an offshoot of Taobao run by the Parent Company Alibaba Group. It is a portal where the local Chinese organizations and global enterprises sell branded products to the consumers in Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the mainland China.
- Industry: The Internet, E-Commerce Retail
- Founded: April 2008
- Founder(s): Jack Ma
- Headquarters: China
- Website: tmall.com
History of Tmall
Tmall.com was introduced by Taobao in the month of April in 2008 as the Taobao Mall. This is a B2C platform. It was launched as a standalone Internet-based domain for differentiating listings by retailers who are authorized traders or brand proprietors, from the C2C dealers.
In the month of June 2011, Jack Ma, the CEO and Chairman of the Alibaba Group announced the restructuring of the Taobao through the email. Taobao was split into three different companies that are the TMall (B2C), Taobao Marketplace (C2C portal) and eTao (search engine for shopping). This reorganization was essential for combating the threats from its competitors.
Tmall.com feature over 70,000 Chinese and international brands from over 50,000 merchants and offers products all over the world to over 180,000,000 buyers.
Tmall.com carried out a huge advertising campaign for raising the brand awareness in the customers. It even announced an improved focus on the shopping experience and the product verticals.
With the launch of the Tmall Global in 2014, the Alibaba Group helped the traders to sell directly to the Chinese consumers. The largest stores of the Tmall Global are Costco of the USA and dm-drogerie market of Germany.
More about Tmall
TMall.com occupied a rank of one among all the Chinese retail B2C websites in 2010. In July 2014, the site was among the most visited eighteenth website internationally and the seventh most visited website in China.
The escrow-based payment gateway Alipay is the most preferred payment method for Tmall.com. The website also makes use of the AliWangWang, ‘Instant chat’ program to facilitate the communication between the sellers and the buyers before purchasing the goods. The Company has even partnered with the ‘TMall Partner Agency’ for managing the store with a team of proficient employees on the shop owner’s behalf.
Among the Chinese retail B2Cwebsites, Tmall.com took the number one position in 2010 with a huge merchandise and transaction volume. Its merchandise volume was 3 times that of its closest rival 360buy.
T.mall.com faced online uproar as it increased the fees on the online traders for eliminating the dealers that offer low-grade quality customer service and products. On the 11th of January 2012, the Chinese name of the website was changed to Tian Mao, that means ‘sky cat.’ The website took over 51.3% of the Chinese market, B2C’s share of online products in the Q1 2013. Many brands, such as Adidas, GAP, ECCO, Umbro, Dell, Samsung, Lipton, Watson, New Balance etc. have their stores at Tmall.com.
In the month of February 2014, the Alibaba Group launched the Tmall Global, with the aim of providing an international platform to help the foreign traders sell directly to the Chinese consumers. With the help of this model, the foreign dealers could carry out business in China without having any stock in the country.
