SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) today announced the launch of the Korea Pavilion (http://korea.tmall.com) on Tmall.com, China’s largest third-party B2C platform for brands and retailers. The Korea Pavilion is the first official online country pavilion dedicated to providing consumers in China with one-stop shop for genuine Korean products and travel and cultural information.
Jack Ma, Founder and Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group and Choi Kyunghwan, Deputy Prime Minister of Korea unveiled Tmall.com’s Korea Pavilion in a ceremony at the aT Center. Tmall.com’s Korea Pavilion is the result of fruitful discussions between Alibaba Group and the Korean government over the past year. These discussions have yielded other positive initiatives such as collaboration in logistics and the creation of internship programs aimed at increasing the cooperation between Chinese and Korean enterprises.
Tmall.com’s Korea Pavilion, in partnership with Korea Argo-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT) and Korea International Trade Association (KITA), offers Korean merchants a dedicated online platform to tap the Chinese market. Chinese consumers can now easily shop for genuine Korean products through Tmall.com. Users of Tmall.com can also learn more about Korean culture, receive travel tips and monitor hot Korean products trending on Tmall.com.
“The Korea Pavilion is Alibaba Group’s first official country pavilion and we will continue to work with governments of other countries to launch similar pavilions in the future in order to satisfy the needs of our Chinese consumers,” said Jack Ma at the opening ceremony of the Korea Pavilion today in Seoul. “Korean made products have always been popular in China and we are excited to bring these products onto Tmall.com.”
To further strengthen the collaboration between Chinese and Korean companies, Alibaba Group is working with KITA to initiate a youth internship program that will let 100 Korean college graduates intern at Alibaba Group’s headquarters in Hangzhou. The first session of the three-month long internship program will start in early July. The selected interns will learn about the Chinese consumer market, its characteristics, and the operations and business of Alibaba Group’s e-commerce platforms. Through this internship, Korean college graduates can learn about the rapidly growing Chinese market and bring that experience and knowledge back to South Korea.
With the growing demand of Korean products among Chinese consumers, Cainiao, the logistics affiliate of Alibaba Group, is looking to expand its partnerships with Korean companies to bring the best cross-border logistics solutions possible to the Chinese consumers.
Following the meetings between Jack Ma and various Korean government officials in January 2015 and earlier in 2014, Alibaba Group has been dedicated into helping Korean SMEs and bridging the Chinese-Korean culture to bring a closer connection between Chinese shoppers and Korean merchants through various projects and initiatives.
About Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company is the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume. Founded in 1999, the company provides the fundamental technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help businesses leverage the power of the Internet to establish an online presence and conduct commerce with hundreds of millions of consumers and other businesses.
Alibaba Group’s major businesses include:
- Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com), China's largest online shopping destination
- Tmall.com (www.tmall.com), China’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers
- Juhuasuan (www.juhuasuan.com), China’s most popular online group buying marketplace
- Alitrip (www.alitrip.com), a leading online travel booking platform
- AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), a global online marketplace for consumers to buy directly from China
- Alibaba.com (www.alibaba.com), China’s largest global online wholesale platform for small businesses
- 1688.com (www.1688.com), a leading online wholesale marketplace in China
- Aliyun (www.aliyun.com), a provider of cloud computing services to businesses and entrepreneurs
About Tmall.com
Launched in April 2008, Tmall.com (www.tmall.com) is dedicated to providing a premium shopping experience for increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers in search of top-quality branded merchandise. A large number of international and Chinese brands and retailers have established storefronts on Tmall.com. According to iResearch, Tmall.com was the largest brands and retail platform in China in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2013. Tmall.com is a business within Alibaba Group.