Some background info: I'm tech lead for a german shop on tmall.hk, and indeed this time, the numbers are crazy.
What you have to know though is that B2C shopping on Alibaba is extremely promotion driven. You have a very flat curve most of the time, and then on promotion day, you've got lots of sales. Everyone is waiting for the special deals.
The way this works is that people can buy or sign up for all kinds of different vouchers, rebates and coupons and whatnot, which they can only use during the promotion, which is typically 24h. This will of course affect your margins, but the volume is high, so it can be worth it.
On the technical side, the APIs are astonishingly bad. I suppose this is the result of building this very quickly, and it has grown ever since. I don't know how they manage to maintain it.
> On the technical side, the APIs are astonishingly bad. I suppose this is the result of building this very quickly, and it has grown ever since. I don't know how they manage to maintain it.
I visited Alibaba HQ last month. People seemed pretty worked and driven by deadlines which can decrease their code quality. The teams I talked to didn't do much testing.
That figures. China (Bejing) is 7 hours ahead of german time, yet I've noticed that my Tmall contacts are replying to messages when it is really late at night for them, sometimes excusing themselves that they have dinner right now. On 11.11 many are on duty for 24 hours.
Off topic, but in contrast to americans, german people are often frowning and complaining a lot - even though we really don't have much cause, in comparison. Friendliness and positivity are some of the things I really appreciate about the USA. Treasure it!
Exactly, sorry - should have explained this. While aliexpress etc. are similar to Amazon marketplace, the tmall.hk site is geared towards trusted, foreign brands and big shops. You can setup a very distinctively looking shop, maintain your brand and standing out completely from the surrounding hosting site.
You are not allowed to open a tmall.hk shop unless you are a globally recognized brand or a shop that makes at least xx million € of revenue a year, its more or less invite only. Its a premium platform.
The reason Alibaba did this is that chinese people don't trust their own brands and shops, so for certain goods where safety is important and luxury goods they flock to foreign brands.
What you have to know though is that B2C shopping on Alibaba is extremely promotion driven. You have a very flat curve most of the time, and then on promotion day, you've got lots of sales. Everyone is waiting for the special deals.
The way this works is that people can buy or sign up for all kinds of different vouchers, rebates and coupons and whatnot, which they can only use during the promotion, which is typically 24h. This will of course affect your margins, but the volume is high, so it can be worth it.
On the technical side, the APIs are astonishingly bad. I suppose this is the result of building this very quickly, and it has grown ever since. I don't know how they manage to maintain it.