Alibaba in the U.S.

“Alibaba Launches US-based Online Marketplace” – CNBC

I personally have never bought anything from Alibaba’s e-commerce site Taobao.com or Tmall.com but almost everyone I know in China are shoppers on those websites; a couple of my friends actually host stores on Taobao as well. Personally, I think Taobao had home advantage in the Chinese market and even though the company is going public in the U.S. and have just launched their U.S. website, I wonder how successful it will be with American consumers. Surely, people in the industry are aware of this company but for many regular folks, Alibaba remains an unknown entity.

With so many e-commerce players already in the U.S., I think Alibaba’s 11Main brings something different since it puts more emphasis on the individual stores and the stories that they have to tell to the customers.