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Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

westiseast.co.uk

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Re: Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

#11

Post by anothermachine »

Tsagadai wrote: post #7
ghshephard wrote: post #2

Particularly fascinating, that as a long time daily (hourly?) reader of HN I've never even heard of Taobao before today.

Taobao is fantastic for buying anything China makes (which is almost everything). It is part auction house, part business-to-business sales. There are even quite a few services to get around the language barrier. A word of caution, if something goes wrong your money is almost certainly lost. Sometimes the firm that you bought it from has folded (I've had this happen in the time it took to deliver the order) to the se…

Interesting to read your comment and dmoy's.

On the one hand, compared to Amazon.com, Taobao sounds like a horrible shopping experience. On the other hand, compared to a shuk (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is), it is a vast improvement.

Context is everything.

Re: Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

#14

Post by bmelton »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #4
ghshephard wrote: post #2

Particularly fascinating, that as a long time daily (hourly?) reader of HN I've never even heard of Taobao before today.

China's web, while accessible via the "regular" internet (vs things like Iran's and NK's version of the internet) is really an internet all to its own. The average citizen in China does not use any foreign websites to do anything [citation needed]. All the services you and I consume online are replicated in China by Chinese companies. From Gmail to Yahoo!, from Facebook to twitter, from Amazon to eBay, from CNN to FO…

So, for every new Chinese startup, are there hordes of people crying about why they haven't rolled out to America?

(I'm sorry, this comment isn't like me, but I couldn't resist.)

Re: Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

#15

Post by westiseast »

brianbreslin wrote: post #10

Does anyone know what they did in 2011 from a sales perspective? They are a marketplace for small retailers, so I'm curious what their margins are or commissions they take. What % of the total online commerce for that day was this? Also are these all credit card transactions or are they COD? Other forms of payments? Is taobao handling all the payment transactions? sorry for all the questions, I don't read chinese so…

I don't know revenue/profit (I think they're listed, so you can check them online). Sales on this day last year was something like 5.2bn RMB from memory? Again, not sure about commissions either - I've only ever bought stuff from the site.

Again, AFAIK everything goes through ZhiFuBao. It's an escrow service in fact, so the buyer must confirm receipt of the item before any money goes to the seller. There's no COD, and that's part of the success (people in China are very worried about scams and had zero faith in online shopping before Taobao setup their system). You can pay using most mainstream credit cards/banks in China, although I think things like AMEX or mastercard aren't supported.

Re: Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

#16

Post by wilfra »

brianbreslin wrote: post #10

Does anyone know what they did in 2011 from a sales perspective? They are a marketplace for small retailers, so I'm curious what their margins are or commissions they take. What % of the total online commerce for that day was this? Also are these all credit card transactions or are they COD? Other forms of payments? Is taobao handling all the payment transactions? sorry for all the questions, I don't read chinese so…

They own their own version of PayPal which lots of people use, which easily links up with all of the major Chinese banks + debit cards. They also do a lot of pre-paid business where people go into the post office and put money on their account. Sounds weird but it's huge over there.

Don't know about commissions but given how fiercely competitive the market is (and most of the competition is on price) there is no chance the fees are anything like ebays (taobao is chinese ebay/amazon).

Side note but interesting: most of the sellers there offer live chat customer service. You see something you want and you can immediately IM the person through taobao and ask questions, make modifications to the order and bargain on the price. It's awesome and so common that it's basically expected.

Re: Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

#17

Post by westiseast »

anothermachine wrote: post #11
Tsagadai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taobao is fantastic for buying anything China makes (which is almost everything). It is part auction house, part business-to-business sales. There are even quite a few services to get around the language barrier. A word of caution, if something goes wrong your money is almost certainly lost. Sometimes the firm that you bought it from has folded (I've had this happen in the time it took to deliver the order) to the se…

Interesting to read your comment and dmoy's. On the one hand, compared to Amazon.com, Taobao sounds like a horrible shopping experience. On the other hand, compared to a shuk (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is), it is a vast improvement. Context is everything.

with all due respect to Tsagadai, I disagree. Taobao is an excellent shopping experience and I've never been ripped off there (perhaps my wife is an expert taobao-ista, which helps).

(1) Shops are absolutely crap scared of a bad review. Shoppers avoid bad reviews like the plague, and there's normally so much competition that you can always find an alternative. The 1 time we gave a bad review, we had a call from the seller within 1 hour offering all manner of things for us to take it back.

(2) Delivery is excellent - next day courier services. Taobao practically revolutionised the postal service in China because the national postal system was so bad. So, 10RMB (around £1) can get you national, next-day delivery for most small items (eg. a small parcel).

(3) The mobile site is awesome, full stop.

(4) There's just so much choice. I can buy official, full price products from the brand (ie, not a reseller, but the actual company), or 2nd hand, or knockoffs. Most knockoffs are clearly marked as such.

(5) Safety - it's not a direct payment system per se, but an escrow service. If you aren't happy in any way with your product, you click a button and the seller gets nothing.

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