Alibaba reaches out to more South Korean brands with its recent recruitment event in Seoul. (Photo : Getty Images)
More than 1,000 retailers and brands attended a recruitment event held by Alibaba's Tmall.com in Seoul, South Korea, eyeing to get a share in the huge Chinese e-commerce market, news portal InternetRetailer.com reported.
According to the China Internet Network Information Center, the number of online shoppers in China has reached 413 million by the end of 2015.
As South Korean fashion is popular among Chinese, the gathering successfully attracted quite a crowd of aspirants, mostly are members of the Korea Fashion Association or the business council of Seoul shopping district, DongDaeMun.
Currently, over 600 Korean brands are already listed on Tmall.com, giving them the avenue to put up their own Web stores. Compared with Alibaba's Taobao, which is bigger in scale, Tmall is a marketplace dedicated to larger and more high-end brands.
Chinese firm iResearch noted that last year, Tmall accounted for a whopping 75 percent of online apparel purchases in the country.
This study nonetheless excludes sites with the likes of Taobao which allows even individuals to sell their products online.
Alibaba further shared that South Korean items rank among the most popular products on Tmall Global, a section especially designed for overseas firms that have physical presence in the country. However, the e-commerce giant did not elaborate as to how much is the growth of South Korean fashion brand sales on their marketplace.
Over the past years, different brands from South Korea have heavily relied on e-commerce platforms to reach more Chinese customers. Examples include the apparel brand Chuu and lingerie line Good People, who both inked deals with Chinese fashion online retailer Handuyishe E-commerce Co. Ltd.
"It is no doubt that today Chinese consumers are spending a lot on fashion. We realize now is a good time to promote our brand to China's young consumer. We plan to introduce a new brand in China. Our company focuses on developing the product, while Handuyishe will handle marketing and operations," Yoon Woo Hwan, Good People CEO, remarked in a statement.
Established in 2008, Handuyishe currently manages online businesses for around 40 fashion brands, half of which are its own.
"We develop about 30,000 new products each year, and Handuyishe plans to manage 1,000 brands in the future," a Handuyishe spokesperson told Internet Retailer.
Handuyishe, which translates to "Korean-style clothing" reached U.S.$192.6 million worth of sales in 2015, a nearly 60 percent increase from its previous statistic.
