Alibaba Australia New Zealand office opens

Sunday, 5 February 2017

As more bricks and mortar retailers pull the plugs on their NZ shops, overseas ecommerce giants are filling the gaps.

The past few months have seen Dick Smith, Pumpkin Patch, more recently, David Lawrence close their physical shops or enter voluntary administration.

At the same time, Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, are ramping up their operations in Australasia.

Amazon is rumoured to be setting up a physical presence warehouse in Australia mid-year and Alibaba founder billionaire Jack Ma was in Melbourne on Saturday to launch an Australia/New Zealand office.

* Rise in Kiwi businesses using Alibaba as an 'open sesame' to China**

Economic Development Minister Simon Bridges helped cut the red ribbon. He said given New Zealand was small and isolated, e-commerce was a way to get 'high quality products and services from our great countries out into the world'.

'With a population size of 1.4 billion and growing recognition and demand for Western brands, it is clear that e-commerce presents significant opportunities for our exporters,' he said.

Bridges said that in the last year, China's e-commerce retail sales grew 37 per cent versus 11.3 per cent in standard retail; mobile commerce sales grew 123 per cent; and 50 per cent of the population there was yet to access the internet.

Over 400 Kiwi brands are already on Alibaba platforms Tmall and Tmall Global, including EcoStore Healtheries and Comvita.

Ma said New Zealand's clean environment provided a unique selling point for its businesses and was the 'gold mine' for the economy in the next 15 years.

'In the past 30 years through a lack of experience in China we have a terrible polluted environment.'

The business, which connects consumers to businesses, businesses to businesses and consumers to consumers through its digital platforms has been hugely successful in China, as has its financial services operation, including Alipay, but its bid to transform into a truly global operation has proved more challenging.

Market watchers claim the Australia/NZ head office is as much a public relations exercise as a way to connect with New Zealand and Australian consumers and businesses.

At times, it seemed like a celebrity appearance with attendees mobbing Ma's table at the lunch and Chinese media clapping him as he entered and left a press conference.

'We believe that globalisation is the future, a lot of people don't like globalisation today but we are strong believers,' Ma, who has met with new US President Donald Trump, said.

'We are strong believers in trade, we think in the past 20 years globalisation was controlled by 16,000 big companies what if we can help 6 million business do business across borders?'

He said globalisation was going through 'growing pains' and if it could be reshaped into a more inclusive model, it had huge potential.

'In the past 18 years Alibaba focused on working with three global groups: small businesses, young people and women,' Ma said.

'We believe these three groups are the future, it's the small businesses that are the centre of innovation, it's the small businesses that creates the most jobs.'

'Empower young people using data technology, we believe the world is moving from information technology to data technology … and we believe that women are the most crucial workers.'

Ma said 48 per cent of Alibaba's workforce was women, including a female chief executive officer and a female chief people executive.

The launch attracted some controversy amid reports the Victorian government had provided incentives for the office to be based in Melbourne. Ma wouldn't comment directly on that, saying only that he appreciated the generosity and would use the money to help businesses.

This was reinforced by Alibaba Australia/New Zealand managing director Maggie Zhou who said the office was a key step in ensuring businesses had the support had information needed to succeed in China.

'Longer term, Alibaba Group's vision for the ANZ regional is to build the entire operating infrastructure needed to enable local businesses to expand globally,' she said.

The opening of the Australia/NZ headquarters followed 2016's Memorandum of Understanding between New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and Alibaba formalising discussions to strengthen China/NZ trade.

'In the last year, China's e-commerce retail sales have grown 37 per cent versus 11.3 per cent in standard retail; mobile commerce sales have grown 123 per cent; and 50 per cent of the population are yet to access the internet. - With SMH

* Stuff attended the office launch with the assistance of Alibaba.