I don’t often write about new products and services in China’s hyperactive e-commerce space, since such initiatives have become commonplace in an overheated sector where everyone is always looking for any competitive advantage. But the latest pilot program by Jingdong, China’s second largest e-commerce firm, looks like a potential game-changer since it could significantly challenge the entire industry by introducing ultra-fast deliveries. At the same time, newly released data is showing China’s e-commerce sales posted a major decline in the first quarter, hinting the sector may be headed for a rapid slowdown after several years of breakneck growth. Read Full Post…
Online discount retailer Vipshop (NYSE: VIPS) emerged as one of China’s most remarkable turnaround stories in 2012, as its shares rallied sharply in the second half of the year after a miserable IPO. Now the company is passing more new milestones, reporting its first-ever profit in the fourth-quarter of 2012 and also entering the relatively small club of Chinese Internet firms that can boast of market values of $1 billion or more. The company has also solidified its position as China’s most valuable publicly traded e-commerce firm, after taking the title from older rival Dangdang (NYSE: DANG) last fall.
After several misguided e-commerce initiatives that ended in failure, Internet giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is finally making what looks like a smart move in the highly competitive space by focusing on what it does best: providing search services. In this case, media are reporting that China’s dominant provider online search company has quietly launched an e-commerce search engine, in what looks like a direct challenge to e-commerce leader Alibaba’s own eTao e-commerce search site.
I’ve been writing for most of the past year about China’s bloody e-commerce battles, and now we’re getting some figures that finally show how bad the situation is with news that up-and-comer Suning (Shenzhen: 002024) has missed its 2012 online sales target by a relatively large margin. This bad stumble reflects the fact that China’s e-commerce market may have big potential, but the overall space is still limited in size. What’s more, with so many big names fighting for a piece of the pie, everyone is having to sell their products at very low prices that ultimately result in lower overall revenues and operating losses.
Media are reporting that online retailers Dangdang (NYSE: DANG) is launching a major overhaul and Vancl is facing issues from its own big retrenchment, as each searches for elusive profits that have become increasingly hard to find in the current cutthroat e-commerce space. In Dangdang’s case, the company is attempting to focus on several key product groups, giving up its previous aim of becoming a general merchandise giant like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). Meantime, online clothing retailer Vancl’s own ongoing slimming exercise has left it so lean that it is reportedly running into logistical problems that are resulting in delayed shipments to some of its customers. All of this reflects just how difficult China’s e-commerce environment has become, with most companies resorting to desperate measures in their bids to conserve cash and become profitable in the ultra-competitive space.
Global e-commerce giant Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was decidedly low-key in the launch last week of its Kindle bookstore in China, and now perhaps we know why. Just days after Amazon formally opened the store on its China site selling books for its Kindle tablet PCs, media are reporting the government agency that regulates the publishing industry has said Amazon’s new store violates Chinese regulations, implying the store may have to close until the situation gets sorted out. Whether or not such a closure, if it comes, would be temporary or permanent remains to be seen, though I think it would probably be temporary. But this case does once again underscore the regulatory risk of doing business in China, where numerous government agencies often oversee specific industries and anyone who operates needs to take care to keep all those regulators happy.
