Alibaba's Tmall vows to add more US brands to meet demand

During its first U.S. tour in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta and Seattle this month which aimed to look for business opportunities, Alibaba's online shopping unit, Tmall, met a number of U.S. retailers. It was making plans to introduce more US-branded goods on the Web site, as demands for the products increased tremendously among Chinese people these days, according to Sina News report.

Tmall sealed contracts with Levi Strauss, Gap and Adidas to open online shops on its Web site.

"Demands for overseas brand surged in China," said Janet Wang, a director from Tmall's International Business Development department. "Our goal is to continue to fulfil the demands and provide our customers with the most comprehensive brand and product selection."

The e-commerce giant Alibaba set up Tmall--formally known as Taobao Mall--in 2008, which claimed to offer only genuine items as distinguished from the former Taobao--popularly called the Chinese eBay--where counterfeits flooded.

Tmall, with a share of nearly 40 percent in the B2C market in China, was favored by younger shoppers. On "Singles Day" in China, held Nov. 11 last year, Tmall generated a total of 3.36 billion yuan in revenue (US$533.5 million) in only a one-day sale.

According to data from the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), there were 194 million online shoppers in the country by the end of 2011, who spent a total of 782.6 billion yuan (US$124.3 billion) online last year.