eBay and Etsy are are feeling the heat from low-cost China-to-the-West marketplaces like Temu, and Amazon just created its own version called Amazon Haul. Now comes word that Alibaba is restructuring its ecommerce businesses and putting a young, rising executive in charge.
Alibaba announced it is integrating all of its ecommerce businesses under a single umbrella for the first time. The Alibaba E-Commerce Business Group will include its domestic and international – and consumer and business – marketplaces: Taobao, Tmall, AliExpress, Alibaba.com, Lazada, Trendyol, 1688, and Idle Fish.
Alibaba appointed the CEO of Alibaba International Digital Commerce Jiang Fan to be CEO of the new business group, reporting directly to Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group and Alibaba Cloud.
An article from South China Morning Post in July 2023 said that at the time, Jiang Fan was the only Alibaba partner under the age of 40 and was being empowered to defend it against companies such as PDD (Temu’s holding company run by Colin Huang Zheng, who is in his 40s).
In an announcement on the Alizila corporate blog, Alibaba said its new ecommerce business group “will drive significant synergies across global supply chains” and would support small- and medium-sized merchants to expand their markets in China and internationally
“The new structure marks the first time that all its e-commerce businesses are under a single leadership within Alibaba Group,” the company said in last week’s announcement. “This decision reflects Alibaba’s unwavering commitment to investing in its core commerce business and enhancing the quality of operations to win in the highly competitive e-commerce sector.”
