This Wednesday at 11 am., SIA is hosting an important webinar with Mark Fleming, Manager, Business Solutions, for Alibaba.
Fleming leverages his prior experience working at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China, to help North American brands utilize Alibaba’s ecosystem to enter and expand their presence in China.
Fleming previously worked in venture capital investing in tech startups and in U.S. Federal government on trade and economic policy. He holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
The major points of discussion in the webinar is just how vast the e-commerce space is in China, and how now is the right time to begin to do business there.
We sat down with Fleming for a quick Q and A surrounding his talk to SIA members.
How important is the winter sporting goods market to Alibaba?
A: It is a growing category along with the popularization of winter sports within China. We recently dedicated a new “winter festival” each year in January that will highlight winter gear and clothing for people to buy on our platform.
Can you give us a glimpse into the partnership with the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing?
A: Our partnership will be all about combining our cloud and e-commerce services in order to help the Olympics engage with more fans and reach more people in China and throughout the world by bringing in interesting technologies to make the games more interactive and appealing. We will grow this each year but our first showcase of interactive technology was at the Korean Olympics.
What are some of the snowsports statistics in China that U.S. brands might be interested to know?
A: Here are some of the important winter sports statistics currently available the from China Tourism Academy:
>>145 ski resorts with chair lifts in China (growing at 16% per year)
>>17.5 million ski resort visits in 2017 (up 15.89% from 2016)
>>170 million winter tourists (growing at 15%)
>>11.6 million Chinese visit a ski resort at least once a year
>>26 towns in China derive major revenue from winter sports
Here are the 2020 estimates:
>>Winter sports venues and ski resorts will generate $6.3 billion USD
>>$95 billion USD will be spent on accommodation, equipment, travel, and winter sports venues combined
>>The Chinese government hopes to increase winter sports tourist to 300 million by the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
>>40 towns will derive significant revenue from winter sports
Alibaba enables businesses “to transform the way they market, sell and operate,” says the online giant. “We provide the fundamental technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands and other businesses to leverage the power of the Internet to engage with their users and customers. Our businesses are comprised of core commerce, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, innovation initiatives and others. Through our subsidiary Cainiao Network and investee affiliate Koubei, respectively, we participate in the logistics and local services sectors. In addition, we have a strategic relationship with Ant Financial Services, the financial services group that operates mainly through Alipay, the leading third-party online payment platform in China.”