E-commerce market in China is big enough for multiple players

Cross border e-commerce is gaining traction worldwide, partly because of rising business from China. Despite the rise in global players, US online retailer Amazon is not afraid of the competition.

Amazon has felt the wind of late comers. Alibaba has brought the war onto Amazon’s home turf, recruiting small US businesses to join its sales network after its debut on the New York Stock Exchange last year.

Amazon’s senior vice president of international consumer business Diego Piacentini says the market is big enough for multiple players.

“Business is not sport, where there is one winner. Business has multiple winners,” Piacentini said.

“The size of the business, particularly e-commerce, would be so large. There is room for global players. Amazon is going to be one of them, absolutely, Alibaba and Tmall is one of them and many others.”

Besides talking the talk, Amazon has beefed up its operation in China since last year. It opened direct mail to China from six of its global locations. Amazon also set up a Chinese e-commerce website and increased its overseas purchases in China to bolster local sales.

“For countries like China or India, they are not exposed to many years of modern retail, e-commerce, or mobile commerce. You can expect in the next few years, that the vast majority of retail activities in China and India would happen online,” Piacentini said.

Last year, 18 million Chinese consumers spent US$213 billion overseas—more than double Amazon’s annual sales. For any global commerce site, such potential is hard to ignore.