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Taiwanese online sellers profiting from PRC boom

With an eye on China's growing e-commerce market and purchasing power, an increasing number of local online retailers are making inroads into the market across the Strait, an online platform operator said yesterday.

Taiwan's online shopping sector has been growing steadily in the past few years, but the market is small compared with that in China, said Jimmy Yu (游士逸), general manager of eDynamics Inc (網勁科技), which operates oBuy (全買網), an online shopping mall that offers for retailers.

The company opened a site in Beijing last year to sell goods from Taiwanese sellers. In July last year, it teamed up with Sina Corp (新浪), China's biggest Web portal, to open a Taiwanese product section on its shopping site.

Later in October, oBuy set up a similar shopping site in Taobao.com (淘寶網), China's top auction site owned by Alibaba.com Corp (阿里巴巴). With the market presence of Sina and Taobao, Taiwanese retailers soon saw bumper sales, Yu said.

`phenomenal'

"Sales have been phenomenal," Yu said, while refusing to disclose sales figures of his Taiwanese clients.

Statistics provided by the Market Intelligence Center (市場情報中心) showed that revenues created by online shopping in Taiwan jumped 54 percent from 2004 to NT$60 billion (US$1.82 billion) in 2005, surged to nearly NT$90 billion last year and was expected to reach NT$131.1 billion this year.

Growth in Taiwan is significant, but the rapid development in online shopping in China is even more stunning, Yu said.

Taiwan currently has about 10 million online users, while China has about 140 million, Yu said.

bestsellers

China's consumer-to-consumer market last year reached 15 billion Chinese yuan (US$1.96 billion), but Taobao alone has set a sales target of 30 billion yuan, demonstrating the market's astounding potential, Yu said.

High-priced products such as accessories, watches and purses were bestsellers last year, Yu said, adding that this showed Chinese purchasing power had taken off with the country's red-hot economy.

With Taiwanese fashion spreading fast in China through TV programs or campaigns by pop stars, clothing has become the hottest products this year, he said.

The Chinese sites each host about 80 Taiwanese retailers at present, Yu said. The number is expected to rise further after oBuy held two conferences for interested online retailers this month, and plans to host another two next month, he added.

cash cow

Companies joining oBuy can choose to market their products on local sites such as Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), shopping sites operated by the Chinese-language dailies China Times and Apple Daily, Youthwant.com (優仕網) and others.

But many online retailers who have been selling to the local market for sometime came to the conference mainly to seek out business opportunities in China, Yu said.

"We believe the market will keep growing and become another cash cow for local online retailers," he said.
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