Spurred by robust demand, Yahoo-Kimo Inc (雅虎奇摩), the nation’s largest online auctioneer, said yesterday it would launch a fixed-price sales platform called “The Mall” (超級商城) on Sept. 25, following on the heels of eBay’s recent adoption of Amazon’s e-retail model.
Jerry Ku (顧昌欣), vice president of the company’s e-commerce business services division, said that contrary to popular belief, 60 percent of Yahoo-Kimo users make fixed-price purchases on its site.
“Instead of bidding and waiting for an auction to end, many of our users prefer the simplicity of a direct, immediate, hassle-free purchase,” Ku told a media briefing.
Ku said “the introduction of The Mall will diversify Yahoo-Kimo’s business model and add a new stream of revenue to the company,” but did not comment on whether the company felt the auction market was slowing or whether the site would hurt its auction sales.
The year-end goal for the Internet portal is to attract 50,000 to 100,000 listings, or 300 of its biggest power sellers, on its fixed-price sales site, the company said.
The Mall differs from Yahoo-Kimo Shopping (購物通) in that rather than re-directing visitors to independent e-commerce Web pages hosted by various stores, The Mall aggregates these stores on one Web site and offers shoppers a uniform checkout.
“Now buyers can take advantage of sellers’ quantity discounts, bundled sales, free gifts and other promotions, and see all the items in one shopping cart,” said Leon Chen (陳杰), a category manager of e-commerce at the company.
Sellers will need to be registered businesses that issue receipts. The new site will offer debit and credit card payment options, as well as pay-by-installment options.
Yahoo-Kimo will implement a seven-day product inspection period and act as financial custodian until a transaction is completed. The company cooperates with more than 15 international and regional banks.
The added security features were developed by Yahoo’s global engineering team, but The Mall is strictly a Taiwanese concept and venture, the company said.
On its auction site, sellers are charged a 3 percent transaction fee with a cap. On the fixed-price site, Yahoo’s commission will range from 2.5 percent to 5 percent depending on the product and sellers will be charged a store opening fee of NT$15,000 and a monthly service fee of NT$3,000.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained