E-commerce brings new business to China Commodities City
Source: chinadaily.com.cn View: 206 Date: 2014-05-07

Most vendors at the Yiwu-based China Commodities City - the "world’s largest small-commoditywholesale market" - spent half of their lives doing business in a brickandmortar market.

Commodities City actively taps e-commerce, and for most vendors establishing a successfulonline business is a headache. A professional photographer is essential to make products lookgood; an able Web designer vital to build a nice online store; tech people and marketing talentare indispensible to draw customers after any online store is launched.

Help may be at hand as increased demand leads to a rise in new companies geared to aidingothers in setting up an online presence. Huang Chunxiao, founder of Yiwu Yidao eCommerce CoLtd, is one such operator in Commodities City.

"We help them to build up online stores scratch, and weoffer services to run the store so that it can be easily pickedup by some key words and have good sales," Huang said.

Huang’s company started to offer online store operationservices in 2012. He said the majority of the 75,000 vendorsat Commodities City are at their 50s and not sufficientlytechsavvy. His type of service is increasingly in demand atthe wholesale market in Yiwu.

"Our company’s business grew 40 percent to 50 percent in2013," the 32 year-old said. "The business is expected togrow 80 percent this year compared with last."

Yiwugou, Commodities City’s official online marketplacebegan operations in October 2012. Traders also use otherChinese online platforms, such as Taobao and Tmall, whichare run by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Local government data show that overall e-commercetransactions in Yiwu city increased 64 percent year-on-yearto 85.6 billion yuan ($13.9 billion) in 2013. Growth forHuang’s company is in line with the development of e-commerce in the city.

He declined to disclose his company’s revenue but said the number of employees has grown to40 three in 2012. He signed a dozen new clients this year, and his services are chargedthrough contracts that are renewed annually.

"Generally speaking, the fee of our service is a fixed payment plus commission. We get about 3percent to 5 percent of the sales of the online store and the fixed payment varies 30,000yuan a year to 200,000 yuan a year, depending on different e-commerce platforms," he said.

The competition in this emerging business is not very fierce, but keeping the right talent to offer ahigh-quality service is key to the success, Huang said.

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