Start Your E-Commerce in China?
You may have known Taobao.com, the biggest online market in China. You may even think to sell your products through Taobao, or its more upscale platform, Tmall.com. It is a good idea, since about 130 million people visit Taobao everyday and you will not get such a huge visitor flow by yourself.
However, you may not know that the "seller" function of Taobao is only open to Chinese residents and companies. Tmall is also solely open to Chinese companies. Thus many foreign individuals and companies go around this by signing contracts with Chinese inviduals or companies to open stores under their names.
Unlike Taobao, where most individuals are selling products and services at low prices, Tmall is positioned as a more high-end platform. And therefore Tmall charges a fixed annual fee plus a sales percentage fee, depending on the product category. For example, if you sell clothes on Tmall, then you will need to pay a fixed fee of CNY30,000 per year plus 5% of the sales. If your annual sales reach CNY360,000, 50% of the fixed fee will be refunded; if CNY1.2 million, then 100%. What you will get in return are customer flow believed to be not that price sensitive, full functioned online store, and other value added services.
Another approach is to distribute products to big sellers on Taobao. Do not underestimate them. The annual sales of the top sellers are over CNY100 million. But make sure your price and quality are competitive.
Certainly, you can just set up an independent online store to sell products directly. Then you will need to attract visitors by yourself. The regular ways are online ads, social media promotion and forum post. And, if you want to host your online store on a server located in China, then you will need to apply for the approval of commercial ICP (Internet Content Provider). Foreign companies can apply for that, but it is nearly impossible to attain. The alternative way is to apply through a Chinese company or host your store on a server outside China.
