Alibaba's Taobao Maker Festival highlights platform benefits to entrepreneurs

By

Benjamin Fitzgerald

Published
Jul 25, 2016

Alibaba Group's Taobao hosted an interactive fair in Shanghai over the weekend, as the Chinese e-commerce group looks to attract more entrepreneurs and Millenials onto its platform.

Dubbed the Taobao Maker Festival, the event was attended by 72 potential merchants, makers of unique products such bamboo bicycles to 3D-printed jewellery.

Alibaba said in a press release it is putting a particular focus on China’s young generation, because it is the most active group on Taobao.

“Millennials are the driving force behind Taobao Marketplace, with 70 percent of buyers in their 20s and 30s,” Alibaba Chief Marketing Officer Chris Tung said.

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These twentysomethings “make a strong contribution to the platform’s active ecosystem,” he said.

Nowadays, the online environment extends beyond e-commerce and into digital media. News and live streaming, online communities and services are contributing how consumers are shopping online with most transactions taking place on mobile devices.

Mobile Taobao launched in 2009 and currently has 369 million monthly active users who spend more that 25 minutes a day using the app, according to report by Alibaba. In comparison, that same report said the average time spent on Amazon and eBay’s mobile apps are about 9 minutes and 11 minutes, respectively, while users of social media site Twitter spend 16 minutes.

Alibaba also said more buyers are becoming sellers as well, leveraging Taobao to launch their businesses. In the process the site is evolving into consumer-to-consumer territory, one that young people respond to.

“Mobile Taobao has evolved into an interactive lifestyle platform driven by a vibrant young consumer population who seek to do much more than just shop,” Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said in the statement.

“It is a destination for innovators, entrepreneurs and creatives to showcase and experiment amongst a community of 423 million Chinese consumers on our China retail marketplaces that come to Mobile Taobao to explore, discover and be entertained.”