Witnessed by a high-profile business delegation led by the Dutch king, China's e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd announced on Thursday the launch of a virtual shopping mall of the Netherlands on its Tmall Global platform to help the country gain more Chinese consumers from online channels.
The national mall of the Netherlands is integrated with several of Alibaba's core businesses, including cross-border shopping site Tmall Global, online travel site Alitrip and online payment tool Alipay.
The virtual mall is expected to give Chinese consumers a one-stop solution whether they want to shop made-in-Netherlands goods online or they want to physically travel across the border.
By fiscal year 2015, as many as 80 Dutch brands have opened stores on Alibaba's online platforms with a total transaction of nearly 3 billion yuan ($472 million). Dutch baby formulas and technology brand Philips are very popular among Chinese shoppers.
The launch of the Dutch national mall is only days before the Nov 11 online shopping festival, China's biggest online sales event. The Hangzhou-based Alibaba has already made globalization its theme for the upcoming shopping extravaganza.