The 70,000 online merchants that run their retail e-commerce sites on Bigcommerce software can now click directly from their e-commerce technology platform to purchase merchandise from 300 certified suppliers on Alibaba Group’s wholesale marketplace Alibaba.com.
Michael Lee, director of international business development and marketing for Alibaba.com, says Alibaba selected 300 of its Gold Suppliers—those suppliers meeting its highest standards of product quality and customer service—to offer flexible ordering terms to Bigcommerce merchants. Alibaba.com requires no minimum order sizes, he says, and leaves it up to individual merchants and suppliers to work out order size and shipping arrangements.
“Merchants have the option to select wholesale pricing based on the fastest available shipping time, or the lowest available price,” Lee says. The ability to order in small quantities, he adds, is also intended to let merchants test new products to see how well they sell before committing to large orders.
The 300 suppliers participating initially in the Bigcommerceprogram are all based in China. They sell items in the five product categories of apparel, automotive, beauty, consumer electronics and jewelry.
As Alibaba learns what products Bigcommerce merchants demand the most, it will consider adding more suppliers within those categories, possibly including some from the United States, Lee says. Alibaba also expects to announce similar arrangements with other e-commerce technology companies, but has yet to provide more details.
The connection to Alibaba comes at no extra charge to Bigcommerce merchants, who range in size from about $100,000 to tens of millions of dollars in annual sales, says Melanie Kalemba, senior vice president of sales and strategic business development at Bigcommerce.
The arrangement provides Bigcommerce merchants access to Alibaba.com’s e-commerce features, including its mobile app for finding suppliers and placing orders; its AliSourcePro system that lets merchants post information on desired products on Alibaba.com, and receive price quotes from multiple suppliers; and Alibaba’s payment services, which enable merchants to receive and inspect products before their online payments are released to suppliers.
Shaheen Haroon, co-founder with his brother Fameez Haroon of Australia-based menswear e-commerce site OTAA.com.au, says AliSourcePro has enabled OTAA to quickly expand its product linesfrom neckties to other categories of apparel and accessories
Alibaba.com charges a $3,000 annual fee to the sellers it classifies as Gold Suppliers.
Bigcommerce, which makes it e-commerce software available through the Internet, charges monthly subscription fees ranging from $29.95 plus 1.5% of the value of each transaction, to $199.95, depending on such criteria as the amount of data storage a merchant uses and the number of data calls it makes to databases.
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