Over 50% traditional retailers launch e-biz by '11 (3)

"Seeking fortune on the internet" has become the common choice of major traditional enterprises. As of the end of 2011, more than half of the top ten chain-store enterprises had launched ecommerce business. Compared with purely online shopping platforms, they have more offline resources and more management experience in presales, sales, and after sales, such as storage layout and maintenance service. In February 2012, Wal-Mart announced its increased investment in the online shopping site yihaodian.com, its holding of the site's shares increasing to about 51 percent, completing its control of yihaodian.com. Yu Gang, chairman of the board of yihaodian.com said that many of Wal-Mart's resources and experience, including purchasing, warehousing, and logistics, would open to yihaodian.com.


What traditional retailers lack are internet experience and the knowledge of the operation rules of ecommerce. Some of them choose to work with third-party ecommerce platform. Zhang Yong, CEO of tmall.com, suggested that in this year's "double 11" sales, the daily sales of the digital chain store "D.Phone" reached RMB 94.59 million Yuan, its eye-catching performance ranking fourth among the day's top selling stores.


However, online shopping's impact on traditional commerce is far from insignificant. Online price tends to be lower, and this chills the secondary and tertiary agents who represent an important link in the traditional circulation channel. A digital marketplace now becomes a place to "check out the products" and a clothes shop becomes a "fitting room". Kuang Qiang, CEO of online store outsourcing service provider eacha.com, said that: "Jiangsu's Nantong city is the best known home textiles market in China. There, almost every supplier has their own store on taobao.com. Some have even closed down their physical stores so as to focus on online business".