Turkey's Trendyol Plans to Enter Eastern Europe Market
Turkish eCommerce giant Trendyol is set to expand to the Eastern European market in 2024 , starting with Romania, Greece, Hungary and the Czech Republic. “Our goal is to enable all of our 300,000 sellers to sell to the regions including Europe, the Middle East and the Gulf Countries,” said the CEO of Trendyol Group Erdem Inan.
This expansion follows Trendyol's success in the Azerbaijan market, which launched in May last year. Inan stated that Trendyol had successfully reached 1.3 million customers and 6.3 million orders in this new market. “With our technological infrastructure and physical investments, as well as marketing efforts, we will achieve better results working together with our sellers,” he added.
Last month, Trendyol also announced its partnerships with The International Olympic Committee (IOC). The eCommerce platform, which affiliated with Alibaba, has become eCommerce Service Partner in Turkey. This partnership will make Olympic games merchandise, which will be held in Paris this summer, available on Trendyol for selected territories.
JD.com Celebrates Antimonopoly Victory Against Alibaba
A Chinese court has sided with online giant JD.com in a long running antimonopoly case against its rival Alibaba, the company announced on Friday, years after Beijing launched a tough regulatory crackdown on Big Tech and hobbled the country’s powerful tech sector. Online retailer Alibaba Group Holding abused its dominance in the market by forcing sellers to work with it exclusively, a Beijing court ruled, JD.com said in a statement published on its official WeChat account.
The High People's Court of Beijing ordered Alibaba to pay 1 billion yuan (US$141 million) in damages to its rival for its monopolistic practices, often called the rule of “choosing one from two,” that prohibited merchants wanting to sell on its platform from selling products on rival e-commerce platforms. The court also ruled against two other companies, Zhejiang Tmall Network Co. and Zhejiang Tmall Technology Co., operating under the Alibaba umbrella.
JD.com, which first challenged the rule back in 2017, celebrated the court’s decision as a “fair ruling” and said it was a landmark moment in efforts to uphold fair competition in China. A spokesman for Alibaba confirmed the ruling in statements to Reuters and Bloomberg. The company said it would “respect the court’s decision” but did not comment on the matter further.
TikTok’s US$17.5 Billion U.S. eCommerce Expansion Poses Threat to Amazon
TikTok aims to grow the size of its U.S. eCommerce business tenfold to as much as US$17.5 billion this year, according to Bloomberg. The ByteDance-owned company’s ambitious move poses a bigger threat to Amazon, as well as Temu and Shein, which have been making big strides among younger American shoppers.
Unlike Amazon, Shein or Temu, TikTok is banking on its social media reach and the appeal of viral videos to attract customers. The shop feature lets users buy items while scrolling through a perpetual feed of short videos and live streams within its main social media app, hoping consumers use it as an alternative to Amazon or Shopee.
This format, which aims to combine the ease of shopping on Amazon with the product discovery capabilities of apps like Instagram, has helped TikTok capture a substantial portion of Chinese consumer spending from Alibaba Group and JD.com.
This effort follows the success of TikTok Shop in Southeast Asia. Late last year, TikTok also took control of Tokopedia, one of Indonesia's biggest eCommerce platforms, in a US$1.5 billion deal to enable TikTok Shop to restart its service. Now, the company is seeking to expand sales in the US and Latin America, where it’s planning to launch the eCommerce operation in coming months.