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Being one of millions of amateur shopkeepers on China’s Taobao, the country’s biggest consumer-to-consumer online marketplace, can be tough. And it’s getting even tougher these days, Chinese media claims, with “almost 10,000 Taobao sellers per day” opting to rest or quit their online stores recently. The added pressure, says an article today in Sina Tech, is coming from more stringent quality controls on Taobao sellers – who mostly run their stores part-time in the midst of regular jobs – which include financial penalties for things like terrible customer service or selling fake items.
Most of the Taobao stores sell new items – in contrast to the flea-market feel of eBay – and so that requires the virtual store owners to spend time doing things like going to wholesalers to buy stock. On top of all that, a well-run store requires being online pretty much all day, dealing with orders, sending off packages, and chatting online with potential customers who have queries. Plus, more enterprising sellers need to engage in social media to promote their stores, such as on Weibo or via Taobao’s own Pinterest clone.
Added all together, the mental and physical effort is coming close to that of a full-time business, and edging close to the standards maintained by business-to-consumer sellers on Tmall, the Taobao sister site for brands and other major retailers. We contacted a representative at Alibaba – which runs both Taobao and Tmall – who explained to us:
Taobao.com constantly strives to improve the online shopping environment for both its buyers and also sellers, and like any business, running an online store requires time, energy and dedication; we welcome feedback and suggestions from users of our platform and hope that through communication we are able to better serve all parties in the ecosystem.
It’s all part of efforts to tidy up every aspect of Alibaba’s four main e-commerce arms. But the pressure is perhaps bearing the hardest on Taobao’s amateur virtual shopkeepers. There’s even a Taobao microsite that names and shames some of the unprofessional vendors on the site.
But Taobao has over six million vendors, so there are always others hoping to make profits from their part-time stores.
[Source: Sina Tech article in Chinese]
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