Alibaba wants to conquer the West from Belgium

As the SonntagsZeitung writes in its current issue, Alibaba is building a huge logistics hub with 220,000 square meters of floor space in Liège, Belgium. The construction is to be completed in twelve months. It is the fifth of its kind after Hong Kong, Moscow, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, and is expected to have the capacity to supply half of Europe with goods.

This could change quite a bit. Although the Alibaba store Aliexepress is becoming increasingly popular here and has been on the list of the most popular online stores since 2017, the local markets are not really relevant for the Chinese. Other markets are in a completely different league. For comparison: on the Chinese Singles' Day campaign day alone, Alibaba made more sales (over 37 billion (!) francs) than Coop did in the whole of 2018 (30.7 billion francs). According to WPP and Kantar, Alibaba is already the most valuable non-US retail brand in the world today (Werbewoche.ch reported).

"Global lifestyle platform"

Until now, Alibaba has seen the Swiss market more as a sales channel for local companies to China. Brands such as Tissot and Tag Heuer, for example, sell to the Far East via this channel. (Werbewoche.ch reported). With the new logistics center, however, the company could now target the end customer with full force and thus challenge Amazon's dominance in Western online retailing. Today, Amazon dominates the West, Alibaba the East. So far, they have largely avoided each other, but this could change in the future.

Back in September, Alibaba CEO Wang Mingquiang announced that Aliexpress would be developed into a "global lifestyle platform for consumers and merchants".

On its way to global dominance, Alibaba has already rolled up several markets with Aliexpress - including Eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey. It seems that now it is Western Europe's "turn". This worries not only Western retailers, but also the industry. The Aliexpress sales channel could become a direct gateway for Chinese corporations.

Zalando as a possible takeover candidate

A UN report on the digital economy cited by the SonntagsZeitung shows how Alibaba could proceed in order to expand more quickly: According to this report, an important strategy for boarding a market is the takeover of existing and potential competitors. In the case of the Chinese, one name is said to keep coming up for a possible takeover candidate: Zalando. The brand is trustworthy and established, and skepticism about the Chinese handling of personal data would probably also be lower with a German name as a figurehead.

This is all still speculation. However, the suspicion that Zalando could be targeted by the Chinese is not unfounded. After all, Alibaba took exactly the same approach in Southeast Asia when it took over the online retailer Lazada, which originally specialized in fashion, shoes and cosmetics. After the takeover, Alibaba gradually expanded Lazada and extended its product range. Today, the company also offers electronics, for example.