AliExpress

AliExpress

Type of site	Online shopping
Owner	Alibaba Group
URL	aliexpress.com/index.html
Commercial	Yes
Launched	2010; 15 years ago (2010)
Current status	Active

The second logo was used from 2015 to 2024

AliExpress self-service delivery station in Katowice, Poland, 2020

AliExpress pavilion, Moscow Leningradsky railway station, 2016

AliExpress (Chinese: 全球速卖通) is an online retail service based in China and owned by the Alibaba Group.^[1] Launched in 2010,^[2][3] it is made up of small businesses in China and other locations, such as Singapore, that offer products to international online buyers. It is the most visited e-commerce website in Russia^[4] and was the 10th most popular website in Brazil.^[5] It facilitates small businesses to sell to customers all over the world. AliExpress has drawn comparison to eBay, as sellers are independent and use the platform to offer products to buyers.^[6] As of March 2024, the number of global users of the AliExpress mobile app reached 8.18 million, a 130% year-on-year increase, setting the highest record since statistics began in 2016.^[7]

Business model

AliExpress started as a business-to-business buying and selling portal. It has since expanded to include business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer, cloud computing and payment services. As of 2016 AliExpress ran websites in English, Spanish, Korean, Dutch, French, Italian, German, Polish, Turkish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Russian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai and other languages - English being the default offered to those countries with languages outside the preceding list.^[8]

Sellers on AliExpress can be either companies or individual industrial and commercial households.^[9] AliExpress is different from Amazon because it acts only as an e-commerce platform and does not itself sell products directly to consumers.^[10]

Abroad

Since 2013, AliExpress has transitioned fully from small-scale wholesale to a To-C (consumer-oriented) platform. During this phase, the platform invested heavily in recruiting Chinese brands and focused on localized efforts in key markets such as Russia, aiming to enhance e-commerce infrastructure capabilities like logistics and payment systems. With the support of AliExpress, the delivery time of Russian postal services was reduced from several weeks to as fast as 5-7 days.^[11]

On September 25th, 2024, AliExpress Korea Held a forum conference in the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas, in Gangnam, South Korea, Introducing various programs aimed at helping local Korean sellers to expand internationally through AliExpress, including benefits such as no fees & seller deposits for 5 years for Korean sellers on AliExpress.^[12]

Government responses

In November 2020, India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology banned the AliExpress mobile phone app along with 42 other Chinese apps.^[13]

In 2022, the Office of the United States Trade Representative added AliExpress to its list of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy.^[14][15]

In November 2023, the European Commission opened a probe into AliExpress regarding "potential dissemination of illegal products such as fake medicines, non-compliant food, and ineffective dietary supplements." On the nature of the investigation, an EU official said, "We have not found yet at this stage that AliExpress is not compliant. We are simply suspecting we have elements that they are not compliant with. This is not a finding of a breach".^[16]

References

1. "Can you tell me the diffrence [sic] between Alibaba and Aliexpress?". Help Center. Alibaba.com. Archived from the original on 9 January 2021. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
2. Dowsett, Sonya (3 March 2020). "Alibaba's AliExpress warns of possible coronavirus delays". U.S. Archived from the original on 2 March 2022. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
3. "How a pandemic led the world to start shopping on Alibaba". Financial Times. 28 April 2020. Archived from the original on 13 April 2022. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
4. Tsydenova, Nadezhda (10 July 2020). "AliExpress Russia eyes $10 billion turnover by 2022-2023, up an estimated 66%". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2 March 2022. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
5. Slater, Matt (18 December 2014). "What is Aliexpress?". China Checkup. Archived from the original on 14 August 2021. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
6. Hsiao, Aron. "ebay Versus AliExpress? Where You Should Be Shopping". The Balance Small Business. Archived from the original on 2 August 2019. Retrieved 2 August 2019.
7. "机构：中国三家跨境电商APP在韩国用户数量猛增，均创历史新高|界面新闻 · 快讯". www.jiemian.com. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
8. "A Brief History of Jack Ma, Alibaba and AliExpress". Alixblog. 23 March 2016. Archived from the original on 14 August 2017. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
9. "大数跨境｜跨境从业者专属的媒体平台". www.10100.com (in Chinese). Retrieved 17 November 2024.
10. "AliExpress Is Cheap, But Is It Safe to Shop There?". 4 December 2019. Archived from the original on 9 July 2019. Retrieved 28 April 2017.
11. "阿里速卖通：十年磨砺，助力中国品牌数字化出海 - 中国新闻周刊网". news.inewsweek.cn. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
12. "알리, K셀러 해외진출 교두보…"5년간 수수료·보증금 면제"(종합)". 아시아경제 (in Korean). 25 September 2024. Retrieved 17 November 2024.
13. "AliExpress among 43 new Chinese apps banned in India: Check full list". The Indian Express. 25 November 2020. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020.
14. Singh, Kanishka (18 February 2022). "U.S. adds e-commerce sites operated by Tencent, Alibaba to 'notorious markets' list". Reuters. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
15. "USTR Releases 2021 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy". United States Trade Representative. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022. Retrieved 18 February 2022.
16. "EU probes AliExpress over possibly illegal online products". Reuters. 14 March 2024. Retrieved 14 March 2024.

External links

• Official website