Taobao Offline Store
Last week, Taobao announced its entry into the off-line business, authorizing supermarkets, chain stores, and school shops to become Taobao’s official shopping service stores.
The first line of 150 off-line authorized stores opened on January 16, 2010. Taobao plans to open over 30,000 authorized Taobao stores.
It is reported that Hangzhou Taobao off-line stores are co-operated by Taobao and Hangzhou Buy Bar who invested 100 million yuan. Taobao will likely to work with other parties in other cities to build more Taobao offline stores.
It is understood that authorized community stores will be able to display “Taobao Community Shopping Service Store” signs, where consumers pay only a small amount of agency fees to enjoy many Taobao services including mobile phone card top-up, delivery service, electricity bill payment, airtickets booking, and etc.
In addition, each authorized offline store needs to pay a certain amount of deposit to Taobao so that consumers can get compensated if their interests are damaged.
The offline extension strategy is a smart move as it will likely expand Taobao’s presence into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities; in addition, it will be helpful to reach those who are not comfortable making online purchases.
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That is when start to think that Taobao is getting really big!