“Success” of Russian manufacturers: sold on AliExpress ... 24 products

Russian-made clothing was 4–20 times more expensive than its Chinese counterparts.

In November 2015, the Chinese online retailer AliExpress (Alibaba Group) began selling Russian-made goods as part of a special project "AliExpress Mall", launched with the participation of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade. Products from Russia on the trading floor were marked with a tricolor with the inscription "Made in Russia". Among others, a store opened in the mall, which represented fashionable goods of Russian brands for Russian buyers.



Sellers expected that the marketplace popular among Russians would be the most powerful sales driver. Their hopes were justified only in part. In the framework of the project “Fashion. Made in Russia "made a total of 24 orders .

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Disgraced the organizers froze the project two months after launch.

AliExpress website in Russia is more popular than Facebook

AliExpress in Russia is among the top ten most popular sites, along with Vkontakte, Yandex, Mail.ru and Google. In July 2015, the audience exceeded 22 million users - the popularity of the site AliExpress has bypassed even Facebook!





^{Data Sources : E-Commerce Association, Data Insight Agency, eMarketer}



The annual volume of the online retail market in Russia was estimated at 713 billion rubles , with 30% accounted for by foreign online stores. Online purchases were made by 25.4 million Russians, that is, 17.33% of the population. At the end of last year, Russia for AliExpress became the main market: according to the service of Similarweb, out of 1.1 billion site views, 14.4% came from Russia, Spain was in second place with 9.06%.





^{Data Sources : TNS Web Index Study, TNS Russia}

During the year 75 million parcels were delivered to Russia from abroad. The largest of the foreign stores, of course, AliExpress (55% of all purchases).

Strange business model

From the very beginning, the organizers chose a rather strange business approach. In the spring of 2015, they created a separate subproject of the “AliExpress Mall”, where they exhibited “premium” products at higher prices. It was for some reason decided to determine the goods of Russian producers. For example, in this “mall”, Baon jackets were offered on average for 10,000 rubles, while on the main AliExpress website one could buy similar goods for 1,600 rubles.



The Trends Brands Base sweatshirt cost 3200 rubles, and similar Chinese goods cost 153 rubles. (with free shipping), Anna Chapman leather clutch - 6,800 rubles, Chinese equivalent - 1,500 rubles.



Many buyers simply do not see the need to pay for the brand. The founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, recently said that Chinese fakes are better in quality than branded products that are made in the same factories and from the same materials.



Nevertheless, the Russian organizers have chosen the boutique business model.



“We want to attract a new, more“ expensive ”audience, which until now for some reason did not reach,” said Mark Zavadsky, General Director of “Alibaba.com (RU)”.



And this is despite the fact that on AliExpress, buyers traditionally come to find the product at lower prices. According to statistics, the average check on AliExpress for Russian buyers is only 1,200 rubles, almost three times lower than the average check for all online purchases in Russia - 3,300 rubles, including delivery (Data Insight and Insales, 2014).



In other words, the project organizers initially focused not on the main audience of the site, but on an imaginary "elite" audience.



“When choosing partners, we focused on those categories of goods that are in great demand in Russia, and also identified those Russian brands and companies that produce their products in Russia,” explained Mark Zavadsky. “Prices for goods in stores are in rubles, which will facilitate the process of making a purchase for users.” Mark Zavadsky expressed hope that in the future even more Russian sellers will be able to join the trading platform.



Of course, during the crisis, the project "AliExpress Mall" completely failed.

Results of the first months

Six months later, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation summed up the results of the project “Fashion. Made in Russia". The presentation with the evaluation of the project was at the disposal of the newspaper Kommersant.



For several months of work of a separate section on AliExpress, where clothes, shoes and accessories of Russian companies were presented, buyers made only 24 orders, another 552 goods were postponed in “My wishes”.



According to statistics, the project was visited by more than 130 thousand people, so the promotion of Russian goods was completely successful. Another thing is that no one was going to buy them especially. This is the Fashion section . Made in Russia "on AliExpress exists, but many sections are inactive, products are not sold there.







The Ministry of Industry of the Russian Federation hoped that through AliExpress, Russian manufacturers would find new buyers: they promised to give priority to Russian goods in the search, and made the entry on the main page of the Russian version of AliExpress. The buyers were promised that they "will be able to place orders for goods at favorable wholesale prices."



“466 Russian companies were invited to participate. Of these, 369 refused, citing disinterest in online commerce and retail sales, the presentation said, quoted by Kommersant. “About a hundred brands that agreed to participate faced problems with AliExpress.” Although the section of fashion goods from Russia was opened on November 20, it was not until December 5 that we managed to eliminate problems and begin to accept orders.



There were also problems with “double conversion of the cost of production”, these problems have not been eliminated until now. Recall that in the Russian section all prices should be indicated in rubles, but in reality they, as stated in the presentation, “floated” and were indicated in dollars.



Russian representatives could hardly understand AliExpress Software, which "was written in Chinese, and then translated into English."



In general, the first pancake was lumpy. Mark Zavadsky commented on the results of the first months as follows: “There were few orders. It turned out that work on the marketplace is a separate science, a separate technology, a different mentality and Russian factories were not ready for this. ”



In a comment on Facebook, Mark Zavadsky said that he considers the story of the sale of Russian clothes not to be a failure, but “an important experience from which both we and our partners learned the lessons.”







Officials from the Ministry of Industry and Trade do not lose hope either. They explain that at the price of Russian goods can not compete on the world market with foreign manufacturers, so the premium segment on the boutique business model is the only way out. To promote Russian goods, the Russian authorities are still interested in cooperation with the Alibaba Group.