Alibaba rewrites e-com playbook, while ZTO is sued over $1.4bn IPO

Photo: © Alexey Novikov

Two stories from the world of Chinese ecommerce today. First up, Alibaba is going into bricks and mortar – a reversal of its asset-light model with which it partnered with others to keep costs down. Now however, as the pace of growth has slowed, it is introducing a “new retail” strategy, by which it will build some test stores as well as partnering with some existing stores for online and offline sales. This Reuters article also notes that Alibaba is ...